With the release of Godzilla vs. Kong right around the corner, Eiza González joined us for a brand new episode of Collider Ladies Night and we had a lot to cover - even more than I anticipated. As always, we discussed her earliest inspirations and experiences in the industry and yes, we did talk about a number of her biggest releases including Baby Driver and I Care A Lot, but a few unexpected titles came up along the way that proved pivotal to putting González on the path to her latest release. Titles like Star Wars: The Force Awakens.

González’s Force Awakens story begins with a need for change, a chance to step away from some challenging circumstances:

“This is a wild story. I hope we have the time! Long story short, came here, I was really sad. I had just ended a really big relationship and I was really depressed and I needed to leave Mexico because I grew up being a teen [star], so when you’re a teen, the public and the press can be very brutal, so I needed to remove myself from it for a minute.”

Eiza Gonzalez in Godzilla vs. Kong
Image via Warner Bros.

Where did she go to reset? Los Angeles:

“So I rented out this landscaper’s house, back room. There was not Airbnbs or anything at the time. She had an open room, a friend of a friend knew her, I rented the place, and my mother - it’s all the making of my mother in the most innocent way - was just like, ‘You’re just in LA. Why don’t you go for an audition?’ I was like, ‘Mom, that’s not how it works. You need an agent and a manager. You have no idea what you’re saying.’”

Turns out, González’s mother actually found the right next step to take:

“She’s like, ‘Oh, some friend of mine told me something about this thing called IMDbPro. I think you have a profile. I think I’m gonna put your name and my email under it and just see what happens.’ And I [was] just like, ‘Sure, mom.’ And she knew that I was really depressed and sad at the time. So then she called me one day and she’s like, ‘There’s this audition.’ I was like, ‘I don’t even know how to audition in America. I don’t have a rep.’ They’re like, ’They’re just telling you to go.’ So I did. I had no idea. I’d never auditioned in English in my life, but I just did it for shits and giggles, you know? I was like, ‘Okay, I’ll do it. It’s not going to happen!’ So then I did and then, it sounds very self-indulgent but it really happened this way, I had a callback and then I didn’t really know what I was auditioning for, and then I had another callback and I was like, ‘What is happening?’ And then, long story short, it turned out I was auditioning for Star Wars, for The Force Awakens.”

star-wars-the-force-awakens-john-boyega-daisy-ridley
Image via Lucasfilm

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As we well know now, she didn’t wind up booking the role, but that doesn’t mean González didn’t score a major opportunity out of it. She continued:

“I was completely clueless. Because you know, they give you dummy sides. You don’t know what you’re reading. Now I know all this information, but at the time, you can see; I think Daisy Ridley was just cast out of nowhere. They like unknown people. So we were lucky to do that. Obviously didn’t book it, but went pretty far and I was like, ‘Great, awesome. That was great. Moving back to Mexico. It didn’t happen. That will be a great story for the rest of my life.’ And then like a week later I got a call on my flip phone at the time that I had bought at a CVS, and I got a call from a casting director and she’s like, ‘Oh, this other director saw your material. He wants to read you. Can you read?’ I tape myself, long story short, it was Robert Rodriguez, a month later I was moving to Austin and I did From Dusk Till Dawn, and I don’t know how this happened. My second audition.”

Eiza Gonzalez in From Dusk Till Dawn
Image via El Rey

A pretty pivotal experience for González right there, but trust me when I tell you, there’s loads more from where that came from. Keep an eye out for González’s full Collider Ladies Night conversation dropping on Wednesday, March 31st to hear more about how Robert Rodriguez became such a supportive figure in her career, what it was like auditioning for James Cameron for Alita: Battle Angel, her experience working with Jake Gyllenhaal on Michael Bay’s next movie, Ambulance, and so much more!

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