The Pace Report: "A Conversation with Rita Moreno" The Rita Moreno Interview
Welcome to this very special edition of The Pace Report, reporting from this year's 2016 APAP Winter Conference. Closing out this year's APAP was legendary screen, stage, record, and television icon and trailblazer, Rita Moreno. At this year's closing ceremonies, Mrs. Moreno spoke about her Puerto Rican background growing up in New York City, her auditioning for the legendary Louie B. Mayer of M.G.M studios, the negative roles she had to play while being a contract actress for the studios, and how she endured and kept reinventing herself to stay relevant in the industry.
Rita has won two Emmy Awards, a Grammy, and a Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for her performance as Anita in the epic, West Side Story in 1962. In December of 2015, President Barak Obama awarded Mrs. Moreno Moreno with a Lifetime Artistic Achievement Award from the Kennedy Center Honors.
This fall, Mrs. Moreno will star in a new Hispanic version of Norman Lear's "One Day At A Time" which will air on Netflix.
I sat down briefly with Mrs. Moreno to talk about the Great March on Washington, in which she attended, and also her work on the groundbreaking PBS television show, The Electric Company.
