JENNIFER LOPEZ SHARES LATIN LOVE STORY

Jennifer Lopez produced El Cantante to share the story of Hector Lavoe with more than just a Latin audience.

All the reasons for doing El Cantante seemed right for Jennifer Lopez to play the part of Puchi, the wife of Latin singer Hector Lavoe. The story of a Puerto Rican couple so much in love and dealing with fame and addiction with her husband Marc Anthony playing Lavoe seemed the perfect project for Jennifer’s Nuyorican Productions.

Even Puchi herself requested Jennifer to play her. Jennifer says it’s a Latin love story but wanted to share it with everybody.

“Even though it’s a Latin project and it’s about Hector Lavoe and even though everybody involved in it is Latin it should be about a story that touches everybody, that anybody can watch and understand. You know what I mean? And you do that by bringing people into a world and then everybody relating to what’s happening so that they have this new world, this Puerto Rican thing in the 70s, this revolution that was happening at that time. Oh I don’t know about this world but then it’s a story that they can relate to. Oh I’ve been there. I’ve been there in that relationship. That’s when you make a great movie. When everybody can relate to it.”

At first Jennifer found it difficult relating to Puchi who had a very different lifestyle than her own.

“Puchi was so complicated for me because I don’t drink, I don’t smoke. I’ve never done drugs and this was a big part of this person’s life. It was a fact that they were involved in drugs and that was their existence and dealt with that a lot. Then I had to go off and do my own research and find the character myself because when you play a part nobody not even the director should know that character better than you.”

Jennifer’s research involved listening to interviews that Puchi gave about Hector where she was able to find the nuances in her voice and toughness in her personality. El Cantante opens Friday in theaters.