Actress Gina Rodriguez has said she feels a “sense of safety” when working on sets with more women involved.
The star of TV’s Jane The Virgin is appearing in Netflix romantic comedy Someone Great, which features a female-led cast as well as having women in prominent roles behind the camera.
Rodriguez said much of Hollywood is “male-dominated” and there is a notable difference when the balance tilts the other way.
She told the Press Association: “When you’re in front of the camera and you look out and see so many women, it gives you not only a sense of pride but a sense of safety.”
Rodriguez, 34, and also known for starring in Deepwater Horizon and Miss Bala, said the sex scenes filmed for Someone Great were different to the “very modest and very sweet” ones she was used to in Jane The Virgin.
She said having a female director in Jennifer Robinson and female cinematographer in Autumn Eakin made the experience “different” to having males in the same roles.
She said: “To have a female gaze on those experiences, I knew I was going to be protected in a way that is different, it is different, it just is.”
Rodriguez added: “For me it was better, I got a safety I’ve never experienced.”
Someone Great tells the story of Rodriguez’s music journalist who is dumped by her long-term boyfriend and to get over the rejection enlists her two best friends – played by Brittany Snow and DeWanda Wise – for an adventure in New York City.
As well as directing the film, Robinson also penned the script, which is loosely based on personal experience.
She said she wanted to make a movie that was “500 Days Of Summer meets Drunk History”, describing Someone Great as “really a story about female friendship and really the romantic comedy part of it, the romance of the movie, is between three women”.
Robinson does not believe Someone Great, a film based on the friendships of three women, would have been made a decade ago, crediting Bridesmaids director Paul Feig with paving the way for movies led by females.
She said: “There have been so many amazing movies led by women and comedies led by women that have created a path where Someone Great can exist.”
Someone Great will be streaming on Netflix on April 19.