For Diane Guerrero, taking on the role of Crazy Jane in HBO Max’s “Doom Patrol” isn’t as easy as just playing a kooky character from a comic book series. Jane actually has 64 personalities, the result of childhood sexual trauma.
“It’s like, ‘Of course I’m doing this role. It’s because I am’ — and this is a word I used to use to apply to myself — ‘I am crazy,’” Guerrero jokes on Wednesday’s episode of the Variety and iHeart podcast The Big Ticket. “I know what all of these emotions mean and I know what these emotions are on a heightened level.”
“Doom Patrol,” based on the DC series of the same name, follows a band of outcasts who gain superhuman abilities after suffering horrible incidents. Along with Crazy Jane, the group includes Robotman (Brendan Fraser), Negative Man (Matt Bomer/Matthew Zuk) and Elasti-Woman (April Bowlby). New to the second season, which premiered in June on HBO Max, is Dorothy (Abigail Shapiro), the daughter of the mysterious Dr. Niles Caulder (Timothy Dalton).
Listen to this week’s podcast below:
During the wide-ranging interview on “The Big Ticket,” Guerrero, 33, revealed she began seeing a therapist while shooting Season 2. “I needed to be in therapy anyway,” she said. “And I just had to go back. The show and the role let me know that it was time.”
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She explained, “We absolutely have to acknowledge our past — talk about it, normalize it, and use it as our strength, not as our weakness. That’s what the show does. It shows you that our weaknesses can be our greatest strengths.”
And things for Crazy Jane aren’t getting easier. “My character just keeps getting darker and darker,” Guerrero said.
When she’s not working, Guerrero has become one of Hollywood’s leading immigration activists. Her 2016 memoir “In The Country We Love” detailed her experience watching her parents and brother be deported from the United States to Colombia because they were undocumented immigrants. Guerrero is a citizen because she was born in the States.
In 2018, she published “My Family Divided,” an adaptation of her memoir for children and teenagers facing similar circumstances.
On the subject of the recent Supreme Court ruling that temporarily block the Trump Administration from ending the DACA program, the former “Orange Is the New Black” star said, “What they need is a permanent solution. DACA is temporary, but what we need to recognize as a nation is that these people are integral to the fabric of who we are.”
She continued, “They came here looking for a better life, just like all of us did. What we need to understand is that the system is working the way that it’s working, it is meant to keep people out. We need imagine a system where we are all protected and where we all can be here and thrive.”
You can listen to the full interview and find out what Duplass had to say about working Aniston above. You can also listen to “The Big Ticket” at iHeartRadio or wherever you download you favorite podcasts.