A look back: Justina Machado at opening night of 'Real Women Have Curves'
The Six Feet Under star is a 2025 Tony Award nominee for playing headstrong mother Carmen in the Broadway musical adaptation of the same-named play and film.
Justina Machado is having a full-circle moment. Over 30 years ago, in 1993, she starred as big-dreaming teenager Ana Garcia in Josefina López's play Real Women Have Curves in her hometown of Chicago. Fast-forward to now, when Real Women Have Curves has become a joyous Broadway musical with a Tony Award-nominated score (by Joy Huerta and Benjamin Velez), and Machado — who in the meantime became a TV star on Six Feet Under and One Day at a Time — is back with the story once more.
Real Women Have Curves opened at Broadway's James Earl Jones Theatre on April 27, just a few days before the 2025 Tony nominees list came out, including Machado for Best Featured Actress in a Musical. This time around, she plays Ana's mother, Carmen, who wants her daughter to stay and work at their family's dress factory in L.A. instead of studying journalism at Columbia University in New York.
Carmen's perspective might seem odd to some, but it's not unfounded. Ana (Tatianna Córdoba) is the only American citizen in their family and therefore the only one who can do certain paperwork — or vouch for the Garcias should immigration enforcement come knocking. As a mother, Carmen is headstrong and protective, but well-intentioned, and that all resonates with Machado.
"I love that Carmen fiercely loves her family," she said at opening night. "I love that she's unapologetic. I love that she's flawed, and I love that she's nuanced."
Her favorite moments in the show, however, extend beyond her character: "Many of them are in the factory scenes with the women," Machado said. Much of Real Women Have Curves is set during the long, hot workdays at the factory run by Carmen's elder daughter, Estela (Florencia Cuenca), and staffed by half a dozen Latinas from various immigrant backgrounds. They share pastries, trade jibes, collectively curse their worn-down sewing machines, and uplift each other when they need it most.
Word-of-mouth about Real Women Have Curves has been enthusiastic, and Machado speculates it's because audiences are moved by the characters just as much as she is. "What's resonating is the joy that these women bring, the authenticity of us, the storytelling," she said. "You see these women and you know somebody just like that. The immigrant story, the mother/daughter story, the coming-of-age story — that's what resonates because those are universal themes."
Of course, the universal comes from the specific, and each performer's own Latin American heritage shaped their performances. According to Machado, that's what makes the characters truly captivating.
"People love specificity. When people try to whitewash something [...] that's boring," Machado said. "[The writers] give us a blueprint, and we sprinkle our own life experience: our tías, our mothers, our abuelas, our primas. We bring the knowledge of this latinidad."
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Photo credit: Real Women Have Curves on Broadway. (Photos by Julieta Cervantes)
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