Daphne Rubin-Vega has landed the mother of a role…
The 49-year-old Panamanian actress, singer and dancerwill appear in a major recurring role on the CW’s upcoming Riverdale off-shoot Katy Keene.
Rubin-Vega, the original Mimi in both the Off Broadway and Broadway landmark productions of Rentand coming off the Lin Manuel/Warner Bros. feature In The Heights, will play Luisa, the mother of a central character, Katy’s roomie Jorge/Ginger. She’s described as adoting mother, a former Rockette and now owner, with her husband Luis, of a bodega in Washington Heights. She supports her son Jorge’s ambitions to make it on Broadway, but doesn’t know about his drag alter ego, Ginger.
The Jorge/Ginger character, played by Jonny Beauchamp, is a central figure on the series and one of at least two characters expected to perform musical numbers on every episode.
In the Katy Keeneseries pilot, recently screened at the Tribeca TV Festival, Jorge is a Broadway hopeful by day and, as Ginger, a drag performer by night. When his Broadway dreams begin to fizzle – he is, he says, “too gay for Broadway” – he’s encouraged by Katy to make the audition rounds not as Jorge but as Ginger.
Katy Keeneis expected to debut during the CW’s winter/spring 2020 midseason.
Rubin-Vega was Tony-nominated in 1996 for originating on Broadway the lead female role of Mimi in Jonathan Larson’s Rent, which she’d debuted earlier that year Off Broadway to great acclaim. The actress received another Tony nomination in 2004 as featured actress in a play for Anna In The Tropics.
Her more recent credits include Broadway’s A Streetcar Named Desire opposite Blair Underwood, NBC’s Smash and Netflix’s Tales Of The City. Ruben-Vega was among the original Rentperformers who made an end-of-show appearance on Fox’s Rent: Live last January.
