- Hi, I'm Laura Gomez.
I interpret Blanca Flores in "Orange is the New Black".
I've been invited to come aboard and decorate a cookie,
and I've been given a wonderful idea.
I'm going to decorate it as Blanca Flores.
(upbeat music)
I'm going to choose this cookie.
This is more like a Caribbean type, you know.
Oh my god, these are eyes (laughs)!
Okay, I'm going to put these little eyes here.
I have absolutely no confidence whatsoever in what I'm doing
except that this is helping
because I have like the right ingredients here
which apparently are edible.
I can't, mm mm, okay.
Obviously, my hair is very nice right now
'cause it was fixed before,
but Blanca as we know, hair is not necessarily her thing,
or actually it is but in not a very traditional way.
When I auditioned for this role,
it was described as the crazy lady
who speaks with the devil.
So I was told originally
that I might be too pretty for the role,
and I said I can be ugly.
So part of the process was to discover
what Blanca would look like.
And you know, we don't always say that we like ourselves.
I like my hair because it can go straight
or it can be this big.
But most importantly,
and here's the part that's the most fun,
we wanted to do a little bit of an homage to Frida Kahlo,
and that's how the uni-brow happened.
It just made it a little bit more like an odd individual.
I don't know what my nose would look like
as Blanca in a cookie.
I'm a very bad cook.
Okay, let me rephrase that, I just don't like the process.
I enjoy eating.
My mom is a wonderful, wonderful, I wouldn't even say cook,
I would say she's a great chef.
She has this ability to create any type of menus.
If we go to a restaurant and I don't know,
it could be in France.
She can recreate it back home
with like then a Caribbean touch.
I can't.
My friends are afraid of me.
If I say I'm going to cook, they go like, hmm,
can we order in?
I don't think that's nice but they're right.
Does this look like Blanca?
Well, there's the body.
Oh my god, yes!
I think this looks like Blanca Flores, am I right?
So season six was so emotional.
The audience was just so affected,
and emotionally affected by it.
I don't want to give spoilers
'cause I know people take their time sometimes.
We're going to explore immigration issues more.
Blanca definitely has a big role in that,
and we're going to see so much of this conflict
that we're seeing in real life,
and that was as an actor,
it was a gift to be a part of that.
Because of the overwhelming response that I got
for this finale on season six,
I realized how sometimes fiction have such an effect.
In reality, we want to disconnect sometimes,
so we're not looking at the news
'cause it's so overwhelming,
and one day it occurred to me because I took a photo
of a friend who had a shirt that said
immigrants, we get the job done,
how we have been demonized and inspired me
to create this sort of a series on my Instagram
where I present mini-bios of immigrants
and present a profile of their journeys, their struggles,
and also their positive impact in American society.
But my goal is to like keep spreading that
because I feel like it's my mini-way of resistance
to the demonization of immigrants,
being an immigrant myself.
Oh, this is for pride!
Working with my castmates
in "Orange is the New Black", what a cast.
This cast of women, women of color, diversity,
it's been wonderful.
Working with Natasha is unpredictable
and I can't not laugh working with this woman.
Then I'm very close with Selenis and the Latinas of course
because that was my tribe.
I'm also very good friends with Cathy Curtin
and Connie Shulman who you remember from previous seasons.
I'm naming names and I'm forgetting,
but each person in this show has
something so beautiful to bring to the table,
and I'm very lucky to work with them.
Is this looking like a thing?
So I just came back from the Dominican Republic.
I was shooting a film there called "Sunshine".
It's been important to me as a Dominican person
to stay connected to the cinema that's happening over there.
I did a film called "Samba"
that went to Tribeca two years ago.
But I'm also writing a lot,
and I have a project I plan to direct over there,
and it has to do with a gay topic and religion,
which are topics that I explore a lot
being from the Caribbean and things that I think
that are needed to be discussed over there,
and a feature film that is based on a play that I wrote
that is called "The Past is a Mirage"
which is about a marriage that goes south
because the man wants a child and she doesn't.
Those are things that I like to explore in my writing
which is why I think it's important
for people of color and women
to write and to tell our own stories
'cause it's usually things
that we don't hear in mainstream stories.
I think I'm missing arms for Blanca.
I am such an artist!
I didn't know this about myself.
This should be in a museum.
I think this is Blanca Flores.
I think this is a fair representation of who she is.
What up, Red, wanna eat something?
I think that she's always in a bad mood
because she wants to be with her love, right?
Thanks for watching my transformation
of this cookie into Blanco Flores.
It's been a pleasure.
Be sure to watch "Orange is the New Black"
season seven, on Netflix streaming now.
Enjoy, (lips smacking), it's been a pleasure.
(upbeat music)