America Ferrera hails Real Women Have Curves immigrant story amid ‘horror and terror’ for undocum...

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&34;The Lost Bus&34; star reflects to EW on her struggle with racism as the daughter of immigrants, warning that &34;no one is safe from it&34; now amid ICE rai

"The Lost Bus" star reflects to EW on her struggle with racism as the daughter of immigrants, warning that "no one is safe from it" now amid ICE raids.

America Ferrera hails Real Women Have Curves immigrant story amid 'horror and terror' for undocumented people

"The Lost Bus" star reflects to EW on her struggle with racism as the daughter of immigrants, warning that "no one is safe from it" now amid ICE raids.

Joey Nolfi is a senior writer at *. *Since 2016, his work at EW includes *RuPaul's Drag Race* video interviews, Oscars predictions, and more.

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October 11, 2025 9:30 a.m. ET

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America Ferrera; Ferrera in 'Real Women Have Curves'. Credit:

Karwai Tang/WireImage; Everett Collection

- America Ferrera speaks to EW's *Awardist* podcast about *The Lost Bus* and her past career.

- "I think what's going on right now is so criminal," she tells EW of ongoing treatment of immigrants.

- She speaks renewed praise for *Real Women Have Curves*, about a Mexican immigrant family.

America Ferrera's breakout as a dramatic actress came 23 years ago in a film she tells ** has renewed importance in 2025 amid ongoing ICE raids largely impacting undocumented Mexican families.

Released in 2002, *Real Women Have Curves *starred a then-teenage Ferrera as Ana, a young Los Angeles woman who aspires to go to college, but whose mother (the late Lupe Ontiveros) longs for her daughter to stay home and lead a traditional life abiding by cultural standards.

Now 41, Ferrera reflects on the film amid "tough times" for the country, adding that "storytelling matters" as people weather through oppression.

"Culture is a pillar of our society, and we don't have to relinquish our storytelling and our art and our culture to what's going on," the *Lost Bus* actress tells EW's *Awardist* podcast. "We have to keep telling stories that reflect our truth. Unfortunately, movies like *Real Women Have Curves* come around very infrequently and rarely, and maybe that's part of the problem."**

America Ferrera and Lupe Ontiveros in 'Real Women Have Curves'.

Everett Collection

The *Ugly Betty* alum feels that, as a result of the lack of stories highlighting the immigrant experience, "we're not humanizing one another frequently enough to avoid this kind of cooperation with the insane ways of treating one another" amid turbulent American politics.

"So we have work to do as artists, and we have work to do as storytellers to really reflect the world as it is," she stresses.

Earlier in the discussion, Ferrera called the treatment of undocumented immigrants "so criminal" and "unfathomable" to her as a human being.

Many in the Latinx community have raised concerns about recent social and political turmoil, ranging from harsh conservative pushback to Puerto Rican superstar Bad Bunny's upcoming halftime show at the Super Bowl, to tourists mocking the "Alligator Alcatraz" immigrant detention center in Florida.

15 years later, 'Real Women Have Curves' is still a cultural revolution

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"The scale of it, not just the horror and the terror that it's reigning on people's lives, but how it's also eroding the very fabric of our society and the very fabric of what we were taught our country was meant to be. It's devastating on so many levels," Ferrera says, adding that she remembers dealing with racism and xenophobia as a child.

"I grew up in Los Angeles, the daughter of immigrants, Honduran immigrants. I remember in [1994] being in maybe third grade and Prop [187] was kind of one of these anti-immigrant propositions on the ballot that was all about kind of taking any kind of social services away from undocumented families and their children, including education for kids in elementary school," recalls Ferrera. "I just remember being in third grade and having my mom pull me aside and say, 'You know, you might get asked questions about where you're from or where your parents are from, and you've done nothing wrong and you belong here, and you were born here and you're raised here and it's not your fault and you're not in trouble.' And I just remember the fear of that, the sheer fear and confusion and not understanding why."

She says that, even at a young age, she "did understand why it was happening to me and not to everyone else," but that she also "couldn't understand *how* it was happening. Even as a young kid, [I] couldn't reconcile learning about life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness and the American Dream and Martin Luther King and civil rights and standing up and saying the Pledge of Allegiance at school every day and learning to love my country, and at the same time, experience such prejudice."

America Ferrera and Matthew McConaughey in 'The Lost Bus'.

Today, Ferrera calls the "horrors families are living with" a "pretext for being able to treat anyone the way that one class is being treated for now," and hopes that such injustices will inspire action from other communities.

"This is the time for every single American to really look and to open their eyes and to accept the reality of what is happening and understand that no one is safe from it," she stresses. "If you have a rational reason for why what's happening to immigrant populations is not upsetting you, then maybe follow the thread of what's happening beyond just the immigrant community."

Ferrera is also generating attention for her performance in* The Lost Bus*, which follows the real-life story of a teacher, Mary Ludwig (Ferrera), who, along with her class of young schoolchildren, boards a bus driven by Kevin McKay (Matthew McConaughey), in an attempt to escape the harrowing 2018 Camp Fire in California.

The film received praise following its debut at the 2025 Toronto International Film Festival, with producer Jamie Lee Curtis revealing at the cinema event a shocking story about discovering her mom Janet Leigh's romantic connection to the film through a discussion with Ludwig.

***Get your daily dose of entertainment news, celebrity updates, and what to watch with our EW Dispatch newsletter.***

"She said, 'My father dated your mother.' [I asked], 'For real?' I said, 'Where?' She said, 'Merced, Calif.," Curtis recounted. "Now, you guys know my mother as Janet Leigh, but before she was Janet Leigh, she was Jeanette Helen Morrison from Merced, Calif., and Mary Ludwig's father dated Jeanette."

*The Lost Bus* is now streaming on Apple TV+. Listen to Ferrera discuss the film in EW's *Awardist* podcast episode above.

*—With reporting by Gerrad Hall*

Original Article on Source

Source: "AOL Movies"

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