America Ferrera Gives Another Inspiring Monologue at ELLE’s Women in Hollywood Event

Thank you, Eva [Longoria], but you forgot to say how hot I am. Those pictures are hot. Thank you, ELLE. And thank you, Nina. I look good in that thing.

Eva, I mean your sisterhood has transformed my experience in this industry, and so much has been said, but it's not hypothetical, like, you bring people into the room literally. You bought a table, and you brought our sisters into the room: Linda Yvette Chávez and Annie Gonzalez... and they were not invited into this room until you invited them here, and they’re brilliant, and they’re talented. And you, you bring us into the room, not as a metaphor, but literally. I love you with my whole heart. Thank you for that amazing honor.

Thank you to ELLE and to Nina Garcia for including me in this phenomenal list of women. Oh my God, this list of women, the work! It also did not occur to me that there were three Latinas on this list. It was like, “Yes! Let’s get ’em!” I mean to be on any list with J.Lo is like, come on. And Nina, thank you for your leadership and for your model and for doing the work day in and day out and getting us to a place where an event like this can reflect us in this way.

Jodie, Fantasia, Danielle, Taraji, Jennifer, Greta, Lily, Eva, it is an incredible honor to stand alongside you and to know that our work does not require a separate diversity award ceremony, and our work is being honored in the main spaces, the dominant spaces. I cheer you on, and I celebrate your wins as my own.

It has been incredibly unexpected and a joy to be a part of the cultural phenomenon of Barbie. And I can’t speak about women in Hollywood without thanking the incomparable Greta Gerwig and the deeply intelligent and enterprising Margot Robbie for taking this on and for giving us something that no one expected, you know, for unapologetically making a movie that's about women, for women.

You know, the kind of movies that they say don’t work, the movies that don’t really travel. You know, the ones that like men won’t go watch? They’re just sort of kind of “special interest” movies, which I guess is true if your special interest is making a billion dollars. Because, like you know that at $1.4 billion, Barbie has given Warner Brothers its largest movie globally of all time, of all time. So congrats, Warner Brothers, for making the right investment in women’s voices.

You know, but stories by women don’t have to all look like the same thing. We can transcend genres. I was extremely blessed to be a part of another powerful collaboration this year with the talented women who wrote Dumb Money, Lauren Schuker Blum and Rebecca Angelo, former journalists who wrote this bananas but true story of GameStop versus Wall Street, directed by the wonderful Craig Gillespie.

And they gave me a chance to play a compelling and complex woman who was looking for a way to feel powerful in her increasingly powerless circumstances, something that we might all know a little bit about. It just so happens that I played both of these roles in the year that women endured the crushing reversal of Roe v. Wade, an act that was meant to put women back in their place of powerlessness over our own bodies, our own lives, our destinies.

But since then, women have not stopped speaking up and showing up in their full power to tell their stories because telling stories matters in Hollywood and beyond. And since then, every single time abortion is on the ballot, we win every time. So the message is clear, we’re not going backwards. The power of women will move us forward in our lives and in our industries, and we will not stop telling our stories.

I have to take this opportunity to thank some of the women in Hollywood who have helped me grow into the hot, powerful, confident, gorgeous, glowing woman that I am today. Guys, I’m not trying to be Jennifer Lopez. Don’t worry about that.... I hope that every single woman in this room finds a group of women or has a group of women in their life like the one I have: women who have empowered me to be confident and who have helped me grow.

So many of them are sitting in this room at my table now and have been with me for decades: Ali Trustman, Carrie Byalick, Molly Kawachi, Natalie Moran, Maha Dakhil, and Christy... thank you for being here tonight and for giving me the opportunity to say thank you for fighting for me because it is still a fight even for those of us on the front lines.

Thank you for loving me, for seeing me, for encouraging me to grow into my full voice of artistry every day. I try to see myself through your hearts. I love you all so much and I am so blessed that you are mine.

And just to say that in this room, there are so many women, some of you who I know, some of you who I’ve never met [or] have never met me, but I have been watching you, and you have been my models, my beacons. You have been the fire under my ass when I needed it the most. So thank you for being indomitable women. I have been watching you, and you have carried me through. Thank you.