‘Don’t Be Afraid to Take Control’: Roselyn Sanchez on Motherhood, Directing and Hallmark (EXCLUSIVE)
See what she says about motherhood, her new film and starring in a Hallmark romance with her husband
Roselyn Sánchez, best known for her roles in the juicy mystery series Devious Maids and the police procedural Without a Trace, has come a long way from her early days as a dancer and beauty queen in her native Puerto Rico, and will soon be honoring her heritage in her feature directorial debut, Diario: Mujer y Café.
In addition to stepping behind the camera, the multitalented star has been keeping busy with He Said, Ella Dijo, a podcast she hosts with her husband, The Rookie actor Eric Winter, and multiple acting projects in the pipeline, including The Third Parent, a horror movie in which she appears opposite Rob Lowe and Crispin Glover, and Undercard, a sports drama starring Wanda Sykes.
On top of all that, Sánchez has also just teamed up with Lysol to promote their new Lavender & Cotton Blossom line that kills 99.9% of germs. “I have dogs, I have kids, I have a husband, I have a nanny, I have a mother-in-law who is always at my house. There’s a lot of traffic,” she says with a smile. “I want to keep things as clean as possible, and everyone likes lavender! If I can turn on some music and dance while I’m cleaning, that makes everything better.”
Sánchez sat down with Woman’s World to discuss working with her husband, stepping out as a director and her long journey from Puerto Rico to Hollywood.
Keeping it in the family with Hallmark movies and podcasts
Roselyn Sánchez and Eric Winter first collaborated when they costarred in the 2019 Hallmark romance A Taste of Summer. “We’ve been together almost 20 years and we hadn’t worked on any acting projects together until then,” she says. “Most of the work that we’ve done isn’t really for kids, and Hallmark approached us to do one of their summer movies. All their movies are clean and PG, and they’re beautiful stories. We thought if we did something together, it would be amazing to do something that we could actually watch with our children. We shot it in Vancouver and brought the whole family. It’s a very pretty movie, and the kids have seen it. It’s cool to see their little faces when they’re watching us onscreen.”
Sánchez and Winter have also been having fun with their podcast. Originally, the couple was approached to star in a reality show, but, “That could’ve ended our careers or led to a divorce,” she jokes, so they passed.
After they turned the reality show down, they were approached by a friend who produces podcasts for iHeartRadio and the opportunity “felt more doable and less intrusive.” The podcast covers culture and their biracial relationship, and Sánchez says she and her husband are “so different, like complete opposites,” which makes recording the show “almost like therapy.”
Roselyn Sánchez gets real about motherhood struggles
As a working mom of two, Sánchez is blunt about the difficulties of finding balance. “It takes a lot of willpower and guts and fights and negotiations and guilt,” she says emphatically. “I’m not gonna lie, sometimes I go, ‘Oh my God, I’m missing a lot.’”
She finds inspiration in her own mom, saying, “I have a lot of things that I do differently from her, but I look up to the way she was able to raise four children with no help from a nanny or anybody. I have so much help and I still go crazy sometimes, so I’ll never comprehend how she did it.”
Thinking back to her mom’s example helps keep things in perspective. “Often when I complain about this and that, I just end up going, ‘Roselyn, shut up. Your mom did this, and she’s fine,’” she says. “That keeps me humble.”
Sánchez has also been open about the ups and downs of her motherhood journey and her use of IVF. “Science is a miraculous thing, and there are a lot of amazing doctors,” she says. “I wish when I was a teenager and in my 20s I was more educated when it came to fertility, because I didn’t think in a million years that I’d ever have fertility problems,” she admits, saying that she tells any women going through similar issues not to lose hope and to remember that there are many paths to being a mom.
How Roselyn Sánchez finds empowerment in assertiveness
Asked for the advice she always comes back to, Sánchez says, “Right now I’m teaching my daughter something I wish I knew: I want her to be very assertive.” She explains, “If you don’t like something, speak your mind. When you go to a public place and you want to ask for something, be comfortable asking. When I was growing up, because of my accent, I always felt like I didn’t belong, and that led to me not being assertive.”
“All I had to do was say, ‘I don’t like this,’ or ‘I think there’s a better way’ or ‘Listen to me, I have an opinion,’” she muses. “Don’t be afraid to take control. You can still be polite and do it in a civil way. It’s not the same as arrogance or entitlement.”
Looking back on her early days and how she learned to assert herself, Sánchez recalls, “When I started, I wanted to be Salma Hayek. When I moved to New York, she was the Latina actress who was starting to break out. Of course you had Rita Moreno, who was the legend, as a Puerto Rican triple threat, but the Latino representation when I started was pretty minimal. People like Penelope Cruz and Jennifer Lopez and Rosario Dawson came in, and little by little, we became a community of Latinas that started doing well, but it was limited and it still is.”
She continues, “If you look at the percentage of Latinos represented on TV. It’s shocking, because Latino culture is the biggest minority, and very soon it’s not even going to be a minority anymore.” “Our moment in the spotlight was short,” she says. “Latinos have to work on supporting each other. We are very proud to be Latinos, but every Latin country is its own world. Nobody has been able to break the code of how to unite us, because Mexicans, Puerto Ricans and Cubans are all very different, and a lot of people don’t understand this universe and think we’re all the same.” Still, Sánchez remains hopeful: “Things are changing, and we’re doing our best.”
Roselyn Sánchez’s exciting new project: ‘Diario: Mujer y Café’
Sánchez’s transition to writing and directing has been a major part of her mission to tell inspiring Latino stories. She started directing with Satos, a 2020 short film about the overpopulation of stray dogs in Puerto Rico. “I was doing my short, and then I came up with the idea of doing a love letter to Puerto Rico,” she says. “My debut feature is going to be a road trip movie showcasing the island.”
“It’s a movie about four friends from high school who are now in their 40s. They have all kinds of problems, and they decide to get together to connect and take a road trip to Puerto Rico,” she says. “I’m talking about friendship among women, and the island looks beautiful. The movie is funny and heartfelt, so I think it’s very effective”—and we can’t wait to see Sánchez’s exciting new chapter.
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