Porque Isabela Merced?
La aparición de nuestra compatriota Isabela Merced en el nuevo tráiler de la película del universo Spider-Man, ‘Madame Web’, dejó boquiabiertos a todos los peruanos. No solo formará parte de la cinta, sino que será una de las estrellas principales al interpretar a Anya Corazón, una de las tres Spider-Girls que lucharán contra un siniestro hombre araña. A su lado estará Dakota Johnson, quien dará vida a Cassandra Webb.
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Savvy and aware, Merced started navigating school and, unconsciously, life differently. She skipped two grades, first and seventh, and moved to Huancayo, her mom's hometown in Peru, for a semester when she was seven years old. The move was strategic: Her mom felt she needed the push to perfect her Spanish, the native language she was losing due to assimilation.
While Merced says she has seen many inspiring things on social media, she does understand that there are many people who need a mental break from the negative news that Americans have been consumed with over the last year. For her, reading bad news in real life is comparable to portraying fictional characters under stress.
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“The first people that come to mind would be Lil Pump and [Tekashi]69,” Merced said. “I feel like Hispanic people know that they shouldn’t [use the n-word]. You just can’t claim a word that you’ve never been oppressed by. The anti-Blackness in the Hispanic community is so real and not talked about enough.”
The Peruvian-American actress also explained to the show’s hosts why the term “Hispanic” doesn’t describe someone’s race but, instead, their ethnicity (“There are white Latinos and Black Latinos”) and why it’s never OK for Latinos to say the n-word, even if they are stars in the hip-hop industry.
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"Hopefully, I'll have an empire of loving relationships,” she says. “I also hope that I'm just as life-savvy as my mom. I hope I have eight dogs. I want to be in some random area, some place of the world that's secluded, in a villa like the one Lenny Kravitz has. And I want horses. I don't know. That's just a thought." Not a good one or a bad one. Just an exciting one.
Merced is booked and busy now, but her instincts tell her that acting might not satisfy her creative cravings going forward. She's gotten a taste of producing and wants to get into directing. It doesn't matter right now, though. In fact, work is not even mentioned in Merced's vision of her future.
When Merced found out about her mom’s pushback, she internalized it as a judgment on her talent. With keen awareness and wisdom beyond her young years, imposter syndrome kicked in. "I don't remember the moment I found out, but I do remember the feeling, which was, 'I'm Ohio talented, but New York talented? Ain't no way.' I felt like Tracy Turnblad in Hairspray," Merced says in hindsight.
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Merced was born in Cleveland on July 10, 2001. Her mother Katherine, a first-generation immigrant from Peru, and father Patrick, a firefighter for the Cleveland Division of Fire, raised her and her two brothers. She's the middle child and the only girl, which meant, she says, she was always fighting for attention.
Merced worries that one day she might become desensitized to the things she sees online and on TV when it comes to racial injustice like the killing of George Floyd. “That’s my concern,” she said. “I don’t ever want to look at something that’s supposed to be completely heartbreaking and roll my eyes and say, ‘I’ve seen this before.’”
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Online, Merced is mostly reserved, but she does occasionally share snapshots of her private life, most significantly in 2019, when she posted a public update on her mom's battle with breast cancer. “It's the same as the good and bad thing I was talking about. You look at cancer and think, Oh, bad. But I do think it was a blessing,” she says now, pensive. “Any near-death experience where you come out on top is a blessing because it allows you to do something that people spend their whole lives avoiding, which is confronting death. The prospect of it and what it might bring, and what it might take.”
For Merced, the prize of life is to keep learning and growing. Her priorities have shifted. Nowadays she focuses on staying true to herself and what feels authentic. Love has become her most treasured currency. She's found a romantic partner. She values the time spent with her family, friends, and dogs. She enjoys physical activity as a way to decompress — Pilates, yes, but also Sky Zone, to feel as free and "sweaty and stinky" as she did when she was just a child, blissfully unaware of the dangers of fire.
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Sorprendió a muchos al asegurar que deseaba participar en la referida teleserie, pero nunca se dio la oportunidad de que Efraín Aguilar, quien lo producía en ese entonces, la convocara. La estrella de Hollywood cuenta, además, con su DNI peruano.
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Though Merced’s life was literally and metaphorically on fire, she still hesitates to describe the situation as bad. "I'm noticing a parallel between that and the rest of my life," she says now. “Anytime there's any sort of emotional fire or shit hits the fan, I always have something important to do right after. And I always follow through. It's an incredible feeling, seeing how far you can go, put up with stuff, and succeed afterward.”