Entertainment
In 'Hit Man,' Adria Arjona found the role of a lifetime
Adria Arjona went skydiving to get over the heartbreak of missing out on a coveted role.
“It’s a little extreme, but it worked,” Arjona, 32, says on the phone days before the crime-fueled romantic comedy “Hit Man” debuted Friday on Netflix. “While I was on the plane, I thought, ‘I’m going to leave all this negativity [here]. I’m going to jump off, ground myself and completely forget about it. What’s up in the air doesn’t belong to me anymore.’ ”
With “Hit Man,” the actor has certainly landed on her feet. The critically acclaimed crowd-pleaser is the latest from prolific Texan director Richard Linklater and has already become a breakthrough project for Arjona’s rising profile in Hollywood.
“I find her amazing,” said Linklater, describing Arjona as a “wonderfully smart and hard-working collaborator from the first rehearsal until her last shot of production.”
In the film, Glen Powell plays a psychology professor who works for a police department undercover, pretending to be a killer for hire. Arjona plays Madison, who seeks out his services to eliminate her abusive husband. The two become entangled in a high-stakes, morally complicated, fiery relationship.
The daughter of famed Guatemalan singer-songwriter Ricardo Arjona, she was born in Puerto Rico to a Boricua mother but spent her childhood in Mexico City when not on the road with her touring father.
The chemistry is palpable between Madison (Adria Arjona) and Gary (Glen Powell) in “Hit Man.”
(Brian Roedel / Netflix)
“It’s a funny little debate that happens online,” Arjona says. “Everyone is like, ‘She’s Guatemalan’ or ‘She’s Puerto Rican,’ and I’m like, ‘I’m very much both and I carry my two flags very high up. I can’t pick.”
Despite growing up around music, Arjona was never inclined to follow in her father’s footsteps. “I can’t sing! I would’ve embarrassed our last name,” she said, jokingly.
“I’ve always thought my dad’s job is coolest job in the world, but I wanted to do something different. I rebelled against music, and got away from it. If I’m honest with you, it’s a pretty big regret of mine now.”
As a teenager, Arjona’s family relocated to Miami. Struggling to adjust to her new environment, she began taking acting classes on her father’s suggestion. Performing, she says, helped her come out of her shell.
“If I don’t hide behind a character, it’s really hard for me to perform or be the center of attention,” she said. “I feel comfortable putting on a costume and being on stage, but I could never, and I still can’t speak in public. I had to give a speech for Glen a couple of weeks ago when we were in Austin, and I was trembling like a chihuahua.”
As an adult, Arjona moved to New York to study at Lee Strasberg Theatre and Film Institute, working as a waitress to pay her bills.
“I feel really lucky that I have a father who gave me the biggest gift in the world, which is not giving it all to me. He made that a point in raising me and my siblings,” she said. “He grew up really poor in Guatemala and he had to work to get to where he is.”
Arjona initially tried to break into theater but felt there wasn’t much space for a Latin American actress. She decided to try her luck in film and television instead, landing a small part after her first audition. Over the last decade, Arjona has built up her resume by landing parts in high-profile productions.
(Brian Bowen Smith / Netflix)
Among her most notable films are the Netflix action movies “6 Underground” and “Triple Frontier” — in the latter, she shared the screen with another actor with Guatemalan roots, Oscar Isaac. Arjona was also cast as bride-to-be Sofia Herrera in the 2022 Latino remake of “Father of the Bride” and portrays mechanic Bix Caleen in “Star Wars: Andor.”
“Getting the jobs wasn’t hard, but it was getting the roles that really served me as an actress that’s been the struggle,” she said. “I want to show the world that a Latin American woman has so many dimensions and we can be so many things.”
Arjona says she is now at the point in her career where she is being offered opportunities she wouldn’t have gotten a few years back. She recalls Linklater telling her she was the only person he spoke to for the role of Madison in “Hit Man.”
“We were nervous because Madison demanded so many qualities in one person,” said Linklater. “Smart, funny, vivacious, mysterious, and of course so smoking hot you’d totally believe somebody would risk everything they had and had worked for all their life, including their potential freedom, just to be with. Adria is all those things.”
After meeting Arjona over video call, the filmmaker arranged for her to connect with Powell, who also co-wrote the screenplay. The two actors got along so well that by the end of their five-hour dinner, they had broken their “dry January” vows by drinking tequila.
“Glen was like, ‘Can we please do this together? I want you to be Madison,” she said.
Within days Arjona was on Zoom with Linklater and Powell writing Madison’s part.
“That’s how Rick works. He invites the actors into the collaborative process and you’re in the writer’s room with him and you’re creating your character with your director, and your co-star. You’re writing lines, you’re pitching ideas,” she said. “That’s never happened to me.”
The process gave Arjona a creative autonomy and ownership over her character that she believes were crucial for her to craft and ultimately understand Madison’s personality.
“I loved the idea that she was constantly role-playing,” says Adria Arjona of her character, Madison, in “Hit Man.” In a scene with Glen Powell as Gary.
(Brian Roedel / Netflix)
“I loved the idea that she was constantly role-playing. She’s this woman that is seeking reinvention at every turn of the page. She’s her own idea of a femme fatale, but she’s not a femme fatale,” Arjona said. “She’s playing a character within being a character. And that I found really interesting and had a lot of fun playing that.”
For Arjona, “Hit Man” represented an opportunity to truly show off her acting chops.
“Thanks to this movie I feel just so much more confident of what I can bring to the table,” she says. “Rick and Glen did that for me.”
And what’s next? Arjona is slated to star in “El Sobreron,” the new genre tale from Guatemalan auteur Jairo Bustamante. Later this year, she can also be seen in the thriller “Blink Twice,” opposite Channing Tatum. Her strategy of not having a set plan seems to be paying off for her, successfully avoiding being pigeonholed by an industry that still has a limited view of who Latinos are.
“I’m so much more than where I was born. I have it in my veins. I carry that with me proudly, but I’m also a human,” she said. “You are your experiences, and being a Latina is definitely part of my experience, but there’s also a lot more. I’m just a woman.”
Entertainment
Kylie Jenner hit with third lawsuit as former chef claims Palm Springs party led to miscarriage
Less than two months after being sued by two former housekeepers, Kylie Jenner has been hit with a third workplace lawsuit. The beauty mogul’s former private chef alleges a grueling workload led to her miscarriage.
Filed Monday in Los Angeles Superior Court, the complaint alleges the woman routinely worked 11- to 12-hour shifts, five days a week, and was assigned physically demanding tasks despite alerting supervisors to her high-risk pregnancy.
A representative for Jenner did not immediately respond to The Times’ request for comment.
According to the filing, reviewed by The Times, the woman was told she was selected to work as Jenner’s private chef around Thanksgiving 2024. In early December 2024, the woman claims she informed her supervisors, also named as defendants, that she was three months pregnant and “required reasonable accommodations to protect her health and pregnancy.”
On New Year’s Eve in 2024, supervisors who had allegedly been hostile with the former chef directed her to “lift and transport heavy food items across the street and uphill without assistance,” the documents say.
As a result of the physical exertion, the former chef claims that she “became dizzy, began choking and gasping for air, and required assistance from security personnel, who intervened by providing water and aid.”
Around Feb. 1, 2025, the then-chef, five months’ pregnant at the time, was assigned to work Jenner’s child’s birthday event in Palm Springs, where she wasn’t provided “adequate support” despite the scale and demands of the party, according to the lawsuit. The former chef claims that when she asked for help and expressed concern over the workload, she was ignored by supervisors.
“Due to exhaustion and overwhelming physical strain, [she] broke down emotionally in the bathroom during the event,” reads the suit. “That evening, [she] experienced extreme physical exhaustion and heaviness throughout her body as a result of the prolonged and intense workload.”
The next morning, while the former chef was still in Palm Springs, the filing states that she awoke experiencing severe hemorrhaging and drove herself to the emergency room. “At the hospital, [she] was informed that there was no detectable heartbeat and that she had lost her unborn child.”
According to the former chef, she informed her supervisors of the miscarriage and medical emergency and, in the following days, was “falsely accused of leaving the kitchen and refrigerator in disarray following the Palm Springs event,” the lawsuit states.
The court documents claim that the former chef suffered severe hemorrhaging again on Feb. 8 and collapsed in her bathroom. The filing states that after the miscarriage she suffered severe depression and emotional distress, and claims that a supervisor reprimanded her, saying, “Stop it, just stop it. You are upsetting Kylie. You are making her depressed.”
“Celebrity status does not exempt anyone from California’s employment laws. We look forward to presenting the evidence in court and allowing the facts to speak for themselves,” attorney Della Shaker told The Times.
The former chef is seeking an unspecified amount of damages and claims that in addition to suffering accommodation failures, pregnancy discrimination and harassment, she was misclassified as an independent contractor, did not get paid on time or for the appropriate hours she worked, and was wrongfully terminated.
After being let go, the former chef claims that she sent a formal written complaint to co-defendant Tri Star detailing the alleged discrimination, harassment and wage theft. The lawsuit states that on May 22, 2025, the management team sent her an email offering a settlement and release agreement (essentially offering her money to sign away her right to sue).
The legal filing follows two lawsuits brought by former housekeepers of the embattled reality star. Less than two weeks after one woman on Jenner’s cleaning staff sued her, claiming her co-workers harassed and discriminated against her, another housekeeper came forward with allegations claiming the “Keeping Up With the Kardashians” star didn’t intervene while she suffered abuse from fellow staff, despite the housekeeper slipping the reality star a letter pleading for help.
Shaker also represents Angelica Hernandez Vasquez, who filed the suit against Jenner on April 17, and Juana Delgado Soto, who filed her lawsuit on April 29.
Movie Reviews
‘Supergirl’ review: DC Studios serves up a second less-than-super movie
James Gunn isn’t exactly crushing it.
Named co-chairman and chief executive officer of the newly formed DC Studios in 2022, the “Guardians of the Galaxy” filmmaker wrote and directed the division of Warner Bros. Discovery’s largely disappointing “Superman,” released last year.
This week, DC Studios’ second big-screen affair, “Supergirl,” lands in theaters with similarly underwhelming results.
‘Superman’ review: James Gunn gets DCU off to rocky, overstuffed start
Starring Milly Alcock as the movie’s namesake Kryptonian heroine — who also goes by Kara Zor-El and is the cousin of David Corenswet’s Superman/Clark Kent/Kal-El — “Supergirl” isn’t distractingly zany the way its 2025 sister film was. Instead, it’s tonally boring, a chore of a movie chock full of thinly drawn characters and increasingly bombastic and violent.
To be clear, Gunn isn’t at the helm for “Supergirl.” Instead, it’s the typically dependable Craig Gillespie (“I, Tonya,” “Cruella”), working from a script by Ana Nogueira, making her less-than-impressive feature-writing debut.
This planet-hopping adventure in the new DC Universe isn’t a complete space wreck, however, thanks largely to the spunky performance by Aussie Alcock, best known for portraying the younger Rhaenyra Targaryen in the early episodes of HBO’s “House of the Dragon.”
When we catch up with Kara, she’s basically as we left her late in “Superman”: a super-sized mess. She’s out with her beloved, rambunctious dog, Krypto — the peppy and powerful pup having already been a major player in “Superman” — and enjoying a 23rd-birthday pub crawl among planets under a red sun. (Quick reminder: Supergirl, like Superman, draws her incredible powers from a yellow sun, like Earth’s, so she’s at least vaguely normal under a red sun and, importantly, can become intoxicated. The color of suns is a major factor throughout “Supergirl,” and it’s the movie’s most inventive narrative element.)
It is on such a world where a drunken Kara encounters 13-year-old Ruthye Marye Knoll of the Danastia Clan (Eve Ridley), whose family has just been brutally slain by the ruthless Krem of the Yellow Hills (Matthias Schoenaerts). Understandably, Ruthye wants revenge against Krem — leader of the Brigants, a band of male pirates and traffickers — and can think of little else.
She’s offering anyone who will help a sword made by her family of skilled weapons makers. The beyond-buzzed Kara isn’t interested, but she gets involved when a scumbag type tries to take the sword. She continues to do her best to fend off Ruthye’s subsequent pleas for assistance in her quest to kill Krem, but when the baddie — in the process of stealing her floating RV of a spaceship — shoots a charging Krypto with a poison dart, Kara has designs on punishing him, too. In fact, she needs to retrieve the specific antidote Krem carries with him to save her four-legged bud.
And so the gals are off to other worlds, initially traveling via the space equivalent of a beat-up Greyhound bus, on which they run into a trio of pillaging Sklarian Raiders. The sequence in which Kara retrieves stolen possessions and extracts information from them is as zany as “Supergirl” gets.
As their trek through the stars warps on, Kara and Ruthye encounter Lobo (Jason Momoa, seemingly leaving his Aquaman character back in the defunct DC Extended Universe), a rough-and-tumble, motorcycle-riding bounty hunter. They team up — sort of, eventually — but their alliance of convenience is one of the flick’s myriad plot threads that fail to tie into a sturdy knot.
The screenplay by Nogueira — an actor who’s penned a pair of plays — attempts to explore why Kara is so jaded by taking us back to her childhood in the Kryptonian city Argo, protected by her father’s tech after the planet’s demise. Of course, that protection proved to be temporary, or she wouldn’t have eventually been sent to Earth like her cousin before her. It’s lukewarm fare, with Kara eventually learning the familiar Spider-Man lesson — with great power comes great responsibility.
Gillespie adds a few nice touches from the director’s chair throughout the movie, but they’re too little to elevate the proceedings.
Again, Alcock — whose credits also include the recent Netflix limited series “Sirens” — does what she can with the material. It’s a demanding role, as she is on screen for most of the movie, and is spirited in it.
Unfortunately, the lesser-known Ridley — making her feature debut following a few television appearances — is given even less to work with. We never learn much about the one-note Ruthye beyond that her family was killed in her presence and that she is really upset about it.
If you’re expecting the always-lively Momoa to save the day, he brings his larger-than-life presence to Lobo, but the demon-like figure isn’t very interesting. A mix between Aquaman and his Khal Drogo from “Game of Thrones,” the longtime DC Comics character isn’t anything you wouldn’t expect here.

If there’s another bright spot in the cast, it’s Schoenaerts (“Rust and Bone,” “The Old Guard”), who brings a touch of nuance to the villainous Krem. You may have expected a bigger name to play the big bad in this second DC Universe big-screen effort, but some of the acting choices the Belgian makes keep things vaguely engaging when he’s within the frame.

Sadly, vaguely engaging is the best “Supergirl” can manage.
We’ll see if Gunn can turn things around, starting with the HBO series “Lanterns” in August and the horror-tinged film “Clayface” in October, before he returns to direct Corenswet, Alcock and the rest of the “Superman” gang in “Man of Tomorrow,” arriving a little more than a year from now.
We’re hoping for super results, but, at this point, it’s tough to say we’re expecting them.
‘Supergirl’
Where: Theaters.
When: June 26.
Rated: PG-13 for sequences of strong violence, action, language, and smoking.
Runtime: 1 hour, 48 minutes.
Stars (of four): 2.
Entertainment
Culture Clash knows the end is near. It wants to go out with a bang
Richard Montoya of Culture Clash doesn’t mince words when it comes to politics, current events or the state of mainstream Hollywood. But he does sugarcoat his technological limitations as a 67-year-old comic in the dreaded age of video calls with a punchy Chicano twist.
“I’m a low-tech Aztec,” he writes via email when requesting a Zoom link to our Monday interview.
Culture Clash — which includes members Montoya, Ric Salinas and Herbert Sigüenza — arrived on the scene as a guerrilla sketch theater group from the San Francisco Mission District in 1984. By that time, the Chicano movement had reached its peak, thanks to the United Farm Workers labor movement, as well as student activist organizations like Movimiento Estudiantil Chicano de Aztlán (MEChA), which advocated for Chicano unity, political empowerment and educational access.
Luis Valdez, founder of El Teatro Campesino — who began putting on social justice-oriented plays for the striking Delano farmworkers in 1965 — backed the slapstick satire troupe, considering the trio “the cutting edge of fresh, new Latino comic genius.”
Culture Clash stood out in a time when Chicanos became more vocal and visible — and its members challenged an entertainment industry that has historically lacked Latino representation. Between 1993 and 1996, Culture Clash hosted its own self-titled TV show on the syndicated Fox network. The show, which was filmed at the Mayan Theater in downtown Los Angeles, is widely considered the first Latino sketch comedy to air on American television.
Throughout the last four decades, Culture Clash has parodied nearly every prominent Latino figure in history, including Che Guevara, Frida Kahlo, Ritchie Valens, Rita Moreno, Edward James Olmos and others. Its members have mocked hard-shell cholos and gangsters, often by placing them in funny scenarios. For instance, take this clip, in which the trio take on cholo characters and reimagine what it would be like to surf on the Southern California shore.
But they’ve also taken on more serious topics in their classic “Chavez Ravine” play, which looks into one of the darkest chapters in L.A. history: the forceful removal and displacement of families, mostly Mexican, in the 1950s under eminent domain. Recently Montoya attended a live reading adapted by Somos El Teatro, led by Xolo Maridueña, Mariana da Silva and Angel Villalobos at Elysian Park.
“It gives us so much life that people are finding the issues of swindlers, whether it’s gentrification, the taking over of settlements,” says Montoya. “The generational trauma of losing your home in L.A. has never gone away.”
But not every Culture Clash joke or skit has been safe from criticism. Montoya still remembers how a conservative pundit chastised the group for using light humor to discuss the 1992 riots, when LAPD officers were acquitted for using excessive force in the arrest and beating of Rodney King.
“By looking at it and treating it as dynamite, exploding it and then by bringing some levity and a whole lot of seriousness to the Rodney King matter allows us a moment, a fraction of time to look at the issues a little bit differently,” says Montoya. “That laugh allows us a moment to examine it differently.”
On June 27, Culture Clash will return to Grand Performances, a free summer concert series at California Plaza in downtown L.A., with comedic sketches colored by political and social satire. The show, titled “American Payasos! Culture Clash’s End Times Cabaret” will be co-presented with De Los.
While their 40-year-plus legacy might merit a show reminiscent of old goofball skits — like their early 1989 show “The Mission” that poked fun at the problematic Spanish Franciscan missionary Junipero Serra — this will not be an “oldies but goodies show,” as Montoya put it. “We are highly pissed off about a lot of stuff right now.”
“ We’re thinking a lot about the Mexican American patriarchy, Cesar Chavez, Dolores Huerta and it’s time to address some of these things,” says Montoya. “ We want to look at the service workers of Los Angeles, the people that sell cotton candy in MacArthur Park, the people that sell ice cream in Echo Park and the people working the World Cup.”
For the veteran comic, son of the late Chicano poet Jose Montoya, it is also impossible to ignore the immigration enforcement raids that have rattled Los Angeles communities in recent years.
“This is a very strange moment for satirists,” says Montoya. “We have a responsibility to use those tools to say what’s going on in our city and country and provide these moments where we can do a little bit closer examination because the people in power aren’t telling us what’s going on.”
In the last five years, Montoya has fiddled around with digital media, creating sporadic videos featuring old clips of the troupe, as well as videos of Latino media, to connect with technologically diverse audiences of all ages. (One example is a video calling on people to get out the vote, that features clips of Speedy Gonzales and honors political figures like Huerta.)
Although Montoya believes Culture Clash is nearing the end of its career, there’s a question lingering inside his mind: What does a graceful exit look like for a group like Culture Clash, which has never been fully integrated into mainstream Hollywood and still left such a profound legacy in the world of Latino entertainment?
The answer to that might still be unknown, but like any Culture Clash project, it will likely be wickedly satirical and punchy. Says Montoya: “We’re ready to go out with a huge, loud bang that can say something against the power structure.”
Culture Clash will take center stage on June 27 at Grand Performances, in partnership with De Los. Also performing is the retro cumbia-quebradita musician É Arenas (bassist of Chicano Batman), the cumbia-fusion, luchador-masked cumbia group La Nueva Ola de Cumbia, as well as DJ Dali.
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