Director Erick Crespo and Kiki Melendez
©2014 Angela María Ortíz S.
By Angela Ortíz
I met Kiki Melendez in the late 90s, just before her show Kiki desde Hollywood. She was full of excitement and energy then and she still is today. She may not be a household name, but if you mention her name in a Hollywood crowd you’ll hear her name come up again and again—I know I have.
Kiki is an award-winning actress, writer, producer, TV personality and trailblazer, best known for creating Kiki Desde Hollywood, Galavision’s #1 entertainment show in 2000, and Showtime’s Hot Tamales Live! in 2008, the longest running all-female comedy show on TV (and now available on Hulu).
“Hollywood is confused about Latinos; they don’t know what to do with us…”
Now she has put everything on the line with her documentary, Journey of A Female Comic, where she shows snippets from a vault full of past interviews of the likes of Aaron Spelling, Usher, Sofía Vergara, Halle Berry, John Travolta, Shakira and Marc Anthony. The documentary also includes Latino trailblazers in Hollywood, Edward James Olmos, Esai Morales, the late Lupe Ontiveros, Maria Conchita Alonso, Guy Ecker, Jacob Vargas and Nadine Velazquez. And she’s willing to show the in’s and out’s of Hollywood’s workings.
Melendez says Hollywood is confused about Latinos; they don’t know what to do with us. They don’t ‘get’ that what works for Puerto Ricans and Cubans is not the same for Mexicans…which is the same conversations we have a lot in our Se Fija! office.
Melendez is always working; she started in radio in SoCal and now you can hear her Sunday mornings on L.A.’s Latino 96.3, also available on the Internet. Along with her busy professional life she’s a devoted mother of twin girls, and married to a Scotsman, John Berry.
Kiki Melendez is well known without being famous. Check out our interview below.
