By JUDY SLOANE

Front Row Features

HOLLYWOOD-Roadside Attractions musical drama “Kiss of the Spider Woman,” is based on the 1976 novel of the same name by Manuel Puig, and the Tony Award winning Broadway musical. Bill Condon (Dreamgirls, Beauty and the Beast), wrote the screenplay and directed this touching tale of reality and fantasy, which spotlights Valentin (Diego Luna, “Andor,” “La Maquina”), a political prisoner, who is forced to share a jail cell with Molina (Tonatiuh, “Promised Land,” “Carry On,”), a gay window dresser convicted of public indecency. They form an improbable bond as Molina relates the plot of a lush Hollywood musical with his favorite star, Ingrid Luna (Jennifer Lopez, “Hustlers,” “Out of Sight”). To escape their brutal life in prison, both men end up imagining themselves as pivotal roles in the movie musical.

The stars and creator of “Kiss of the Spider Woman,” came together on Sunday to discuss their collaboration. The film opens in theatres this Friday, October 10, 2025.

Q: What drew you to re-imagine “Kiss of the Spider Woman” for today’s audience?

Bill Condon: Good question, because you have to answer the question why when you take on something that has had so many different iterations? For me, it was my love of the novel. Even though all previous versions have been groundbreaking in their time, Manuel Puig was ahead of all of them, and we just caught up to everything he was writing about, specifically stuff about gender fluidity, and just the fact that it’s a love story. It was a chance for me to be true to Puig.

Q: Jennifer, what was it about the movie that attracted you?

Jennifer Lopez: I always wanted to do a musical; that’s something that has been a dream of mine. I got the script from Bill and the minute I read it I was blown away that it had all of the things that I imagined when I was a little girl of what I wanted to do with my life. I got to sing, I got to dance, I got to act, I got to play a big Hollywood movie star. It was really a no-brainer for me. It is a love story at the core of it, and it was also a beautiful homage to how important movies are in our lives.

Q: There’s a duality about the characters that you play. Auroa/Spider Women is both alluring and dangerous – how did you approach and navigate them?

Jennifer Lopez: It was three different characters that I got to play. Ingrid Luna, the actress that Molina idolizes and is in love with, then there’s (the role she plays in the musical) Auroa and the Spider Woman, the dark and the light of the two sides of somebody.  Playing each one of the three characters, it was about finding little nuances. Obviously, the costumes and the hair helped define each one, but there were different emotional cores at the center of each character as well.

Q: Tonatiuh, how did you get in character as Molina?

Tonatiuh: The source material is a testament to the work. It was such a launching pad, the world that Bill wrote was poetic. So when I read it I immediately knew a) how much work it was going to be, but b) what joy it was going to be to do that. In the 1940s musical I wanted to exemplify traditional masculinity, so that I had a strong juxtaposition in contrast to Molina. I got to play the totality of the gender spectrum in the film, and that was such a gift.

Q: Diego, you have talked in the past about participating in some student protests back in 1994. Was that the inspiration for getting into character?

Diego Luna: I was in Mexico in the nineties. In ’94 particularly was a very important year for many things, for social movement and for community work. But I would say that the most important part of my past that I got to play with here is theatre. My father was a set designer and this film to me is a homage to the theatre, or how much film was theatre back then. For me, that section of the film was beautiful to experience, being in New York with Jennifer and Tonatiuh and the whole group of performers.

Q: The relationship between Valentin and Molina begins with conflict but grows unexpectedly into intimacy. What did you discover about yourselves as actors while navigating that shift from tension to tenderness?

Diego Luna: The core of the film is these people allow themselves to experience; it doesn’t matter the conditions. You can’t think of worst conditions to meet anyone important in your life, in a cell, in this moment in history, when you have to protect yourself from everything around; opening up sounds crazy. To build this world to protect us from what’s going on out there. And as actors we couldn’t achieve any of this if we were not completely connected to the other. It was dangerous, it was fun, it was very demanding.

Tonatiuh: Bill did something that is uncommon in filmmaking, which is we shot the prison (scenes) in sequence. And so the first time that Molino walked into the cell and sees Valentin, was the first time I got to see Diego in full character. And as actors we built not just the relationship of the characters scene by scene, but as people we got to know each other moment by moment and the love, the connection, the vulnerability, the trust was almost like the narrative that was happening between us.

Q: What was it like doing the musical numbers?

Jennifer Lopez: It was amazing. I hadn’t done this type of dancing for years, that musical theatre, Broadway style of dancing. I remember with Diego and Tonatiuh, both of them were a little bit more like, what are we doing? I was like, we’re just going to act it, you’re going to act like you can do this. I could see their dedication and commitment, and the choreographers were great, very collaborative.

Tonatiuh: [Dancing] with Jennifer Lopez, it’s the Olympics. I loved the challenge. I was like, if there’s a way of making it better, tell me. It needs to be great.

Diego Luna: I always like telling this story because it did happen, and I think it summarizes everything. My daughter went to the set to see me when I rehearsed, and on the way home she was like, ‘Dad, just don’t stand too close to Jennifer, because then it shows.’ I [said,] ‘No baby, I’m going to be dancing with Jennifer.’

Q: The story spotlights fantasy and survival, how did you balance the imagined story and the true story, and how did you embrace those truths within the movie?

Bill Condon: The movie within the movie here, the musical, is invented for this film. I was always worried about the fact that we were going to invest this time with these two prisoners in a cell, and then interrupt with a musical number, and then go back and that that would be something that an audience resented. It’s very important that the story of what’s happening in the prison cell keeps feeding through the movie. I think the penny drops for an audience about 20 minutes in, where they’re like, oh it’s not being interrupted, we’re actually learning more about Molina through the story that he’s telling. And then there’s a great moment when Valentin wants to hear more about the movie. By the end, he is projecting his own feelings onto Armondo. He’s taking that leap. So that was the crucial connecting [link].

Jennifer Lopez: Manuel Puig was ahead of his time, but I feel like the story and the message is not done yet. It needed to be told again to this generation. We need to remind people of the humanity of these communities and remind people that love is love. It’s a story that will keep being told until everybody gets onboard with the fact that we’re all just people and we all should be loving each other. It doesn’t matter who we are on the outside. You have this gendered man who is a political, tough revolutionary, and then you have this window dresser who’s on the gender spectrum.  You have the two of them seeing the humanity in each other, realizing they need each other, falling in love with who the other person is. To me, that’s what the movie is really here to do and to say in this moment.