Rita Moreno used her ‘awful’ experiences with women as inspiration for new film

Rita Moreno is looking back at her life to draw inspiration in her new film. This week, Moreno was featured on “The View,” where she discussed her film “The Prank.” In it, she plays a mean teacher, and explained how she was inspired to create the role by some of her personal memories and experiences with women in show business.

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Moreno shared that her role is one of the best she’s had in years. “I mean, isn’t she the meanest bitch ever?” she asked the women in the show, prompting laughs from all over the studio. Moreno shared that, at first, she didn’t know how to play an “awful” person. After finding the key to her character, she revealed that she had a great amount of fun playing bad.

"I just thought, how am I going to play this terrible person? And I thought of all the women in my life — particularly in show business — who'd really been awful to me," she said. "I said to myself, I thought, 'I'm going to use all of the things that they did with me and my little Puerto Rican past,' and that's what I do. Boy was that fun."

After Moreno shared her thoughts and her experience in the entertainment industry, Whoopi Goldberg praised her for being different than the women in her era, and for opening doors for others that also didn’t fit into any boxes. “Whatever they did to her, she did not do to others,” said Goldberg.

More about Moreno’s upcoming movie

Moreno’s “The Prank” will premiere in theaters in March 15th and follows two students who decide to frame their mean teacher for the murder of another missing student. It costars Connor Kalopsis and Ramona Young.

The film shows Moreno unlike ever before, boasting a strange haircut and terrible clothes, which Moreno had a hand in choosing. “I designed that horrible haircut, with the bangs that are too short,” she said. “All of the clothing we got from Goodwill. I said, I do not want her to dress well. She’s mean in spirit and mean in everything.”