Exclusive: The Green Veil’s John Leguizamo & Aram Rappaport Talk New Anthology Series

Simply put, The Green Veil is a triumph for producing partners John Leguizamo (the series’ lead actor) and Aram Rappaport (writer, director, and creator). Making its world premiere at Tribeca 2022, the TV anthology series is about oppression in America. Leguizamo stars as federal agent Gordon Rogers, who is in the midst of a top secret mission that he must complete while navigating the struggles of his picture-perfect-on-the-outside family in post-WWII suburbia. We had the fortune of interviewing both Leguizamo and Rappaport ahead of The Green Veil‘s dual-episode screening at Tribeca, which, for them, is beyond exciting.

“It’s the first time they’re doing it,” says Leguizamo of Tribeca’s inclusion of The Green Veil in their NOW Showcase A (Narrative Episodic) program. “What Aram did, here, is a first. No one’s ever shot a TV series — raised the money, shot it, edited it — and [went] to festivals to [market it]. It’s always done within the [network] system, or the streaming system. This is outside of it, so it could be the first step of a whole new pioneering venture.”

The Green Veil marks a creative reunion between Leguizamo and Rappaport. The two had previously worked together on Leguizamo’s Latin History for Morons, which, available to stream on Netflix, is a one-man play the actor created, per The Atlantic, as a means of giving his teenaged son “verbal ammunition to defend himself” against bullies who were mistreating him because of his Colombian heritage. Latin History for Morons was also Leguizamo’s way of teaching his audience about how America’s educational system so naturally puts forth a one-sided — that is, a white-sided — narrative, blithely ignoring the contributions of racialized communities throughout history.

Rappaport Worked Closely with The Mohegan Tribe

Like Latin History for Morons, American history is at the forefront of The Green Veil, raw and unsanitized. Immediately, The Green Veil opens with a young Indigenous woman, Isabelle (played by Jessica Marza), bound and gagged, screaming for her life in the backseat of a car. This comes moments after Isabelle’s mother, Glennie (Irene Bedard), appears to be declining the sale of their land. Shortly after, we see Glennie racing across their land, desperately chasing the car that we learn belongs to Gordon and his FBI partner.

“I was always enamored by the sort of oppression/repression of the 50s, whether it was immigrants or [Indigenous peoples], or white families, from the housewives to the all-American dads that had to hold it together,” says Rappaport. “That was the impetus to create a family drama that was veiled in sci-fi. [Adding] this sensationalism of the potential UFO landings to something that was very nefarious and socially dishonest when it came to John’s character as an FBI agent looking to re-appropriate land from [Indigenous people].”

Related: Best Indigenous Movies from North America, Ranked

Leguizamo adds that, through Rappaport’s research ahead of creating The Green Veil, “[Aram] found out it actually started from the U.S. government in the late-1800s/early-1900s — taking [Indigenous] children from families and putting them in boarding schools. We know that because it’s been in the news, but then, he discovered, in the 50s, 60s, and 70s, they were still doing it, but [instead] putting them up for adoption — to assimilate, basically — so they would not return to the reservation [and] you could take the land and do whatever you want with it.”

In order to correctly — and intentionally — share this harrowing truth, Rappaport worked closely with members of the Mohegan Tribe. Naturally, this often posed a challenge in terms of asking them to revisit past traumas. What’s more, around the time Rappaport was cutting the first two episodes of The Green Veil, news broke of the discovery of mass graves of Indigenous children in Canadian residential schools. “These are all triggering traumas,” says Rappaport. “The medicine woman from the Mohegan Tribe told me just the other day that was someone in her family who was taken in the same way [as Isabelle]. As a family, it’s hard for them to utter her name because it’s so traumatic still, this is two generations past, this erasure.”

Gordon Rogers Role Gives Leguizamo a Lot to Play With

Leguizamo’s past performances, whether on-screen or onstage, dramatic or comedic, all surely prove the actor’s chameleonic talent. However, The Green Veil arguably presents Leguizamo at his finest. Gordon Rogers, whom Leguizamo describes as a “self-hating, complex Latino character,” is frightening and brooding, yet full of life and magnetic. He may be the patriarch of his household — which consists of his wife Mabel (Hani Furstenburg) and their adopted daughter Abbie (Isabelle Poloner) — but it’s clear that he lives in a prison within himself. Taken from his mother when he was just a boy, not unlike how he would later take Isabelle away from her own mom, the name “Gordon” is more or less forced upon him by law enforcement. From there, he is thrust into a (presumably) predominantly white world, which results in his internalizing a proximity to whiteness as a marker of success. A large house in the suburbs, impeccable English, a beautiful wife and daughter, and a newspaper subscription — these are things that The Green Veil emphasizes are Gordon’s desperate wants and needs.

When asked about how social consciousness and politics drive much of 21st-Century American movies and TV shows, Leguizamo says he feels “so lucky that in my lifetime, we’re finally coming to this point where the studio system, the networks, the streamers are making an effort to get our stories told — [Indigenous], Black, Latin, and Asian stories — and our contributions to the making of this country because this country wouldn’t exist without [them].”

Where Leguizamo and Rappaport ultimately succeed — more than just bringing true American history to the screen, particularly at a time when books are being banned and critical race theory is being protested by parents — is making The Green Veil a thrilling watch. Indeed, against the series’ story of oppression is the looming possibility of a UFO landing, a prominent news topic of 1950s America. “You have to do it entertainingly,” says Leguizamo. “[These stories] have to be brilliantly told to get everybody to watch. And, here, you have a thriller. It’s got a sci-fi element. It unravels and reveals itself in really scary, thriller-type ways.” Rappaport adds, “We didn’t want to preach. We needed to get people invested in the show from an entertainment perspective. Everyone loves a conspiracy theory. The UFO landings, that’s a true story. The land appropriation, that’s a true story. We’re basing [Gordon] on many people. […] All of those combined, for us, felt like this triangulation of a really interesting narrative that we wanted to push the envelope on.”

The Green Veil just premiered at Tribeca and currently has no wider release date set.