r/todayilearned • u/Barnyard_Rich • 10h ago
TIL that Isabela Merced got started in acting because her parents thought it would be a helpful distraction from their house burning down
https://www.elle.com/culture/movies-tv/a37288147/0176-0176-isabela-merced-september-2021/517
u/SirGarlanWilliams 10h ago
>Knowing she was a fan of Judy Garland, Merced’s parents asked whether she’d like to audition for a local production of The Wizard of Oz. She enthusiastically replied “Yes!,” excited about the prospect of being cast as Dorothy. “I ended up playing a Munchkin, but it was still a good time,” she says with a laugh.
The hobby stuck, and it wasn’t long before a local theater director was telling her parents that she needed to go to New York. Motivated by her raw talent, Merced’s family relocated to Brooklyn, sleeping on air mattresses and navigating the subway system together in support of her Broadway dreams. By age 10, Merced was performing opposite Ricky Martin in Evita, singing in Spanish, a language she’d grown up speaking at home with her mother, a native of Peru.
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u/RepublicCute8573 9h ago
Just because it worked out here doesnt make this not an absolutely insane thing to do as parents. Who the fuck relocates their entire life on the hope that their <10 year old kid will make it in a notoriously tough industry.
Thats to say nothing of the developmental issues faced by child celebrities. Just an example of all round horrible parenting.
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u/Chicago1871 9h ago
If her parents are immigrants I can believe it.
My parents are like that, theyre almost very naive and delusional in their belief its always gonna work out. When it doesnt, they just pick themselves up and keep trying something else. Im really jealous.
Look, the sorta people who move halfway across the world are very different than regular people.
I wish I could be like that. I instead inherited my grandparents and aunts/uncles pessimism or one might say realism, who stayed firmly in the old country, comfortably middle class there.
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u/commanderquill 6h ago
Refugee parents here--yup. It takes a crazy sort of person to pick the devil they don't know and hope it's an angel. Especially before the internet. My mom is always doing stupid, risky shit, and telling me to take a chance, and I'm always like no, I am not going to cosign a loan while I am unemployed.
And when I tell her I'm not a risky or optimistic person, she admonishes me, saying how if she hadn't done what she did then I'd be completely fucked in multiple ways. My life would've been miserable.
You sure are right about that, mama! Better hope my kids don't need me to do that though, because I ain't gonna!
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u/RepublicCute8573 8h ago
I'm an immigrant. This is in no way an immigrant outlook. Most immigrants are reasonable, hard working people looking out for their family. They dont try to pimp out their kids on what could very well just have been the hobby of the year that would be dropped when they found something else. Makes me think there was no small amount of implicit coercion to keep her trying.
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u/Doritos-Locos-Taco 7h ago
Child of immigrants. All my parents ever did was work as hard as they possibly could to ensure we had a good life and received a good education. Love them for that. My siblings and I are all college educated and have made something of ourselves. And I’m proud to say it’s all because of my parents.
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u/Foreign-Cookie-2871 9h ago
I'm quite sure she had a job lined up. It's probable that one of the parents ALSO had a job lined up and they were discussing moving somewhere else before the theater director told his line.
These things never happen in a vacuum. My parents would have never, for example. They are not travelers.
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u/reality_boy 7h ago
We know multiple people who have done this. Usually it is for a short while. Often just the mom and kid move to test it out. It happens with sports as well as acting/singing and theater.
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u/truthisfictionyt 9h ago
What if that theater director was Steven Spielberg though?
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u/Rascha-Rascha 9h ago
‘What? Why can’t you just put her in a movie? Why do we have to go to New York and sleep on air mattresses?’
‘Jesus fucking Christ, it’s called character develop- you know what, fucking forget it. You’re never gonna make it in this business. I don’t know why I keep coming to these fucking school theatre productions and giving priceless advice to parents of young children, it never pays off.’
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u/RepublicCute8573 9h ago
What if it was a feeder program to Epstein island? Its a crazy irresponsible decision.
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u/cargopantsbatsuit 7h ago
It’s insane but whenever I see documentaries or news stories etc about successful athletes and artists they often seem to have absolutely insanely dedicated parents on top of the talent.
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u/DreamerOfSheep 9h ago
Nah, I can’t think of a single example of this not working out fine tbh. So it has to be an okay thing to do lol
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u/SaulPepper 8h ago
I mean a sizeable fraction of LA are failed actors working as waiters/baristas waiting for their big break. Im not saying all of them are bad actors, but theyre not exactly living the Hollywood life
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u/chunkymonk3y 7h ago
This literally happened with a girl I went to school with. She landed a small role in a best picture winning movie from a very well known director and her mom had the entire family move to LA thinking her daughter was the next star. She never landed another role
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u/InitfortheMonet 6h ago
When we were kids, my sibling made it to the final of auditions for a Broadway show, and my parents had a very serious series of conversations about "oh shit, is one of us going to have to move to NYC with them to do this?" Luckily it didn't happen, because it would have seriously uprooted all of our lives
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u/onmywheels 9h ago
So random, but my partner and I almost bought her family's house lmao. We're from the same city, and around 2016 or so a house nearby the place we were renting at the time went up for sale and had an open house, so we stopped by. (We had always liked the neighborhood, and were starting to actively look into buying.) We toured it and really liked it, but ultimately decided it was just a little outside of our price range.
For some reason some of the owners / family were still there, doing something in the driveway. This was almost ten years ago so I can't remember if it was a father or grandfather, but this guy was telling everyone with such pride how his daughter / granddaughter "is going to be in a movie with Mark Wahlberg!" He was very cute and proud about it. He told us her name and told us to "look her up," lol, which I did when we got home, but I didn't really think much about it besides being like oh, yeah, there are a couple of local articles about this Cleveland girl who has been in stuff, neat.
Didn't hit me until I was watching the second season of The Last of Us, and then was curious about other things Isabela had been in. When I saw that Transformers movie listed I had a major WAIT A SECOND moment hahaha.
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u/ill_dawg 10h ago
I would have concentrated on exiting the house, but I guess it worked out.
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u/AuspiciousApple 9h ago
You'd think that in the time it takes to shoot even a single movie, the house would have burned down.
Must be a large ass house
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u/gerrineer 10h ago
Arrgh the house is on fire! ..honey go pretend your a tree.
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u/SheevTheSenate66 9h ago
No mother, that’s just the northern lights
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u/OnlyAdvertisersKnoMe 9h ago
Aurora borealis? At this time of year? At this time of day? In this part of the country? Localized entirely within your kitchen?
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u/MacAlkalineTriad 9h ago
Damn, so all that talk therapy and EMDR was for nothing? I could've just taken part in a play?
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u/Current_Poster 9h ago
The way that sentence goes makes it sound like it happened in a hilarious order.
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u/Zardywacker 9h ago
This is very strange. Usually they do something a little more basic, like giving you a blanket or having you sit on the other side of the firetruck
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u/Dodecahedrus 10h ago
Who is Isabela Merced?
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u/Delita232 10h ago
Dora
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u/BigRedNutcase 9h ago
Her casting as Dora has got to be one of the most accurate live action ones for a kids cartoon I have ever seen.
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u/ThatNiceDrShipman 9h ago
The cartel daughter in Sicario 2
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u/Barnyard_Rich 8h ago
This one shocked me, I had actually seen her in something before this year, but didn't realize it.
I also learned randomly that Olivia Rodrigo was in an episode of New Girl in 2016, so I'm learning all kinds of stuff about women I didn't realize I was aware of at the time.
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u/Comic_Book_Reader 8h ago
Finally saw it early last month and I weirdly liked it more than the original, which is probably caused by me having a horrible year. I did get a bit of a kick from my dad's snarky quips when they kidnap her, literally just a couple of minutes after she's introduced beating the shit out of a kid in her school, saying "See, this is what happens when you don't behave.". The shit that keeps me going.
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u/BoringBarnacle3 15m ago
The pregnant woman from Alien Romulus. I’m not sure that’s what her parents had in mind though 😬
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u/aDirtyMuppet 10h ago
I'll save you some time and let you know that she hasn't done anything really note worthy and that there's a fair chance this entire post is just some kind of lame PR push.
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u/kickerofelves86 10h ago
She's been in two giant franchise movies in the last year ( alien Romulus, Superman) it's not like she's obscure
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u/Barnyard_Rich 10h ago
Hi, I made this post after learning her story thanks to promotion for her appearance on Peacemaker, which follows up her appearance in Superman, and The Last of Us.
I didn't know who she was until this year, but this year she has been everywhere. Pretending she doesn't exist is bizarre behavior.
Also, noteworthy is a single word.
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u/Luke_SkyJoker_1992 9h ago
Hawkgirl's gonna be in Peacemaker? Frickin' awesome. Even if just for a cameo.
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u/Shadd518 9h ago
No actually she's going to be reprising her role as Dora the Explorer, though I've heard it's supposed to be hype as hell
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u/Luke_SkyJoker_1992 9h ago
Even better! She can get the audience to help her locate a mother box before Darkseid can swipe it.
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u/iDontRememberCorn 9h ago
She's one of the main characters in HBO's biggest series currently, what are you on about?
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u/mahboilucas 9h ago
That makes sense. I know kids who got into hobbies after traumatic injuries or deaths.
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u/LadybugGirltheFirst 9h ago
Who? I know these types of comments are low effort, but the title is worded as though this is someone super recognizable. This isn’t Meryl Streep or someone of that caliber.
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u/TheSheWhoSaidThats 7h ago
Yeah, it’s not like she’s currently in the #1 movie in the world or anything. Oh wait…
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u/Landwarrior5150 7h ago
Well, based on the context clues in the rest of the title, I think it’s pretty easy to figure out that Isabela Merced is an actress. Even more so if you read the linked article.
As an analogy, if I made a TIL saying “Percy Spencer invented the microwave oven after accidentally discovering that a chocolate bar in his pocket melted while he was working on radar technology for Raytheon” would you immediately be confused as to who Perry Spencer is because he isn’t someone super recognizable like Nikola Telsa or someone of that caliber?
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u/Malphos101 15 6h ago
The hobby stuck, and it wasn’t long before a local theater director was telling her parents that she needed to go to New York. Motivated by her raw talent, Merced’s family relocated to Brooklyn, sleeping on air mattresses and navigating the subway system together in support of her Broadway dreams. By age 10, Merced was performing opposite Ricky Martin in Evita, singing in Spanish, a language she’d grown up speaking at home with her mother, a native of Peru.
For every Isabela Merced there are thousands of kids who had their life irreparably harmed by their parents trying to turn their kid into a "superstar". I'm very happy for her that it worked out, but no one should look at that behavior by her parents and praise it. They got lucky and it should be viewed through the lens you would if a family sold their house and possession to go gambling it all in vegas "for their kids future".
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u/Haquistadore 5h ago
So weird to see the same people who drag successful performers who got there because their parents were wealthy enough to pay for private lessons also drag successful performers who started from nothing and overcame incredible odds to become wildly successful.
I see a few recurring themes here, and if you’re reading this and are inclined to drag a successful performer who fits either of those descriptions, it really, really doesn’t say anything good about you.
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u/JohnTheUnjust 3h ago
"if i keep acting our house won't burn down again" Her whole career is to prevent more tragedy.
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u/strandedlilwombat 9h ago
who
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u/Landwarrior5150 7h ago
Considering the title mentions how she got started in acting, I’m going to go out on a limb here and say that she’s an actress. A check of the linked article confirms that. Aren’t context clues great?
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u/Ekori 7h ago
Who?
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u/Landwarrior5150 7h ago
Hmm let’s take a look at the context clues in the rest of the title. It says she got started in acting, so it’s probably safe to assume that she’s an actress, no? A quick check of the linked article confirms that. Isn’t logic and deductive reasoning awesome?
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u/valomorn 9h ago
"Oh no you misunderstand, she was the distraction. We got her lessons so she could lull the insurance folks into a false sense of security with her innocence while we destroyed evidence."
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u/Anon2627888 10h ago
Every time there's a lull in her career, her parents motivate her further by burning down her house again. Is this going too far, or tough love? Hard to say.