RC: It’s really cool. I shot in Atlanta earlier this year so I’d also love to talk to you about being from Atlanta and Miami. Were you born in Miami?
AD: Yeah I was born in Miami, my parents are Venezuelan and they left Caracas, Venezuela in 1992 when my brother was ten months old and my mother was pregnant with my sister who was born in Miami.

RC: You’re the baby.
AD: Yeah I’m the baby, I’m the youngest of three. Growing up in Miami had its pros and cons. It was humble beginnings and it wasn’t the best area growing up, but at times it felt very family or community oriented. In times of scarcity or necessity, people are that much closer because they look out for one another and I feel like that’s the kind of community I was raised in. Miami is a big melting pot and for the majority, it’s very Latin and Hispanic rich, it’s rich in culture, rich in food, community and music. So I grew up in a predominantly Hispanic and Black neighbourhood, Miami Lakes, North Hialeah. I grew up always being aware of and loving different cultures, we were there up until 2005 when I was about twelve or thirteen. My parents were both professionals in their industry in Venezuela, they met in theatre school, my dad is a professional ballet and jazz dancer and my mum was an actress and singer-songwriter. They both had careers before moving but the politics in Venezuela were getting very bad so they moved to Miami and it was a huge shock for them as well, my dad had to work every job under the sun to help provide for his family. My dad was working three or four jobs, anything from construction to fast food to security, and my mum was a stay-at-home mum because she needed to raise the kids. Then slowly but surely through a lot of hard work, my parents ended up getting involved in Miami theatre. I don’t know how they did it, but they did it and they ended up making their own theatre company. Around 2005, my dad wanted a change of scenery because we weren’t growing up in the best area, I wasn’t growing up around the best kids. Around that kind of culture and community, unless you adhere to these things or succumb to them, you’re either an outcast or a misfit. I was becoming a product of my environment. My dad swore to himself before that kind of shit happened he would literally move this entire family, I had very old-school Latino Hispanic parents so my dad tried a few different ways with me. [laughs] But we ended up moving because my parents also wanted a change of scenery, I don’t know why they picked the suburbs of Georgia to do that.

RC: Have you ever asked them?
AD: Yeah man, I’ve sat down with my dad before and had some intimate adult conversations and he’s told me he was just looking for more for our family. Miami at the time was getting very expensive and my dad just wanted to set his kids up with a different quality of life. At the time my siblings and I were all living in one room and my sister was getting to an age at thirteen or fourteen where she needed her own privacy, so we ended up moving to a place called Kennesaw, Georgia. I’m not shitting on Kennesaw, shout to Kennesaw! [laughs]

RC: Any Latinos in Kennesaw?
AD: No! [both laugh] Very little, especially in 2006 when we got there. We stuck out like a sore thumb. There were a few and my parents ended up finding a church where we found some Hispanics and Latinos. But not only were there not a lot of Hispanics, there wasn’t anything else besides Southern white folk.

RC: My fiancé is from Miami, I love Miami. I grew up on the border and it feels like a big border city because it’s so Latino, you don’t have to know English to get by at all.
AD: All the other ethnicities and races know Spanish, they’ll speak Spanish to you. Miami is an anomaly dude, it’s a place in and of itself.

RC: Totally. But then to go from there to Georgia, which we know from being in Jackson is quite segregated and you feel that when you’re in certain parts of the South. I shot in Atlanta earlier this year and Atlanta is dope, you get into the outskirts and you’re like, “Wow.”
AD: It’s amazing.

RC: Where you’re from is the suburbs of Atlanta, right?
AD: The suburbs yeah, we moved around a little bit while we were there too. We were in Kennesaw for a few years, funny enough I wasn’t very happy when we moved and the people were not very inviting. At least the kids weren’t, around those times there was a lot of ignorance, my brother and sister had a hard time as well.

RC: In terms of being ostracised for being Spanish-speaking Latino?
AD: Yeah dude, sometimes I tell this story, sometimes I don’t, but I got into a fight on my first day of eighth grade there. I got walked up to by this cowboy-looking kid and he was like, “Do you speak Mexican?” And even at thirteen, I was like, “That’s ignorant as fuck.” My dad told me how it was a new opportunity, so I remember giving the kid a chance. I was like, “What did you say?” He was like, “Do you speak Mexican?” In my head, I was like, “I don’t know if this kid is trying to punk me out, I’m the new kid at the school, I don’t know what to do right now,” but then I got the sense he was trying to bully me. This was a big boy, I was very small at the time I had a very late growth spurt. [laughs] I cocked a fist back down to my ankle and I just went straight through because I was already angry we were there and I didn’t know what to do in that situation, it was a huge culture shock for me. I remember throughout the first year when we moved there, I would cry and tell my dad, “What the hell have we done? What are we doing here?” There just wasn’t a lot of culture there so to speak, and if there was it was just very suburban Southern culture. It wasn’t until we moved to another city, Marietta, that I could kind of see how times were changing. There were new students coming into the school every year or so, and by the time I got to high school, there was way more diversity. There were a lot more POC, you were starting to see more and more. My sister and brother actually started one of the first Latino Hispanic clubs at their school in Marietta.

RC: Wow, that’s really cool.
AD: It was super cool for us because my brother and sister were really involved, I didn’t get heavily involved in the performing arts in high school until my senior year.

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