On last Monday’s episode of The CW’s Golden Globe-winning “Jane the Virgin,” the series’ first big mystery took a giant step towards resolution when the dangerous and mysterious drug kingpin known only as Sin Rostro was revealed to be someone close to our heroine’s life.
Sin Rostro turned out to be Rose (Bridget Regan), the stepmother of Jane’s (Gina Rodriguez) baby daddy and current boyfriend Rafael (Justin Baldoni). Rose’s true identity was revealed right after she dumped a truck full of cement onto Rafael’s father and her husband, Emilio Solano (Carlo Rota).
Now the show is trapped in that limbo where the audience knows the truth, but none of the characters onscreen have figured it out. However, that will change rather quickly showrunner Jennie Urman told TheWrap.
“We’re going to play some of the irony of not knowing it’s her and being in the room with her, of course, but pretty quickly they realize who it is, which makes her pivot in a different direction,” Urman said.
In addition to revealing how the Sin Rostro aftermath will impact the rest of the season, Urman also discussed the inherent goodness and romanticism of the show, whether fans should get attached to certain relationships due to its telenovela roots, and how Shonda Rhimes may have indirectly opened the door for shows like “Jane the Virgin” to make it on to the air.
TheWrap: How did Bridget Regen react when you told her Rose was Sin Rostro?
Urman: She was excited! I love her as the Big Bad reveal, but I also love how Luisa (Yara Martinez) is like her kryptonite. She really honestly does love Luisa, and that’s going to be what makes it not such a clean getaway for Sin Rostro.
But she does a lot of bad stuff to Luisa!
She does a lot of bad stuff, as she explained to Luisa. She really is apologetic about certain things. We’re going to flash back in [episode] 14 to how she and Luisa met. So she basically admits, yes, she had to lock her up and stuff, this plan was in the works for a long time. And she offers Luisa an out.
So now we know who Sin Rostro is, how long until characters on the show start figuring it out?
Quickly. We’re going to play some of the irony of not knowing it’s her and being in the room with her, of course, but pretty quickly they realize who it is, which makes her pivot in a different direction. If you’re thinking of music, of movements, this is the high point, the crescendo of the telenovela aspects of the show. But once all that telenovela stuff settles, we’re left with, how does it impact our characters? How will it change their emotional journeys for the rest of the season? This reveal and the death of Rafael’s father does a lot for us in terms of character. Rafael’s father died thinking Rafael was a failure, which is a hard thing for him to live with, since he’s been trying to get his father’s approval. It does different things to our characters and it affects our relationships, and it affects Jane, ultimately. That’s what we’re always looking for.
Does Rose have any nefarious plans for any of the characters or is she just mostly interested in not getting caught?
Once she’s revealed in our world, she has to decide what to do. I think you always feel a little bit of fear because now you see what she’s capable of, but Jane is not going to die or anything crazy like that.
Since this is a telenovela, how safe is it to get really attached to some of the relationships on the show, like Jane and Rafael or Xo and Rogelio? Are they all just destined to breakup eventually?
We wouldn’t do it randomly. What I think we do is make these leaps and then get in there and unpack the reasons that brought them together. With Jane and Rafael the whole thing is their relationship has happened backwards. They met, strangely got pregnant, then they got to know each other and then they had this big epic romance. So what happens to that epic romance when you get more into day to day life? It can’t be smooth sailing for them just by virtue of, well this is a TV show, but also by virtue of how they met and what the reality is. A lot of their differences are going to come out afterwards, but they’re having a baby together so they are tied and what does that mean? Is love enough? Does love conquer all? They come from such different places — she comes from Xo and Alba and his father just got cemented in a reflecting pool! Those things start to weigh on them. I would say you should be attached to the relationships you’re rooting for but you shouldn’t expect it to be smooth sailing.
For some reason there is so much diversity on TV this season, with “Jane,” and shows like “Empire” and “Fresh Off the Boat.” Do you have any thoughts on why this is the moment network execs seem to be really embracing diversity?
I don’t know. I don’t know why a particular moment … It feels like something that should have been happening forever. I think it was Shonda Rhimes, when she first cast “Grey’s Anatomy” — the way she just kind of cast it blindly and found interesting characters and put them in all different combinations — that really opened things up. She continues to do that with all of her projects and their success have probably shown the powers that be that people want to see interesting, different kinds of stories, not everything looking exactly the same way, be more like America. As a country we want to see different representations, we don’t want to constantly be looking at the same kinds of people from the same points of view.
“Jane the Virgin” airs Mondays at 9 p.m. ET on The CW.