Rosa Salazar Talks ‘Man Seeking Woman’ And Playing “The Dynamite” That Disturbs The Peace

When I meet Rosa Salazar, she’s just come off stage at FX Networks’ Television Critics Association panel. She’s donning a dress she describes as, “A little bit Virgin Suicides,” and black combat boots. When I sit down to chat with the actress, it feels like I’ve known her for longer than a few seconds, which may have something to do with the fact her character on Simon Rich‘s Man Seeking Woman is too, named Rosa — not to mention they share similar demeanors: bubbly and excited.
So it’s a wonder she’s disturbing the peace this season. Rosa plays Rosa on the surrealist rom-com, now in its second run on FXX. And while she’s dating the son of God himself, Jesus (Fred Armisen), Rosa piques the interest of series protagonist Josh (Jay Baruchel) while also catching the eye of his best friend, Mike (Eric André) — causing a rift in the bromance at the core of the show.
Salazar, whom you may recognize from action-packed YA adaptations The Divergent Series: Insurgent and Maze Runner: The Scorch Trials, has been bouncing back and forth between franchise sequels and dramatic television bits, including Parenthood and season one of American Horror Story. Salazar reveals, however, that working with Simon Rich has been at the top of her bucket list and landing the role of, well, herself couldn’t be more ideal. As the absurd little show twists and turns week after week, Rosa took the time to explain how close to home this part is for her, what it’s like to be “the dynamite” of the season, and the importance of not letting drama within the script’s pages blur into reality.
Decider: So how was it getting to play a dramatized version of yourself?
RS: It was wonderful. But there are some eerie parallels between myself and my character on Man Seeking Woman and sometimes I wonder if Simon [Rich] wrote it before we met. It’s a little bit loopy for me to play myself. It’s very different from everything else, you know? It’s weird to be called by your name on set and [the crew] isn’t messing up by calling you your character’s name.

And how was getting stuck in the middle of Mike and Josh?
It was a very enlightening experience because, as a woman, there are those couple of times where you meet a guy and then you meet his best friend and you spend all of this time together… it’s common and hurtful and seems very dramatic for the time and situation. I love that this season is all about that because I’m sort of a serial monogamist. Love is a very life and death situation at times because I can be very passionate and vulnerable and open so I got to employ all those real-life attributes to the show. It was so fun, but also hard at times. My boyfriend came to visit for a month and it felt like I had three boyfriends, you know what I mean? [laughs]. It was very interesting and definitely challenging at times, but ultimately fulfilling to the nth degree because I’m such a huge fan of the show.

So you were able to take what you learned from your character, Rosa and apply it to real Rosa?
RS: Yeah [laughs]. Well, it was more that I was taking stuff from the Rosa I was a long time ago and applying it to that character because it isn’t very life or death right now. When I was younger I was incredibly passionate, making all the mistakes in love. It was more like going back in time and saying “Well, what was it like when I met so-and-so but then another someone came into the picture?” So it was more like digging up the stuff I already learned not to do you know?[laughs] It more like an excavation and less like a catharsis that I needed to go through right in that moment.
I’m curious if you watched the series before you signed on?
RS: Absolutely! So, I auditioned for the pilot.
No way!
I auditioned for the series a long time ago and they didn’t even know who Josh was yet. They hadn’t even cast Jay so [producer] Jonathan Krisel was like, “We’ve got to get her in here.” They didn’t know who to pair so I ended up taking this ABC deal and it kind of got further and further away from happening. You know, the show became this show that I was just so obsessed with that I was able to put my own experience of auditioning, testing, and ultimately not getting it aside and enjoy it because it is unlike any other show on TV. It’s so interesting, it’s so surreal and so fun. It’s such a cool exploration of those peaks and valleys of relationships, which I obviously love. So I was just hoping one day they’d call and be like, “You know what? We have the dream role for you! It’s you, you’re going to be called you, and you’ll be around for the whole season.” And that happened [laughs]. There’s maybe once or twice in your career that you really manifest something in that way. Simon and I are huge fans of each other, Krisel and I are fans of one another, so it sort of just ended up working out. We didn’t forget about the chemistry we had in the room when we met and sure enough Simon called my agent and was like we have this part, we just want to talk to her about it. We met at the London in L.A. and had this talk and I was super nervous because I’m a huge Simon Rich fan so when that happened it was sincerely a dream come true.
What were your first thoughts when you read your first script?
RS: I cried! I absolutely cried because — first of all, just to get that dream job! You’re like, “I can’t believe I’m holding this script! There’s me!” Obviously the writing is incredibly top-notch because of a whole host of writers: Sofia Alvarez and all of them are so amazing. When you have that kind of talent and taste-making ability behind a script, it’s already so special. But then to see the real stories they were putting together and how they were evolving the show from something I already loved in the first season into this new, real, grounded, serialized set of stories while also being so wacky and surreal. I cried because this is exactly what I love to do and this is exactly the story I like to tell on exactly the network I’d like to be on and with people I absolutely admire, so like I was over the moon.

I know you’ve done your fair share of films, but how is it for you kind of weaving in and out of film and dramatic TV and then being thrown into this crazy comedy?
RS: Yeah [laughs] as an actor, you’re lucky if you are shifting tones and states and countries all the time, right? But it can be a little hard. When you’re in Toronto shooting a completely different medium, it can be tough. You come off a franchise movie and it is incredibly different than any TV thing. Franchise movies — it’s like a three month thing in like Albuquerque and you’re living there and you’re doing the movie and the whole press thing and you’re done with that movie for a year, two years. TV is fast! We’re shooting this, we’re doing this, we have a lot left to do today so let’s do this, folks! It’s a lot of moving parts and a lot of fast energy. I love that. I love doing movies, but for TV… I always thought I would go in that door. You get to stay with this thing and cultivate it as you’re watching it. As you’re doing it, you get to see like, OK where am I going this season? Right as I finished that two-month shoot Man Seeking Woman in Toronto I flew in to do the Warner Brother’s movie CHiPs.
So I literally flew into LAX and the pass man from the new job picked me up and I had just wrapped Man Seeking Woman sixteen hours earlier. I think the transition, for me, going into Man Seeking Woman was very easy because I had this time beforehand where I was really reading the script, re-watching all the episodes that I had already watched like a thousand times, and just like really pumping myself up. I couldn’t have done it the other way around. I couldn’t have done CHiPs and then Man Seeking Woman because I needed to go to this weird place for Man Seeking Woman. It is more of like how your brain catches up because it’s less about TV and movies more about how much time you need to like recalibrate. So it can be zany when you’re coming off a two-month project about relationships and a six-hour flight but you’ve just got to snap back.
What I really enjoy about your character is that she kind of brings Josh out of himself. How it is — as a fan of the show and also as an actress — to come into the series where it’s getting a more complicated.
RS: One thing I always try to remind myself of is that the material always plays tricks on you. Anytime I’ve ever done anything, I subconsciously inhabit these things that the role demands. Because you’re playing this person every day. Relationships in the script — they will bleed into your relationships on set. For instance, I ended up spending all this time with Eric and then when Eric and Jay were in a bad place in the script, they were kind of like bumping heads on set. So I have to remind myself that the material does bleed into yourself. I read the script and I was like, “I hope I don’t mess this up,” but that’s me reacting to the material and feeling that pain of getting in the middle of something — of testing a relationship between two friends because I know how that’s felt in the past.
So reacting to that in the script, coming between these two boys as the dynamite that blows up the situation, was sort of me being like, “Oh, I hope I don’t screw this up.” Material really does play tricks on my mind in a very subconscious way.  But I felt excited to go there and to explore what that feels like on purpose, not accidentally getting in between two people in real life, but to feel what that feels like to do it in the safety of a script. It’s not always easy to play the dynamite in the story because you do start to feel like remorseful [laughs]. There is no way around it because everything you’re saying, your brain is hearing and your brain doesn’t know the difference. Your heart really doesn’t know the difference. If you’re in a scene with someone and you’re breaking up with them, or yelling at them, or they’re yelling at you — it sort of plays tricks on you. That’s the one thing I try to remind myself when I get characters like this that aren’t just having a great time all the time They’re sort of the catalyst for the break. I had to keep myself grounded because it’s not you, but it does get blurry when your character’s name is Rosa and you have done this in the past [laughs].

[Stream Season Two of Man Seeking Woman on FXNOW and catch up on Hulu]
This interview has been edited and condensed.
Photos: FX Networks/Everett Collection