America Ferrera is having a great year. Her powerful speech in Barbie earned its place in cinematic history as a major cultural moment and she was just nominated for her first Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress. I’m a huge fan of America, so I’m thrilled that she’s getting the recognition she deserves. (I know I say this often but if you’re looking for a new sitcom to binge, go watch Superstore!)
Last week, America appeared on Late Night with Seth Meyers to talk about the movie, her Oscar nomination, and her different experiences at Oscar events. At one point, she shared that she met Martin Scorsese at an Oscar event and was starstruck saying hi to him, prompting Seth to ask her if that happens often. America responded by telling a story about the time she met Leonardo DiCaprio and cried.
Appearing on Late Night with Seth Meyers on Friday, the 39-year-old Barbie star explained that being starstruck will “sneak up on you” at industry events, before she detailed one celebrity encounter in particular that left her “weeping.”
As she explained, it usually happens when she meets someone she had a “childhood connection” to, such as when she met DiCaprio, now 49, at the 2007 Screen Actors Guild Awards, where she won an award for her performance in Ugly Betty.
“I watched Titanic in the movie theaters seven times. [I was] 13, 14 [years old], prime time to be in love with Leonardo DiCaprio, right? OK, so first time I went to the SAG Awards, and I had won for Ugly Betty, I had been onstage and the whole thing,” she recalled. “I was feeling kind of like, ‘I belong here, this is cool.’ ”
At the awards show, she ended up saying “hello” to DiCaprio. “And I promptly departed [from] him, went around the corner and just started weeping,” Ferrera said.
“And my husband, then-boyfriend, was with me and he was like, ‘I am so embarrassed right now.’ ”
Ferrera’s spouse, Ryan Piers Williams, whom she wed in 2011, then encouraged Ferrera to “stop crying.”
“I hope Leonardo DiCaprio never sees this,” Ferrera told Meyers, who joked that he “probably won’t.”
That is SO funny. I’ve been trying to think of which celebrity I’d be so starstruck that I’d cry if I met them and I don’t know! Honestly, I think it would be Judy Blume. There are celebrities that I’ve admired or would love to meet, but Judy’s books meant so much to me when I was growing up that I could see myself becoming emotional if I ever met her. I would also love to sit in on a Fiona Apple recording session and see how her genius works. Oh, and Gillian Anderson would definitely inspire a lot of feels. I wouldn’t have cried meeting Leo, though. I was more of a Devon Sawa girl growing up. Those five minutes he’s on screen during Casper…
You can watch America’s entire segment with Seth below. They tell more funny stories, including Seth joking about which famous person he met that made him cry (at least, I think he was joking!) and which Full House star she was thrilled to have met. She also talks about meeting Tom Hanks and trying to hold it together as he said nice things to her. It’s a fun interview and she comes across as a really nice, down-to-earth person.
photos credit: Xavier Collin / Image Press Agency / Avalon, Jeffrey Mayer / Avalon and Getty
Ugh yessss, the “Can I keep you?”
She is so right that you can never pick by it though! I thought I was the least star-struck-able person in the world and then nearly started crying when I saw a legendary football coach from my state walking down the street past me! I totally surprised myself.
This! You truly don’t know which famous person will hit you in the gut, emotionally, until it happens. I live in LA, so I’ve seen a lot of celebrities and my son goes to school with some of their kids, and I have only lost all composure when I saw Andre Royo (or, as I call him “Bubbles from The Wire”) at the farmers’ market. I started shaking and tearing up, and completely embarrassed my child.
Happily, he is a lovely man, and when I managed to get out that Bubbles is in my top ten of favorite characters ever on screen, he was less afraid of me. Or at least he was able to act like he found it complimentary.
My son is never going to let me forget it, he tells anyone remotely famous adjacent that I lost my shit over Bubbles from The Wire.
@rosie Judy Blume was signing books at a library conference I attended once. I saw lots of people cry when they met her—you’d be in good company 🙂
I think that Judy Blume pops into her bookstore in Key West quite frequently… My mother-in-law happened to see her there once during the off-season. I would be the same, her books were well-read during my childhood and I passed them along to my kids as well.
Judy is also known for responding to fans who email or write her. Most children’s books authors do, at least in my experience (I am a professor and teach a lot of Children’s Literature courses). Email her with questions or just appreciation for her contribution to children’s literature and how important her books were and are to you. I imagine you would get some sort of reply. Children’s book authors are under siege right now, and Judy Blume is in the thick of it for her books that focus on adolescent experiences. I’m sure she would be encouraged by notes of support.
I’ve met a few celebrities -mostly the singing kind- as a kid and as a young adult and I never cried or became overly emotional even with the ones I was obsessed with. My high school’s AFROTC teacher… I blathered like an idiot just running across him in the wal mart!!
I’m pretty sure I would just freeze. That’s my go to. I freeze. 🤣 When I was 12 I was volunteering at a working colonial village similar to Williamsburg but much smaller. Our governor came to visit with his family and he decided to keep asking me questions. When he left an older volunteer was like “do you even know who you were talking to? That was the GOVERNOR” I was like “oh ok.” 💀 only time I met someone of importance and I had NO IDEA. A friend of mine told me she found out she shops at the same grocery store as a famous nhl player (of whom her young son is a fanboy). She was minding her own business shopping and kept passing the guy in the aisles and he was looking at her weird. She said when she got home she realized who it was and also realized she was wearing a hoodie with the hockey team logo on it 🤣 she was like “he probably thought I was stalking him Omgggg I didn’t know who he was!!!”
Adding that I took my daughter to a free Q&A book signing to meet Katherine Applegate and as we were walking in to the school an older woman started chatting us up asking if we were going to the signing and I was like “she seems like a nice teacher but why is she talking to us”
Yeahhh that was Katherine Applegate 🤦♀️ maybe I don’t freeze, I’m just totally oblivious 🤣
What’s even funnier is that she’s already aged out of his target demographic (<25).