Wanda De Jesús is the latest to join the Hulu drama pilot Olga Dies Dreaming. She joins previously reported Aubrey Plaza (Parks and Recreation) and Ramon Rodriguez (Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen). The series is based on the novel of the same name by Xochitl Gonzalez.
The pilot for Olga Dies Dreaming, written by Gonzalez and to be directed by Alfonso Gomez-Rejon, tells the story of a Nuyorican brother (Rodríguez) and sister (Plaza) from a gentrifying Sunset Park in Brooklyn who are reckoning with their absent, politically radical mother (De Jesús) and their glittering careers among New York City’s elite in the wake of Hurricane Maria.
According to Deadline, De Jesús’ plays Blanca Acevedo, a former Young Lord turned radical activist, who is brilliant and uncompromising. From an early age, she was the family contrarian, always keenly aware of injustice: in her family, in the neighborhood, and the world.
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Olga Acevedo is a renowned wedding planner whose surface successes mask a darker interior. For Olga, the pursuit of perfection has become a compulsive survival mechanism as she tries to climb as far from her past as she can. Still, she can’t shake the feeling that the important people she knows don’t see her as their equals, and this nagging sense that her success is an illusion always leaves her wanting more.
A relative newcomer to the industry, Gonzalez previously worked as an entrepreneur and consultant. After deciding that she wanted to pursue a career in writing, however, she enrolled in the University of Iowa and received her MFA and became both an Iowa Arts Fellow and the recipient of the Michener-Copernicus Prize in Fiction. Since graduating, she’s been published in Vogue and The Cut just to name a few outlets.
