Jennifer Lopez
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Jennifer Lopez is ready for her close-up in the new Kiss of the Spider Woman film adaptation. The hit-making superstar is set to play the titular character in the upcoming movie recreating the Tony-winning musical that originally starred Chita Rivera. In a first taste of the upcoming flick, Lopez has shared “Kiss of the Spider Woman” from the film’s soundtrack.
“Sooner or later, in sunlight or bloom / When the red candles flicker, she’ll walk in the room / And the curtain will shake and the fires will hiss / Here comes her kiss,” she sings on the haunting track. “The moon grows dimmer / At the tide’s low ebb / And her black beads shimmer / And you’rе aching to move, but you’re caught in the wеb / Of the Spider Woman / In her velvet cape / You can scream / But you cannot escape.”
In the musical adaptation, Lopez plays Aurora, a figure of admiration for prison inmate Luis Molina, played by Tonatiuh, and his cellmate Valentin Arregui, played by Diego Luna. Rivera herself visited the set to watch Lopez in action before her death last year.
“[I] almost dropped dead,” she told Out of the experience. “The little girl in me who sat in front of the television watching West Side Story with their mom, dancing around and wishing I could sing and dance and act one day, had become fully realized in that moment.”
“It was one of the most beautiful moviemaking experiences I’ve ever had, and also at a difficult time in my life,” she added. “[It]
just filled a part of me that was waiting to kind of come alive for so long.”
Ultimately, bringing the beloved musical to life on screen was a “dream come true” for the Bronx-bred icon. “I’ve dreamt of doing a musical for so many years. For it to be one that is … [a] movie about love and acceptance and community, especially in this time, to me it couldn’t have been a better thing to happen,” she confessed.
Kiss of the Spider Woman is in theaters Oct. 10.