Justina Machado Has Lived All the Themes of Real Women Have Curves: The Musical

Justina Machado was so nervous about the impending Tony nominations that she decided to turn her phone off prior to the morning of May 1.

At 9:30 AM, however, the star of the new musical Real Women Have Curves got up the courage to turn on her computer. "Then I got a congratulations from an old agent of mine, and then I felt secure enough to turn the phone on," a grateful Machado told �뵺�� that same morning.

Machado is nominated for Best Performance by an Actress in a Featured Role in a Musical for playing Carmen Garcia, a hardworking, no-nonsense Mexican immigrant mom, who imagines a traditional life for her daughter Ana, an aspiring journalist who has her own dream of attending a Manhattan college. (Read the complete list of 2025 Tony nominations here).

Chicago native Machado, who is best known to TV audiences for her work in the Emmy-winning reboot of One Day at a Time, said the Tony nomination—her first—means "everything," adding, "I moved from Chicago to New York in the '90s, because this is really what I wanted to do. My life took me somewhere else, and I ended up in Los Angeles, which I love. I've been there for many years, and my career was mostly TV, some film. I got the opportunity to come back and do this. This is a dream come true. It means everything. It's like a full-circle thing."

Machado, however, was not a musical theatre performer in Chicago, where she was "a member of a Latino Chicago theatre [and] worked at Victory Gardens. I worked at The Goodman, just the regional theatres in Chicago. That's why I moved to New York." It wasn't until summer 2009 when she made her musical theatre debut, succeeding Andréa Burns as Daniela in the Tony-winning Broadway production of Lin-Manuel Miranda's In the Heights.

Justina Machado in *Real Women Have Curves* Julieta Cervantes

When asked about the demands of performing in a musical eight times a week, Machado admitted, with a laugh, that her voice was fatigued: "I gotta, like, steam and shut up for the rest of the day...You're constantly nervous about the voice, but once you get into the rhythm of it, I think it just becomes a little easier. I'm still learning that rhythm, and everything's been good so far, but it's really about a lot of sleep and a lot of rest."

Real Women Have Curves: The Musical is based on the play by Josefina López that inspired the 2002 film of the same name. The current, joyful musical adaptation, it should be noted, also picked up a 2025 Tony nomination for Best Original Score for Joy Huerta and Benjamin Velez. Machado said that her favorite moment for her character in the new musical is "probably the end, [when she sings] 'I Got It Wrong' with Tatianna [Córdoba] and the character Ana."

And, what does Machado think is the main message or theme of Real Women Have Curves?

"There's so many themes that run through it that are universal—and that I've lived," she answered. "It's just a slice-of-life and an immigrant story. It's a coming-of-age story, a mother-daughter story, a family story, a first-generation [story]...I was first generation. I also left my home early, and my mother was not happy about it, and was scared for me. That's what it means to me. When people see it, I think what they leave with is a sense of pride and joy. Especially if you're Latino, you really feel seen and heard. It's relatable. It's so important to see yourself up there and to feel heard and seen. That's very important."