For someone who is just a decade into her acting career, Toronto’s Humberly Gonzalez boasts a laundry list of roles that more closely resembles the resume of someone double her age. Gonzalez credits that to her team — and to believing in herself.
“I entered every room not desperate to be cast; I just wanted to show up in my full self,” she says. “I wanted to say, here’s who you’ve been looking for the entire time. And I came in with kindness and love and just a lot of curiosity and enthusiasm to play.”
That attitude has taken her from Venezuela to Fort McMurray, Alta. and then to Canada’s National Theatre School — and into the casts of top projects including Star Wars: Outlaws Utopia Falls, In the Dark, Orphan Black, Nurses, Workin’ Moms and opposite Jason Momoa in Netflix feature Slumberland. This year, she’s Canada’s undeniable breakout star, appearing in the Paramount+ film StarTrek: Section 31 alongside Michelle Yeoh, returning to one of Netflix’s most popular shows of all time, Ginny & Georgia and joining new Kevin Williamson (the mind behind Dawson’s Creek and Scream) series, The Waterfront, as a series regular.
People are taking notice — such as the Toronto-based film festival Future of Film Showcase, which named her the recipient of the Rising Star Award. She’ll deliver the festival’s Closing Keynote in conversation with Trailbazer Award Recipient Devery Jacobs this Sunday, June 22 at the Paradise Theatre in Toronto.
“They are so great at elevating Canadian content and filmmakers nationwide, and I think it’s important to have something that’s just ours,” Gonzalez says of the festival. “It’s such an honour; I got to look back and realize I’ve been doing this for 10 years, and people have been seeing my work and they see me as someone who’s risen up through those years.”
It’s especially remarkable to be recognized for her work in a field of acting that she didn’t ever expect to be working in — TV and film. “I really thought it was going to be just theatre and musical theatre for me,” she says.
During her time at the National Theatre School, Gonzalez says it was a conservatory just for theatre, so she wasn’t exposed to TV and film at all, with one notable exception.
“They brought in Don McKellar, and he met and interviewed all of us and wrote a script specifically for our class to film in Toronto for a week. That was my first exposure to the technicalities of what it means to be on a set, and I remember he told me I was talented and had a way with it,” she recalls.
After that, Gonzalez says the “world opened up” for her — but she says she’s still taken her years of theatre training with her. “I think what training that does is it really allows you to explore what your instrument — which is what they call our body — is capable of,” she says. “It also really exposes you to such vulnerable work. We dive so deep into character work and dissecting a scene and intentionality and your goals for your role.”
FAST FACTS
Name: Humberly Gonzalez
Proudest moment: Earning a BAFTA nomination for her role in Star Wars: Outlaws
Favourite local actor: Kiana Madeira, Clark Backo
Favourite place in the city: Sunnyside Beach
Gonzalez takes on each new character with conviction, and it’s in roles like Sophie Sanchez on Ginny & Georgia where you can see the impact of that.
“The amount of messages that I still get, even to this day, about people watching Sophie and [love interest] Maxine [played by Sara Waisglass] and their relationship, how it made them feel seen, how it helped them come out, how they watch it with their mom or their dad, and they felt more understood — it really warmed my heart,” she says.
Gonzalez herself is queer, but wasn’t fully out when she started working on season one of Ginny & Georgia. She says she wasn’t sure when or how she should share that information publicly, but it ended up happening organically on the podcast Girl on Girl after the first season released.
“I was hesitant; I wasn’t sure how it was going to be received. But there was this outpouring of love the second the media knew about it. It was so emotional,” she recalls.
She went on to star in Hallmark’s first lesbian holiday romance, Friends and Family Christmas, in 2023.
“These stories are so important, and they’re important for me to tell. They’re important for me to be a vessel to that, not just as a queer person, but as an immigrant, as a woman of colour, as a Latina woman.”
Now, Gonzalez is graduating out of high school and into the gritty world of The Waterfront, a new Netflix crime drama series that premiered this week. “I loved that it was more mature role and a drama, which is something I really wanted to graduate into, especially after being in high school for like, the last six years of my life!” she jokes.
Her character, Jenna Tate, returns to her hometown to take care of her sick father and reunites with her old high school flame, Cane Buckley (Jake Weary) — who happens to be part of the infamous Buckley clan in town.
“It’s kind of the start of this whole thing between them, and it’s a wrench thrown into already so much drama,” she shares. “There are lots of steamy entanglements and whodunits and secrets and cliffhangers. I think people are going to binge this!”
Gonzalez recently finished watching all the episodes herself, and says the whole cast is very excited. “Our group chat for The Waterfront is going off. Everyone is so proud and so excited to share it with the world.”
