Key Points
Collette has played more than her share of mothers throughout her career: a matriarch with dissociative identity disorder on the TV show United States of Tara; a miniatures artist whose family is haunted after the death of her own mother in the film Hereditary; and, more recently, an American mom charged with taking over her Italian familys mob business in the movie Mafia Mamma...
But Collette is not necessarily called mother for playing fictional ones, or even for being a mother in real life..
It derives from the Black and Latino LGBTQ ballroom scene, a queer subculture in which members are organized into so-called houses often led by a mother..
When there are those Black diva figures who we admire, like Diana Ross or Patti LaBelle or Chaka Khan, he said, theres also a way that we refer to them as mother because not only did they nurture us with their music and their cultural contribution, but they fed us in a kind of way...
Rodriquez said being able to play a ballroom mother was an honor, joy and serious responsibility, adding that she found the terms newfound popularity beautiful...
