{"id":154727,"date":"2025-03-08T23:00:10","date_gmt":"2025-03-08T23:00:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/entertainment.runfyers.com\/index.php\/2025\/03\/08\/raquel-welch-was-encouraged-to-hide-her-hispanic-roots\/"},"modified":"2025-03-08T23:00:10","modified_gmt":"2025-03-08T23:00:10","slug":"raquel-welch-was-encouraged-to-hide-her-hispanic-roots","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/entertainment.runfyers.com\/index.php\/2025\/03\/08\/raquel-welch-was-encouraged-to-hide-her-hispanic-roots\/","title":{"rendered":"Raquel Welch &#8216;was encouraged to hide her Hispanic roots&#8217;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p> <br \/>\n<\/p>\n<div>\n<p class=\"byline\">\n<p>        <time itemprop=\"datePublished\" content=\"2025-03-08\" datetime=\"1741474810\" pubdate=\"\">8 March 2025<\/time>\n    <\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.femalefirst.co.uk\/raquel-welch\/\" class=\"exposure-link \" data-linktrack=\"LinkTracker,articleExposure,raquel-welch\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Raquel Welch<\/a> was encouraged by people in Hollywood to downplay her Hispanic roots.<\/p>\n<p>                            <\/p>\n<p class=\"image-caption landscape\">Raquel Welch passed away in 2023<\/p>\n<p>The actress &#8211; who passed away in February 2023, aged 82 &#8211; is the focus of a new CW documentary, titled &#8216;I am <a href=\"https:\/\/www.femalefirst.co.uk\/raquel-welch\/\" class=\"exposure-link \" data-linktrack=\"LinkTracker,articleExposure,raquel-welch\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Raquel Welch<\/a>&#8216;, which reveals how she was urged to hide her Bolivian ancestry.<\/p>\n<p>Gregory Nava, a director who worked with the actress on &#8216;American Family: Journey of Dreams&#8217;, the TV drama series, said: &#8220;She was saying they wanted to change her hair, her look, her name.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Her manager at the time was saying, \u2018No, you don\u2019t want to come off as being Hispanic.\u2019 They wanted to change her first name from Raquel to, I think, Debbie Welch. Very much in the Sandra Dee, Doris Day tradition, you know. But she refused.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>The movie star&#8217;s birth name was Jo <a href=\"https:\/\/www.femalefirst.co.uk\/raquel-welch\/\" class=\"exposure-link \" data-linktrack=\"LinkTracker,articleExposure,raquel-welch\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Raquel Welch<\/a> Tejada, but she ultimately adopted the surname of her first husband, James Welch.<\/p>\n<p>\nBrian Eugenio, a cultural historian at Princeton University, says in the documentary: &#8220;Her father was a structural engineer who was a Bolivian immigrant to the United States who married an Anglo woman [Josephine Sarah Hall], and so, she was raised as fully aware that she was Bolivian.<\/p>\n<p>\n&#8220;As she tells the story, her father refused to speak Spanish in the house \u2018cause he didn\u2019t want his kids to have an accent.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>\nIn a throwback clip in the documentary, Raquel admitted to feeling that &#8220;part of [her] that was missing&#8221; because of her dad&#8217;s approach to life.<\/p>\n<p>\nThe actress &#8211; who became a global icon in the 60s &#8211; explained: &#8220;The part of me that was missing was the part of me that my father chose to just amputate out of our lives.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p><!-- Pagination --><\/p>\n<p><!-- playbuzz --><br \/>\n<!-- end playbuzz--><\/p>\n<p><!-- \n\n<div data-cn-project=\"femalefirst\">\n    \n<\/div>\n\n --><\/p>\n<p><!-- Outbrain { date: 2018\/06\/08 } --><br \/>\n<!-- Outbrain { date: 2018\/06\/08 } --><\/p>\n<p>    <!-- Outbrain { date: 2018\/06\/08 } --><br \/>\n    <!-- Outbrain { date: 2018\/06\/08 } --><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p><br \/>\n<br \/><a href=\"https:\/\/www.femalefirst.co.uk\/celebrity\/raquel-welch-encouraged-hide-hispanic-roots-1414862.html?f=rss\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Source link <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>8 March 2025 Raquel Welch was encouraged by people in Hollywood to downplay her Hispanic roots. Raquel Welch passed away in 2023 The actress &#8211; who passed away in February 2023, aged 82 &#8211; is the focus of a new CW documentary, titled &#8216;I am Raquel Welch&#8216;, which reveals how she was urged to hide [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":154728,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[10848,10847,859],"class_list":{"0":"post-154727","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-make-up","8":"tag-brian-eugenio","9":"tag-gregory-nava","10":"tag-raquel-welch"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/entertainment.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/154727","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/entertainment.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/entertainment.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/entertainment.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/entertainment.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=154727"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/entertainment.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/154727\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/entertainment.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/154728"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/entertainment.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=154727"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/entertainment.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=154727"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/entertainment.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=154727"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}