Jennifer Lopez’s Spidey Sense is Tingling in Kiss of the Spider Woman

When Kiss of the Spider Woman premiered at Sundance in January 2025, the audience rose to their feet in a standing ovation that left Jennifer Lopez in tears. It was the first film by acclaimed director Bill Condon to debut at the festival since Gods and Monsters in 1998, and his return to the movie musical has proven both visually and emotionally arresting. Lopez stars in the titular role — an intricate combination of glamour, danger and emotional depth — in a story based on the Tony Award-winning stage musical by Terrence McNally, John Kander and Fred Ebb.

“I’ve always wanted to do a musical. That’s been something that’s been a dream of mine and in the back of my head for so long,” Lopez says. The film, which is based on the 1976 novel by Manuel Puig, takes places in Argentina in the 1980s, and follows Valentín (Diego Luna, Milk, César Chávez, Andor), a political prisoner, who shares a cell with Luis Alberto Molina (Tonatiuh, Promised Land, Carry-On), a queer window dresser convicted of public indecency with a younger man. As Molina recounts the plot of a fictional Hollywood musical called Kiss of the Spider Woman, starring his favorite diva, Ingrid Luna (Lopez), the boundaries between fantasy and reality blur. “Bill sent me the script, and the minute I read it, I was blown away that it had all of the things that I imagined when I was a little girl of what I wanted to do with my life…” Lopez says. “I got to sing, I got to dance, I got to act, I got to play, a big Hollywood movie star. It was, like, the stuff that dreams are made of. And so it was really a no-brainer for me.” 

For Lopez, the challenge was embodying not just one woman, but three — Ingrid Luna, the screen goddess Molina idolizes; Aurora, the romantic heroine of the film within a film; and the Spider-Woman herself, both seductive and fatal. In finding the key to unlock this intertwined trio of characters, Lopez started with the idea that they are aspects of Molina himself, and how he sees himself. “For me, it was kind of making them all just a little bit different, but knowing that all of us were the same in that we were all searching for love,” Lopez says. “The Spider-Woman just wants a kiss, Aurora’s looking for her true love. Molina’s dying to be loved, wanting to be loved, wanting to be seen, and even Diego’s character, Valentin, wants to be seen, wants to be ignited, wants to be heard as a revolutionary. So, yeah. I mean, there were just so many pieces to it… For me, playing each one of the three characters was about finding just little nuances. And obviously the costumes and the hair and all of that helped to define each one. But there were different emotional cores at the center of each character as well.”

Working with four time Oscar-winning costume designer Colleen Atwood helped Lopez ground those shifting identities. “It’s the costumes, and it’s the hair and makeup, right? It’s all of it, because my three characters are so different,” Lopez says. “And Colleen was very specific about what she wanted. It wasn’t like other costume designers I’ve worked with… She was very specific — she was like, ‘This is the suit that I’m thinking of for this.’ She had a sketch of it, and she had color swatches, and she was like, ‘What do you think? You know, do you like this? Do you like that?’ And we kind of honed it down.”

For Lopez, those choices shaped not just how she looked, but how she felt on set and how she approached each scene. While the main plot featuring Molina and Valentin follows a clear, linear structure, Lopez only appears in the film-within-a-film, which could easily become confusing. “We are not making a whole movie in the musical, right? We’re, doing pieces of this movie,” Lopez says. “And [Atwood] was like, ‘You’re traveling here, and you’re doing this here, and you’ll have a suit here, and you’ll have this long dress here, and this coat…’ I’m like, oh, okay, okay, so we’re in a big gala, it’s black tie…It made it very simple for me to understand exactly who I was in that moment. So, for me, the costumes are a very big part of understanding the character and making the reality kind of come to life in that way.”

At its heart, Kiss of the Spider Woman is about identity, repression and the human need for connection. Its themes — gender fluidity, freedom, love — resonate just as strongly today as when Manuel Puig’s novel was first published nearly 50 years ago, if not stronger. While Kiss of the Spider Woman was made into a film in 1985, winning the late William Hurt an Oscar for his portrayal of Molina, it’s a film that’s very much a product of its time, and far from definitive.“I feel like the story and the message is not done yet. It needed to be told again to this generation,” Lopez says. “We need to remind people of the humanity of these communities. We need to remind people that love is love. It’s a story that I think will keep being told. Until … everybody gets on board with the fact that we’re all just people … and we all should just be loving each other. It doesn’t matter who we are on the outside.”

Lopez sees the story as one of finding love and humanity in the most brutal of places, as well in ourselves. “You have this cisgendered man who’s political, tough, revolutionary,” Lopez says, “and then you have this, you know, window dresser who’s on, the gender spectrum — and we’re not quite clear what it is at the time because it was the ’80s.” What moves her most is how the two men come to see each other for who they truly are, their bond deepening beyond ideology or identity. “They realize they need each other, falling in love with who the other person is,” Lopez says. For Lopez, that connection — the shedding of preconceptions, the recognition of beauty in difference — is what gives Kiss of the Spider Woman its urgency today. “Valentín learns to embrace love, to let go of all his ideas of who he thought this person was, and see him for the loving, beautiful human that he is,” Lopez explains “And to me, that’s what the movie is really here to do and to say in this moment.”

Kiss of the Spider Woman opens in U.S. theaters on October 10 through Lionsgate, Roadside Attractions and LD Entertainment — just in time for awards season. For Lopez, who has spent decades redefining her artistry across music, film and dance, this may be her most ambitious transformation yet.

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