The idea of being mean to Rita Moreno is mystifying.
Not least because the West Side Story actress is one of the most accomplished entertainers in history, an EGOT winner and still inspiringly busy at 92. But also because she's one of the most gracious people you could hope to meet.
Apparently, though, there were some women once upon a time who didn't think much of her.
"I call them 'the b--ches,' the women who were very mean to me when I was younger," Moreno exclusively told E! News ahead of the release of her new movie The Prank. "Being Puerto Rican, all that kind of stuff, you don't forget that."
At least she was able to put those painful memories to good use for The Prank, in which she plays a sinister high school physics teacher who threatens to fail the whole class—and two plucky students spread the rumor that she may have murdered a missing classmate.
Giving stone-faced, silver-haired Devil Wears Prada vibes as Mrs. Wheeler, Moreno loved every second of it.
"Her heart is made of ice and she's mean as a snake," Moreno explained of her villainous turn. "If a student does something wrong, the entire class pays for it. She's just horrible! And I just thought, I cannot wait to play this."
At the same time, she added, "I laughed all through the movie. I thought, 'Damn, I'm funny.' But she's not a funny person—she's evil."
And yes, she had a specific person in mind.
"It's such fun to pin all that stuff on a character," she said of channeling her real-life antagonists. "One of those women was a woman who made no expression. I had an agent say to me, 'You don't have what it takes.'"
But Moreno—whose go-to advice for aspiring entertainers is to go for it but be prepared with a backup plan in case you don't make it—thinks she knows what made her vulnerable to other people's nastiness.
"It never even occurred to me that she was jealous," she said. "I just thought she didn't like me, maybe because I was needy. Neediness really bothers a lot of people, they don't know how to handle it. And as a result of not knowing how to handle it, they hate the person who is that way."
Again, the whole scenario is unfathomable. But Moreno has been jaw-droppingly candid over the years about her own insecurities and personal lows, such as the time she swallowed a bottle of boyfriend Marlon Brando's sleeping pills after one too many deceptions on the actor's part.
Thinking about episodes from her past that she can't believe even happened, "immediately the picture comes up, Marlon Brando, with whom I went on and off for almost seven years," Moreno told E!. "When I think of it now, I think, Wow… But that was my madness then, I didn't like myself. And I always picked men who were not nice to women. Of course, that's perfect for them."
She did find another, marrying cardiologist Leonard Gordon in 1965. They stayed together until his death in 2010, though she said in the 2021 documentary Rita Moreno: Just a Girl Who Decided to Go For It that she really wanted out of the union because he was so controlling.
On a brighter note, her marriage produced her beloved daughter Fernanda Gordon Fisher—who was with her mom at the Oscars on March 10—and Moreno dotes on her two grandsons. And she makes a point of being nothing like the mean women she encountered decades ago.
Moreno acknowledged that having a good attitude has contributed to her longevity—in show business and in general—"probably quite a bit."
Summing up her approach, she explained, "I call it spreading joy. If I see someone on the street who has a beautiful jacket on, I don't mind just stopping and saying, 'Excuse me, that is a beautiful jacket, you have good taste.' I found in my life that that makes people very happy."
Doing things that people tend to not do for each other anymore, like holding a door open or giving someone a hand at the supermarket, are among the little gestures that go a long way.
"And people don't know who I am," she added. "Don't assume that everybody knows who Rita Moreno is. They just know that somebody was very kind to them at the supermarket and helped them with their packages. I love doing that because I know it makes the day of that person."
The Prank is in theaters now.