Brooklyn Nine-Nine Star Stephanie Beatriz’ Real Voice is Nothing Like Rosa Diaz, And It’s Blowing Fans’ Minds

Actors. We know that they pretend to be people they are not for a living. And yet, there are still so many instances where an actor’s real-life persona is so different than the character he/she is playing that it’s downright jarring to see the difference. Case in point: Brooklyn Nine-Nine star Stephanie Beatriz. Beatriz has been a breakout star of the NBC (formerly Fox) police-themed workplace comedy, playing “Rosa Diaz,” the 99th Precinct’s resident badass. Rosa’s attitude and mannerisms have become a big staple of Brooklyn Nine-Nine, which is why it’s now blowing fans minds to hear the actresses real voice.

As you can see above, Stephanie Beatriz recently sat down with Variety to talk about Brooklyn Nine-Nine (now airing its seventh season on NBC). In Brooklyn Nine-Nine Rosa Diaz is the department’s John McClane type: a badass who wears the badge but doesn’t necessarily follow all the rules of restraint, preferring to approach policing like an action movie hero. Much of the humor of Rosa’s character is found in her deadpan expressions, dry wit, and overly macho attitude, marked by a deep action hero baritone; finding out that Beatriz is actually a light and fluffy personality with a voice that’s almost like a California Valley Girl, truly is boggling to the mind. In fact, longtime Nine-Nine fans will probably appreciate this: If you go back over some of Rosa’s funniest scenes in the series, you quickly notice that the times in which butch, badass Rosa is pretending to be a ditz or girlie -girl, are the exact times when Beatriz actually lets her real voice out!

As for that “Rosa voice”: Beatriz says fans are “very confused” when they hear her real voice. “…I mean I’ve been doing it for… our seventh season is airing now, so it’s like second-nature now.”

Other than discrepancy between performance and reality, a lot of the discussion with Stephanie Beatriz centered around the connection between art and life that Beatriz made with the character. The actress came out as bi-sexual in 2016, and decided to take Rosa along for that ride. That quickly upped Beatriz’ profile as an LGBTQ icon or “bi-con” as it’s dubbed by Variety‘s correspondent.

Brooklyn Nine-Nine airs new episodes on Thursdays on NBC.