Sundance 2012: Gina Rodriguez in 'Filly Brown'

Gina Rodriguez got her hands on the script for "Filly Brown," it felt serendipitous. The character on the page was a tough, sexy young Latina with a big narrative arc—and she was, like Rodriguez, a spoken-word artist. Jackpot. But the character that will appear on screen on Friday when the film premieres at the Sundance Film Festival is a rapper, not a street poet. That transformation happened by chance, and was driven by Rodriguez's standoffish encounter outside the audition room with another actor reading for the part.

Directors Youssef Delara and Michael D. Olmos had seen Rodriguez's comic supporting turn in the indie "Go for It!" In the audition, they had her to read a prepared spoken-word piece. Then they asked if there was anything else she wanted to do.

"Yeah, I'd like to rap," she told them. "I want to rap about that chick in the hallway that was nasty to me."

Rodriguez "was just joking around [and] being a little badass." When she finished her freestyle, the room was silent, and the actor went home certain that she'd just committed audition-room self immolation. But she was called back in the next day, and shown a clip that the filmmakers had slapped together of her rap and spoken-word piece. Sitting in the room was Edward James Olmos, the movie's executive producer. When the clip finished playing, Olmos turned to the filmmakers and said, "I think you've found your Filly Brown." The character of Filly was changed from a spoken-word artist to a rapper, and Rodriguez's career is now on a big upswing—as evidenced by the news this week that she has signed a talent-holding deal with ABC. "Filly Brown," meanwhile, enters Sundance with plenty of buzz behind it.

Rodriguez is determined to enjoy her moment, and unlike most actors at Sundance, she is staying through the festival's very end. The parties and swag suites and general madness have usually cleared out by this time, and the happenings in Park City are limited to movie watching and skiing. Rodriguez isn't much inclined toward the latter.

"Oh, I'm not messing with skiing," she says. "You can't get this Puerto Rican on the slope. Uh-uh."

You can't blame her for being cautious. The last thing that an actor having the kind of year that Rodriguez is having needs is a ski injury.