Ferreira, Leguizamo: 'Bob Trevino' shows positives of social media

March 19 (UPI) -- Barbie Ferreira and John Leguizamo say their movie Bob Trevino Likes It, in theaters Friday, shows how social media can be used in positive, supportive ways.

The film follows Lily (Ferreira), a young woman who discovers a man with the same name as her father, Bob Trevino (Leguizamo), on Facebook, and asks if they are somehow related.

Bob only shares a name with Lily's estranged father, but starts liking her posts anyway and eventually becomes a father figure for her in real life. In a recent Zoom interview with UPI, the actors said this kind of interaction online is more common than it seems, despite toxic harassment and salacious news getting more publicity.

"Good things happen on the Internet every day but we think that the more negative things are more interesting," Ferreira, 28, said. "I guess people think it's more interesting to watch the Catfish TV show and all that fun stuff. There is positive stuff that happens on the Internet all the time. I would hope so."

Leguizamo added that social media itself has no judgments; it's all up to the individual users how they utilize it.

"It's just a tool," Leguizamo, 64, said. "It's an objective tool and it depends on who the user is and the user's intent."

Leguizamo himself has used social media for social activism and to connect with contacts he would not be able to find otherwise.

"I've been able to use it to get political, to politicize people, to unite, to organize," he said. "There's a lot of celebrities that I've met, political celebrities and pundits and intellectuals that I've always wanted to connect with and I've done it through DMing."

Ferreira acknowledged it's only natural for people to vent their negative thoughts on social media.

"After all, social media is used by humans," she said. "We are all flawed but we inherently also can be good."

Both actors have also found distant family members online as Lily was attempting to do.

"My family has through Ancestry.com," Ferreira said. "Children start popping up places."

Leguizamo said his family located a half-brother of his online.

"My mom and my aunt go on Facebook and they connect with relatives from Colombia from way back," he said. "I think I even found that I have another brother that I never knew."

Even without the social media angle, the relationship between Bob and Lily hit home for both actors.

"I didn't have a great dad so I was always looking for father figures elsewhere and I found them," Leguizamo said. "It's such a beautiful movie that tells you that the chosen family can be better than your original family and it's okay. It's not a shameful thing to have to seek a family elsewhere."

Ferreira has found a surrogate family in the arts too. She starred in two seasons of the teen drama Euphoria and in films like Unpregnant and House of Spoils.

"Especially when you're traveling all the time and you're in this very isolating situation, you feel alone," she said. "You've got to find people who will not only uplift you but also speak sense into you and keep you grounded."

Bob Trevino is the first movie to feature Ferreira in a starring role. She filmed another lead role before, a re-imagining of the notorious horror movie Faces of Death.

Ferreira said the experience of being the primary actor amongst the crew was exciting.

"People called me No. 1, like 'No. 1's in the elevator,'" she said. "I was like, 'Hey, I haven't gotten that one before.'"

The original Faces of Death was a compilation of violent scenes, some of which included actual deaths caught on camera. Ferreira said her film is not recreating any such scenes but will capture the same tone.

"We're not obviously recreating scene-for-scene a gore tape," she said. "It's a really disturbing reimagining of Faces of Death."

Leguizamo began his movie career with small roles including a terrorist in Die Hard 2 and a liquor store robber in Regarding Henry. He has done comedy and drama, including the sketch comedy show House of Buggin' and one-man shows.

Some of his standout roles include Luigi in the live-action Super Mario Bros. and Tybalt in the '90s modernization of Romeo + Juliet, his own comedy vehicle The Pest, the musical Moulin Rouge!, the villain in Violent Night, voice roles in Encanto and the Ice Age movies, among many more.

Leguizamo leaves for Europe on Tuesday to begin filming Christopher Nolan's The Odyssey. He said he is working on his New York accent to sound more appropriate in ancient Greece, even though the film is in English.

"I'm trying to clean up my little New York accent a little bit so I'm not saying 'But ya' betta'," he said.