Gina Brillon won over the America’s Got Talent audience with stories about her heritage, being a chubby kid, and the perils of being a big girl dating a skinny guy.
“At some point, he is going to look at you, like he wants to pick you up. Don’t do it.”
She was born in raised in New York’s South Bronx.
“Thank you fellow gangsters,” she said to the audience who cheered in response.
Her act was based on experiences from her life there.
“A lot of the girls I grew up with had that really thick Rosie Perez Puerto Rican accent,” she said, referring to the actress famous for her accent and her star role alongside Joe Pesci in My Cousin Vinny.
“I was jealous,” she said. “Guys thought that accent was cute and I didn’t have it, and I was jealous until I realized that at some point, that girl’s gotta get a grown person job.”
Perhaps acknowledging the inherent lack of fairness in making fun of someone’s accent—the accent of a whole group of people, in this case—she follows up the joke by claiming it’s done out of love.
“I tease, but I love. It’s part of Latino culture. Like we tease, yes,” she said. “But we’re brutal. We hold no punches. It’s to the point where your greatest insecurity will become your nickname,” adding that hers was chuleta, which means pork chop. “That sounds delicious.”
In her audition, Gina called being on AGT “epic.”
“This is the dream. I made it. I’m here.”
Her audition poked fun at her husband’s heritage as a white man from the Midwest.
“I got me a 1978 caucasian. That’s a good model, a good year. He’s not just regular white, he’s Midwest white. That’s organic.”
