For Roselyn Sanchez, hosting Dick Clark’s New Year’s Rockin’ Eve w/ Ryan Seacrest from her hometown of San Juan, Puerto Rico is not just a great honor, it’s also a rare opportunity to spend New Year’s Eve at home, and with her whole family.
Remezcla had a chance to talk to Sanchez about her hosting gig, and one of the things she emphasized was that she doesn’t usually get to hug her family as the New Year arrives. This year, as she’s hosting from Puerto Rico, she will. And she’ll also get to “showcase a part of my hometown,” and of course, headline a celebration that will also include Daddy Yankee.
But that’s not all we can expect from the first Spanish-language New Year’s Eve countdown broadcast on a major US network. We can also expect a party that will, hopefully, leave people wanting to visit Puerto Rico, and showcase the island’s vibrant culture, food, dance, and music.
Puerto Rico has been “struggling with tourism,” as have most places in the world, due to a pandemic that we’re still firmly in the middle of, but that will hopefully get more manageable with a sizeable part of the world’s population now vaccinated. A slow recovery from Hurricane Maria has also hampered Puerto Rico.
But the hope is that this celebration, which will take place at the Puerto Rico Convention Center at DISTRITO T-Mobile, Puerto Rico’s newest entertainment and nightlife complex will give people watching a taste of how beautiful Puerto Rico can be. The special is also set to bolster Puerto Rico’s own monumental year, as the capital city of San Juan celebrates its 500th anniversary.
Sanchez, who very recently hosted the Latin Grammys is famous not just for her TV roles – she currently stars as Elena Roarke in the FOX series Fantasy Island – but also for the podcast she cohosts with husband Eric Winter, titled “He Said, Ella Dijo.” And she was very “excited to be asked,” to co-host this event, particularly as there were “a lot of people, from around Latin America” they could have asked, and other places they could have chosen to showcase.
It’s also a very good way to kick off a year in which Sanchez has a lot planned in a way that will, hopefully, put a smile on the face of everyone watching. Among those things, a new movie with her husband – and, even more exciting, her first directing opportunity. And the actress looks forward to a new phase of her career that will, hopefully, include much more of her behind the cameras.
For now, however, she will help usher in the new year with the Puerto Rico part of the countdown during Dick Clark’s New Year’s Rockin’ Eve. It will take place at 11:00 p.m. EST. Ryan Seacrest and Liza Koshy will be in Times Square, Billy Porter in New Orleans, and Ciara in Los Angeles.