LAist Studios Podcast Features Exclusive Interview With Nury Martinez, Examines LA City Council Tape Scandal

In an exclusive interview with LAist Studios, former Los Angeles City Council president Nury Martinez speaks publicly for the first time since she resigned nearly a year ago over a leaked audio recording that captured her making racist and disparaging remarks.

“I've thought about that particular day, God, a thousand times, if not more,” Martinez says in an interview with Antonia Cereijido, host of LAist Studios’ Imperfect Paradise. The new season of the award-winning podcast, “Nury and the Secret Tapes," begins on Wednesday, Sept. 27, and the trailer is available now.

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Listen to the trailer

A year after the scandal and her resignation, Nury Martinez breaks her silence in an exclusive interview with LAist. Coming Sept. 27.

What the podcast covers

Martinez spoke to Cereijido in a wide-ranging interview for a four-part story that looks back at the scandal and examines the political context leading up to the leaked audio tapes. She also addresses the specific language that she used about former L.A. city council member Mike Bonin’s son and her hurtful comments directed at the Black and Oaxacan communities.

The first episode will focus on the scandal itself — what was said in the room where it all happened, and how did key players in the scandal react to the tape? In the second episode, listeners will get a deep dive into Martinez’s upbringing in the San Fernando Valley and her rise to becoming one of the most powerful women in Los Angeles politics. In the third episode, Cereijido asks Martinez to answer for the comments that she made in that room.

The series features a frank conversation between Martinez and Cereijido about how her comments are connected to anti-Black racism and colorism in Latino communities. Martinez says she has not commented on the scandal since resigning as council president in October 2022 because she has been afraid that she may say something wrong and face further criticism.

“I'm not gonna lie, I am nervous,” she said in the interview. “I don't want my words to get misinterpreted.”

A complex picture

Martinez describes what her life is like now, and speaks about the other council members heard on the leaked tapes, Gil Cedillo and Kevin de León.

Bonin is also featured in the series. He shares how he felt when he first learned about the contents of the secret tapes and in particular her disparaging comments about his young son.

“I was livid that she talked about beating him down. And I was beside myself when I heard, you know, the specific comments …” Bonin says in the first episode, referring in part to Martinez’s description of his son, who is Black, as a changuito — Spanish for “little monkey.”

Throughout the series, Cereijido delves into the complex picture of what was happening behind closed doors in the Los Angeles city council leading up to the now infamous meeting, including deep divisions on the council over homelessness and the economic response to the pandemic.

The series features experts like Tanya Hernández, a Fordham University Law School professor who has written extensively about anti-Blackness among some Latinos. Hernández analyzes why Martinez’s words had the powerful effect that they did in Los Angeles.

“What the audio tapes opened up now was just how systemic and much of a pattern across the communities that this actually is,” Hernandez says. “That is the message that Latinos, Latine, Latinx can also harbor anti-Black bias and sentiment.

Listeners will also hear from Odilia Romero, the executive director of Comunidades Indígenas en Liderazgo (CIELO), an Indigenous-women-led human rights nonprofit in L.A., who said the tape, “shows what we've always known as Indigenous people, that the other Mexicans have always discriminated against us.”

Cereijido also spoke with current L.A. city councilmembers Marqueece Harris-Dawson, Nithya Raman, Eunisses Hernandez, and other crucial figures in Los Angeles politics who were deeply intertwined in the scandal.

“I hadn't heard the jealousy and resentment of Black people,” Harris-Dawson said of the discussion on the tapes. “That's something that they wouldn't talk about in front of me.”

About the series

Cereijido was previously the executive producer of LAist Studios, and also hosted The Barbie Tapes with MG Lord and Norco 80. Before that, she was a producer on NPR’s Latino USA. Senior producer Emily Guerin, who hosted California City, previously produced the Imperfect Paradise season focused on former L.A. County Sheriff Alex Villanueva.

New episodes of “Nury and the Secret Tapes” will be available every Wednesday, starting Sept. 27, and will also be broadcast on-air at LAist 89.3 on Sundays at 7 p.m. Pacific.