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A Conversation With America Ferrera
By : Anne Louise Bannon
Photos: Copyright 2007 ABC, Inc.
Back in January, America Ferrera sat on the set of her hit show "Ugly Betty" surrounded by a pack of TV critics shifting as they pushed their voice recorders closer to her. Ferrera herself still had the slightly dazed look of someone for whom things had not yet quite sunk in.
It's a small wonder, since the night before she'd won the Golden Globe for best actress in a musical or comedy for her work on "Ugly Betty."
"It's nice to have won the award," she said, (later conceding that, no, she had not gotten a lot of sleep the night before). "I did get to meet some people that I've admired my entire life. I took a picture in between Steven Spielberg and Clint Eastwood. That was just surreal. I felt like I was at Magic Mountain at one of those fake picture booths. It was pretty amazing."
"Ugly Betty," which airs on Thursday nights at 8 p.m. on the ABC network, has become one of the few runaway hits of the fall 2006 television season. Based on the wildly successful Colombian telenovela "Yo soy Betty, la fea," it's the story of Betty Suarez, the daughter of Mexican immigrants, who ends up working at the premier fashion magazine Mode. Betty may lack the appropriate sense of style, is far bigger than all the models and fashion divas and far nicer than her coworkers, but her intelligence, hard work ethic, sound moral compass and kind heart repeatedly win the day in the vipers' nest in which she works.
"It's actually sarcastic," said Salma Hayek about the title. Hayek is not only one of the show's executive producers, but she also appeared in the telenovela seen on the Suarez family's TV, then went on to play Sofia Reyes, who seduced Betty's playboy boss Daniel Meade (Eric Mabius). "We're making fun of it. We're not really calling her ugly. We're making fun of the people who would think that's ugly. I think she's beautiful."
So beautiful, in fact, that Hayek was instrumental in getting Ferrera the role. "Salma actually approached me about the show to begin with," Ferrera said, "Salma and her company—they believed in me before anybody else did. And they brought me to the project and they fought for me all the way."
Like Betty, Ferrera is the daughter of Latino immigrants, although her parents are from Honduras. Born and raised in Los Angeles, California, Ferrera began acting in school and community theater productions when she was a young child. She went to Camino Real High School, a school famous for its champion academic decathlon teams. Even though Ferrera was a good student, she said that she didn't get a chance to participate.
"I wanted to, but then I got cast in a movie called Real Women Have Curves and then didn't get to try out for Academic Decathlon," she said.
The small movie, her first professional acting job, went on to win several awards, including the Humanitas prize for writers George LaVoo and Josefina Lopez. Ferrera also won a special Jury Prize with her costar Lupe Ontiveros at the Sundance Film Festival and was nominated for both Young Artists and Independent Spirit awards.
She worked fairly steadily over the next few years, but again attracted notice when she took on the role of Carmen in The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants, based on the popular teen novel. That also earned her a few more award nominations, including two from the Teen Choice Awards.
Ferrera said that her life has not changed that much in spite of the show's success. "It's a lot of work," she said. "I promise you, I don't have the time for the parties. I truly believe that it's harder for television stars to get into trouble because of the hours they work."
Even the day after winning the Golden Globe, Ferrera didn't expect to be doing anything different. "I'll probably work about 12 to 15 hours filming, and then go home and go to sleep and wake up and do it over," she said.
Still, she said that winning felt really good. "Just this morning, arriving and seeing the crew and the cast and letting it settle in and really appreciating the fact that our hard work and the love and the passion that we put into the show has been recognized. It's really most special, sharing it with the people who were there," she said.
The show has been so popular that ABC has launched a whole "Be Ugly 07" campaign to promote it, along with healthy attitudes for young women. Ferrera said that she appreciates the idea.
"I think that it carries wonderful messages," she said. "And it's a kind of extension of what the show is. It's dare to be who you are. It's dare to not fit in, dare to stir up some noise. The character is such a wonderful character to play. I feel honored and touched that she's loved and admired by so many people. I love and admire the character, as well. I really do, and I think the writers are doing a fantastic job of making her a complete person with all sorts of feelings. She's strong and confident, but she's also insecure at times, and weak and embarrassed. So she seems like a very real person."
While Ferrera says that she relates to Betty's life as the daughter of immigrants, she also wishes she were a bit more like Betty. "I hope to feel in my personal life the way I feel when I'm Betty," she said. "Because Betty has such an amazing heart and such a positivity and a gratefulness to life."
"There's a little bit of Betty in all of us," said executive producer Silvio Horta, a first-generation Cuban-American who wrote the pilot. "Doesn't matter what you look like, how old you are, what you weigh. Everyone at some point feels this way, feels that they are the outsider."
There's no question that Betty is a fish out of water in her glamorous job, but at the same time, her situation is inspiring. In fact, there are those who call the show an immigrant show that proves anything is possible.
"I think that is what our show is about," Ferrera said. "Our show is about an underdog that no one really pays attention to because they don't see the potential. They don't see what's there until she comes up and proves herself and makes people fall in love with her. I think that the show has quietly proved itself. And it is about a winning story for the everyperson."
Insider's Tip — The next time you watch "Ugly Betty," check out the tube-shaped hallway of the Mode magazine offices. The shelves along the tube have different pieces decorating them in every episode. Cinderella shoes one time, mirrors another. It's done deliberately to reflect the theme of that episode.
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