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‘Four Brothers’ Interview: Sofia Vergara

As the lone actress in a lot of the scenes, how did you deal with the high testosterone level among your costars?

Sofia Vergara: “I had to scream and get crazy! [Laughs] It was great working with the guys because by the end of the movie I was one of them. I made friends with all of them and it was a pleasure coming everyday to the set. What’s funny is at the beginning I arrived on the set and they were all sort of flirtatious like, ‘Sofia, sit here.’ Everything like that. By the end of the movie it was like, ‘Get out! You’ve been sitting there for too long.’ I became one of them and they ignored me…It was fun for me. I had the opportunity to curse in Spanish. Yes. It came very natural to me. It felt very good [Laughs]. But it was fun. The whole movie, shooting the whole movie with John [Singleton] and all of the guys, was great. I had fun doing my character because she was fun. And just a crazy maniac.”

Did you create a back story for your character and her romance with Tyrese’s character?

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Vergara: “They were like high school sweethearts. They knew each other her whole childhood and they were always girlfriend and boyfriend, and suddenly he leaves. He leaves Detroit. He leaves her for, I don’t know, seven years, but he’s the love of her life. She’s living with some other guy, but once she sees him it’s like, ‘That’s it. I want him again.’ And that’s why she’s about to have a nervous breakdown because she thinks that she’s going to lose him again–and this time for good. He might even die. So she gets crazy.”

When you read the script, were you at all concerned with how Latina women were being portrayed in the film?

Vergara: “I read the character and I didn’t feel offended or stereotyped, and I’m that woman. That’s what the other women will relate to, and I think that she was just fun and she was great to do. She had to be like that and you have to be in her position. I mean, she was about to have a nervous breakdown. Maybe an American woman wouldn’t have been like that because they are a little more keeping everything for themselves, but Latin people are like, ‘No. We explode and we scream and then you turn around and you forget.’ You say, ‘What do you want to have for dinner?’ That’s how it is. I’m not afraid that she looks stereotyped, because she had a good reason to be like that. She thought that she was going to lose her man. She was in love and she was in this house with all these men, with all this testosterone, this crazy mix of personalities. This was the only way that she was going to be able to survive. If she was like a shy, quiet girl you wouldn’t have even noticed her in the movie. So I think that’s why John wanted this character to be over the top, to break a little bit of the toughness up in the movie and the drama and the violence. It was something a bit light, the comic relief.”

Do you find that there are more opportunities for Latinas, or for you in particular?

Vergara: “Well, there aren’t as many as there are for American actresses, but it is getting better. I mean, for example, for me it’s harder because I have an accent and the roles have to be very specific. You can’t just play a Latina with a crazy accent anywhere. She can’t be a scientist. Usually, they write the Latina woman in a different way. They don’t write her like that. So it’s hard to find those characters, but it’s getting better. That’s why I think that Salma Hayek and Penelope Cruz and them doing such a great job because they have thick accents, but they’ve been working for a long time. So it’s not easy.”

How has this particular film and its theme of vengeance resonated for you personally, because your brother was assassinated in Columbia? How much did working on this remind you of that?

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Vergara: “Well, it was for me, one of the last scenes at the shootout was hard. But you know, it’s part of life. You just keep living and it becomes part of you, but it doesn’t stop you from doing anything. It’s just something that you have inside. I understood totally why the movie was this crazy thing about the revenge, because once you’re in that situation–when you lose someone that you love and you know who did it–you want to do something. Maybe I wouldn’t go and shoot them myself, but you want justice. So I understood why these kids were doing the wrong thing, but for the right reason.”

Are you focusing on breaking out in the states, or are you going back and forth between the states and Latin America?

Vergara: “Well, usually, I didn’t work that much in Columbia. I’ve been a TV host for ten years on Univision. For example, I have a clothing line in South America and so I do go back and forth and I try to keep doing things because those are the markets that I come from and for me the American market is like any other thing. I don’t know how it’s going to go. Next week I start filming a sitcom for ABC. It’s called Hot Properties. It’s going to be on Fridays at 9:30pm primetime and it’s also very exciting for me because that’s the first time that a Latina woman with an accent on primetime television. I’m a realtor in New York, and she was happily married for ten years and she got a divorce because she found out that the husband was gay. Now that she’s ready to start dating again she’s obsessed with every man in the world being gay. So she can’t relax and is always looking for the gay clues. She’s obsessed with this. It’s a comedy.”

How did you like shooting in a cold weather climate?

Vergara: “I didn’t like it. It was horrible. My first scene was running in my underwear and it was like minus twenty degrees. It was torture. It didn’t make any sense to me why they wanted to do this in the movie. I’m like, ‘Is this necessary? Why the torture?’ But then when I saw the movie I was like, ‘Yeah. It looks cool.’ It was worth it.” I loved Toronto. I loved it. I mean, the restaurants, there are so many restaurants and the shopping is amazing. But it’s different when you have to be out in the cold when you are going somewhere that you want to go because you’re going to have a drink or going to dinner, but not because you have to stand there and do that scene. It’s different.”

How is your son handling his mom’s success?

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Vergara: “He’s used to it because I’ve been working since he was a little baby. So he doesn’t know anything else. He knows that I have to work. He just laughs with me when he reads the gossip and stuff because he’s the one who knows where I sleep every night and what I really do. So he laughs with me.”

Has he seen Four Brothers?

Vergara: “Yeah. He saw it with me. He loved it. He said, ‘This is the best thing you’ve done.’ He thinks he’s like Quentin Tarantino. He writes already and has written three screenplays. He wants to direct. So I’m always like, even when I get a script, I’m like, ‘Read this. Do you like it?’ He’s like, ‘Yes.’ ‘No.’ Whatever. He’s like a nerd because he knows everything, every director, every movie. I mean, it’s incredible. So when the movie ended I’m like, ‘So what do you think?’ He said, ‘I love this movie. This is the best movie that you’ve done because there is comedy. There are people laughing and crying. The shootouts and the drama and the violence. It’s everything.’ I’m like, ‘Yeah. You’re right.'”

How would you describe one of his screenplays? And would you work on one of his screenplays?

Vergara: “Oh, I would beg him. But now he doesn’t even want to sleep with me anymore. I’m like, ‘Hey, I’ll give you twenty bucks to sleep in here with me.’ Before he was like my baby and now he’s like this big man. Yeah, I would love to. He’s good. Maybe it’s because he’s my son and I think that he’s good at everything. Maybe he sucks! [Laughs]

Once you were photographed with Tom Cruise a few months back, your name has been all over the place. How does it feel to be getting all of this attention?

Vergara: “It’s crazy, but I come from the Latin market where I’ve been working for many, many years and maybe it’s not the same level of Tom Cruise and the international press, but it’s the same tabloid thing where you appear in every magazine. You have a hundred million paparazzi everywhere. It’s to another degree, but it’s the same thing for me and so it wasn’t a big surprise or anything that I haven’t been through before. Of course you can’t compare the amount of press that Tom Cruise can create, but it was funny for me to see that that one set of pictures could create so much craziness. People see pictures and they immediately imagine, ‘Oh my God, they’re having sex!’ Or that there’s some romance, or whatever. Maybe they were doing business. Maybe it was a coincidence. Maybe anything.”

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