[IMG:L]Having wrapped their successful first season, which has its finale May 17, cast members, producers and members of the creative team from ABC’S Golden Globe-winning comedy Ugly Betty convened for An Evening With Ugly Betty at the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences, dishing up inside scoop and answering burning questions for an industry crowd.
Hollywood.com got the scoop on the red carpet and from the panel, moderated by Dancing With the Stars’ Tom Bergeron.
Betty got a gun?
Ugly Betty would have been a very different show had executive producer Silvio Horta gone with his original ideas. Brought aboard by executive producers Salma Hayek and Ben Silverman, who’d been trying to adapt the Colombian telenovela Betty la fea for American TV for several years, Horta envisioned sitcom and drama versions and “a high concept network show [with] Betty as an undercover FBI agent. That didn’t go over so well.” Then, “being first-generation Cuban-American and straddling these two worlds,” he examined his own background for inspiration. “Once I tapped into that voice it fell into place.”
An offer she couldn’t refuse
America Ferrera, who’d previously starred in the indie hit Real Women Have Curves and in The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants, was Hayek’s first choice for Betty and wasn’t going to take no for an answer. “Salma could sell a used car,” laughs Ferrera. “She swore to me that it was going to be an enormous hit and if I didn’t jump on it, it would be the biggest mistake of my life. I trusted her and Ben Silverman, and knew they were going to maintain the integrity of the project. It could have so easily gone in so many bad directions–too mean, too insulting. They never let it become a one-joke show.”
[IMG:R]A lot of effort went into figuring out just how ugly Betty should be:
There were hair and makeup tests, camera tests and decisions on eyebrow size and orthodontia style. “We ran the gamut,” says co-executive producer Marco Pennette.
The New York look is Hollywood magic
Only Ugly Betty’s pilot was shot on location. Production designer Mark Worthington re-created Mode’s offices on an L.A. soundstage, ditto the interiors for the Suarez family’s Queens row house. The exterior shots require “a lot of CGI, especially Queens. You can’t replicate that here.”
[IMG:L]Wilhelmina’s wacky beauty regimens are real
Case in point: Fish nibbling away at the dead skin cells from her feet. “A writer mentioned it and we said, ‘That’s Wilhelmina!’ recalls Pennette. The fish were flown in from Singapore, where the practice is apparently all the rage. Vanessa Williams wasn’t going to depend on the piscine beautifiers, however. “I flew my manicurist in from New York because I knew my feet were going to be on camera,” she confides.
Betty’s unfashionable outfits can be pricey
“I’ll look at something and say, ‘That’s so Betty!’ and it’s a Chloe designer blouse,” says costume designer Eduardo Castro. “Sometimes it’s a $5 piece and sometimes it’s a $2000 piece—it’s not about what they cost, it’s all about textures and color.” Betty, he finds, “is particularly difficult to hit on the mark. America’s such a pretty girl and I have the tendency to make her look too pretty.” Castro contracts “workrooms all over town, and we’re constantly shopping” for clothes for the characters. “Sometimes I’ll find things and rip them apart.” He also works with couturiers like Valentino, who has supplied pieces for Wilhelmina’s wardrobe.
CENSORED!
Ugly Betty is pretty daring for an 8 PM show, and the writers have gotten away with some risqué double entendres, but NBC Standards and Practices disallowed a joke about Ryan Seacrest. “It goes back and forth,” observes Pennette. “Sometimes we give up two things and get one.”
Change of accent
Budding designer Christina wasn’t written as Scottish. Originally conceived as a native New Yorker, the character acquired a Hibernian burr when Ashley Jensen (of BBC fave Extras) came in to audition. Jensen, whose own style runs to eclectic and vintage finds, is married to actor writer Terence Beesley. “He adjusted to L.A. better than I did,” she admits.
Glamour Man
The man behind fictional Mode editor Daniel Meade has been named Glamour magazine’s Man of the Year. Eric Mabius’ stock in Hollywood has certainly risen, and he’ll spend part of his series hiatus shooting an ABC movie comedy called Nature of the Beast with Eddie Kaye Thomas.
Art imitates life
Like his character Ignacio, “I’m an immigrant, I know that experience,” says Tony Plana. “I left Cuba when I was 8 years old and struggled with a new language and a new culture. My wife says that of all the characters I’ve played over the last 30 years as an actor that this is the closest I’ve played to who I really am and if anybody knows it’s her.” Plana and Ferrera have another, more serious showcase coming up: both appear in the kidnapping drama Towards Darkness, shot after Ugly Betty’s pilot and before beginning work on the series.
Life imitates art
Becki Newton and Michael Urie have become as close as their conspiratorial characters Amanda and Marc. “Becki and I share a brain,” says Urie. “We’ve become so obsessed with each other. We’re finding the characters and they’re finding us at the same time.” One of Newton’s most memorably hilarious Betty moments was a sight gag involving a too-tight rubber designer dress. “All I did was run through frame,” she recalls. “I really couldn’t move.”
Betty goes Broadway?
The cast, featuring many Broadway vets, would love to do a musical episode. “We all love the idea and we’re talking about it,” confirms Horta. “We can bring back Patti LuPone, Kristin Chenoweth, Rita Moreno,” he suggests, naming recent guest stars, Broadway veterans all.
