INTERVIEW WITH ERIC MABIUS ON THE SET OF "UGLY BETTY"
by Terry Keefe
This interview originally appeared in the March 2007 issue of Venice Magazine.
For over a decade now, Eric Mabius has been doing memorable, high-profile work as an actor, but finding the breakthrough role to make him a household name has been more elusive. Then, this September, came “Ugly Betty,” with his starring turn as Daniel Meade, the boss of the title character played by America Ferrera. And the fame quotient has finally caught up with the talent for Mabius. Don’t say we didn’t tell you so. We did our first article on Mabius back when he made his feature film debut in Welcome to the Dollhouse, as the long-haired rocker stud Steve Rogers. The role as a high school beefcake of burnout could have been the framework for a fairly one-note performance, but Mabius found a lot of heart in it, as one of the few characters in the film who actually shows genuine kindness to outcast Dawn Weiner (Heather Mataro). That combination of edge and heart is exactly what the role of Daniel on “Ugly Betty” required as well, because with the wrong person wearing Daniel’s expensive suits, the character could have easily been more of a caricature. In the series storylines, Daniel has basically lived most of his life as the prodigal son of the Meade family, while his older brother Alex was the golden child who handled the family’s magazine empire, particularly its flagship publication Mode. Then Alex dies, and Daniels’ father Bradford (Alan Dale) gives his son a test-drive running Mode. But Daniel is so irresponsible at first that he can’t keep his hands off his assistant, so Bradford hires Betty for the job because he believes Daniel won’t be attracted to her. And Betty proves to be exactly what Daniel needed, as she helps bring out the nicer guy who is lurking beneath the surface of the cad. Mabius and Ferrera provide the heart at the center of “Betty,” which features some hilariously broad characters and outlandish plot twists, such as the most recent revelation that Alex Meade never died, but instead had a possible sex change and returned as Alexa (played by Rebecca Romijn). Essentially, the two root the show, allowing the wacky fashion universe in which it exists to spiral in many different directions, knowing that it always has the home base of Daniel and Betty to return to.
Venice: What was the audition process like for “Ugly Betty”?
Eric Mabius: I initially met with Silvio and Terry and Richard Shepherd. I had read the script and I thought it was fantastic. But I met with them and I thought there were going to be too many cooks in the kitchen. Inevitably, when you have something so brilliant, it doesn’t end up working out because they often end up dissipating what is heart the best parts of what’s been created in the first place. I was worried it was really going to be watered down and that it was going to changed quite a bit. Not knowing them, I just assumed that they weren’t going to be able to pull it off. And I moved on, and I was actually going to test for “Heroes”. Because it was down to Milo and myself. We were doing my test deal, and “Ugly Betty” found out and they said, “No, we want him.” I said, “No, thank you. I’m flattered, but -” I thought they were going to cast someone who was a spot-on pure rogue. Someone who didn’t really have much heart and someone who was easy to dislike and was strictly a womanizer. But they were serious and I got to go and meet Steve McPherson and the job was mine. It was incredible. A dream come true. Taking the leap back to New York was going to be tough, especially with the baby that was going to be coming. But I was so excited about working with America, because I was a fan of hers from her earlier work. All of these pieces started to come together. They cast Vanessa, for example. It just seemed too good to be true. When we had that first read-through, I was just in awe looking around the room. I couldn’t believe how well it had been cast.
I think you might have the strongest, deepest cast on television.
Absolutely. There were some complaints, I think initially, after the pilot, when some people just weren’t understanding the complexity of trying to introduce so many characters at once. But it was going to take time. All of those characters have deepened and gone in directions that no one could have anticipated. There are some major surprises coming up.
Everyone, even minor supporting characters, are getting an interesting arc of some sort. That’s something that is really setting the show apart.
I’m amazed. Like I watch Becky and Michael, or their characters Amanda and Marc….they’re just this perfect terrible twosome.
They add a whole different level to things. Becky Newton in the episode where her Amanda character is continually shoveling food in her mouth, while simultaneously talking and arguing, is hilarious.
What’s also great is that you’ll have moments like that, but it won’t upstage the warmer parts of the show. They go to Betty’s house in Queens, and Amanda is shoveling all that food. But then she encounters the Suarez family. Ignacio and Hilda are drawn up into that comedy she’s doing. And all of a sudden, Ignacio is the server of the food. Obviously, Amanda has eating problems, but Ignacio is so sweet and takes people at face value and doesn’t understand that she has an eating disorder. So it becomes this whole other type of comedy, with layers on top of layers of comedy.
At what point do you think you found Daniel? Or do you think you’ve completely found him yet?
No, and that’s the great thing about doing a series. You’re always fine-tuning things, because it’s just a reflection of how people are in life. They’re never just this thing or just that thing. They’re a combination of a lot of things. And some days you’re more this and some days you’re more that. So, in each episode there are certain aspects of Daniel that come to the forefront and others that fall back. Like his repoire with Betty; his desire to fill his big brother’s shoes; his desire to please his father and mother; his goal to be a peacemaker in the family; his wish to get his affairs of the heart right. Like in life, he’s fine-tuning all the time. It’s not a fixed point. I sometimes miss doing a film, but I love being able to work on a character week after week. It’s exciting and rare. I think that’s part of the reason that so many talented film actors are gravitating towards television now because we get the luxury of exploring those characters on a much deeper level than you’d necessarily be able to on film.
The series has to balance a lot of tones and does so very successfully. How much discussion is done amongst the actors regarding tone and questions such as how big to play a gag?
Well, at this point we don’t have a ton of discussions about that. Because what’s great now is that producers have faith in us, that we’re all at the same pitch and on the same page. Just being able to play around on camera…the result of that is what you see every week on the show. If anything, though, they’ll ask for a variation on a take for their editing purposes. Like the scene you just saw shot (between Eric and Rebecca Romjin), there was a fine line between Daniel maintaining control and losing control. Deciding where the cracks appear. You have a thru line there. You give them a beginning, a middle, and an end. And you give them the full pendulum swing. This choice, that choice, and one in the middle. It depends on the director each week, as to what direction you’re going, but there’s always that sort of subtle fine-tuning. And as an actor, trying it each of those different ways is helpful, because if you end up discovering something you hadn’t anticipated, that could be something you could go and explore in more takes. Of course, if the director is unsure of that, you’ll have a discussion. But the directors they bring on are very good. They know that we have a better grasp on our character than just about anybody. The writers also. There’s a writer assigned to fine-tune each episode, but they have a lot of faith in us. They’re not like so many other horror story writer-producers you hear about on other shows, where their word is law. As opposed to this synthesis that occurs as the result of collaborating. To trust the actors on your show is a heady thing, especially when there’s so much money involved. But it’s like when you’re out with your friends at night and random things occur, and you wake up the next day and the things you remember are those funny, spontaneous moments. That’s like what happens when we’re doing our scenes. We got together and had fun and the result is what we get to watch. It’s very rare and totally cool. I’ve never learned as well from any other show how to not anticipate moments. How to be spontaneous. A lot of times we’ll get lines right before we go to shoot. You get new scenes handed to you at the last moment. As an actor, it’s kind of freaky because you don’t have time to prepare. But this show has taught me not to worry about over preparing. Which has never happened before. Actors are kind of control freaks. But this thing is, in a wonderful way, sort of driving itself. The writers have hit their stride. There are some episodes coming up which are just so funny, you just can’t believe it. Everything is just cooking. The cast is cooking. The writing staff is just flying. Things are kind of in this incredible steady state right now.
How much of the bigger story arcs and twists, such as the one that was just revealed with Rebecca Romijn, are you aware of well in advance?
Well, there are so many rewrites, and I get attached to scenes very quickly, so I tend to not read the scripts prior to the read-throughs that we have the day before shooting. That way, I’m surprised and I don’t get married to any one scene or concept too quickly. But sometimes we hear rumblings about big twists ahead of time. For example, I knew about the Rebecca twist a long time ago.
It took a little while to hit me, but this is really a dual fish-out-of-water story, that of both Betty and Daniel.
Yes, and initially, I don’t know why, but I just didn’t see that, from the beginning, that’s what Silvio was trying to do. They’re the same person, from completely different worlds. We’ll have an episode where Betty is trying to get her relationships right and the same with Daniel. Or there’s the episode where she’s having really difficult father issues, trying to get him to give up that secret he was hiding, and so am I. There are those dual struggles, without being too overt, which keep echoing throughout the series. But it wasn’t until I saw the pilot that I realized that this is what Silvio set out to do. Which is either a testament to me being really dumb [laughs], or to Silvio being really good about getting messages across without preaching.
The first promotional stills of America as Betty, with the bad braces and fashions, made the show look like it was going to be pretty cartoonish. But she gives the character a lot of depth, so it evens out the broader aspects. That’s a difficult balance for an actor. How fully formed was her take on Betty from the start?
America, as a person and as an actress, can’t be anything other than genuine and honest. She’s constantly acting and reacting in a spontaneous way. She never comes to the table with a fixed performance, which is what makes it so much fun to work with her. I get along great with America, but there’s this other thing when we do scenes together, that can’t be anticipated. And it’s far better than I could have ever hoped, because we’re reacting in a purely spontaneous way, and I haven’t had that very many times. As an actor, you look at a scene and try to prepare in your mind’s eye the ideal situation and the ideal responses to your actions and words in the scene. But here, there’s none of that. It all just gets thrown away, and we just have this kinetic, wonderful thing. Obviously, my opinion’s biased, but I think the scenes between Betty and Daniel are, to a great extent, the backbone of the show. And it all sort of ripples out from there. Which was the intent of the original series, “Yo Soy Betty La Fea,” as well.
In the Columbian version of the show, Daniel and Betty ultimately get together. Has a conscious decision been made not to do that here?
Well, it was pretty much the death of the series there. As it was the death of “Moonlighting,” and “Cheers,” and “Remington Steele,” and on and on and on. Audiences really think that they want Daniel and Betty to get together, because they’re so attached to the fortitude of their platonic relationship that they think the next logical step would be a romantic one. But once they get that, there’s no where left to go. I think that unrequited love will be much more powerful. We pine after the relationships that almost happened much more than the ones that did.
How was seeing America, as well as the show, win the Golden Globes?
Next to the birth of my son, I don’t think I’ve had an outer body experience other than that. I Tivo’d it, but I didn’t get to watch the show until a few days later because we’ve been working straight through. First of all, I didn’t even know that James Woods and Geena Davis presented the awards to us for our show. I just completely did not remember that, because it became like a straight line of electricity between my eyes and the envelope and whomever’s hand was on the envelope. I then I think that I was in such a state of shock when the announcement came around for America, that I was totally out of my body and floating at that point [laughs]. But I do remember jumping straight up in the air and screaming so loud that my eardrums hurt.
You’ve been working so much that you may still not be aware how much of a phenomenon the show has become.
Yeah, there’s kind of a disconnect. The fan mail’s been incredible. That’s been the main connection I have to that, because I don’t really get to go out much. And a lot of the people that I spend time with anyway are like off-the-boat Irishmen, who are always willing to take the piss out of you and make what you do feel insignificant anyway [laughs].
by Terry Keefe
This interview originally appeared in the March 2007 issue of Venice Magazine.
For over a decade now, Eric Mabius has been doing memorable, high-profile work as an actor, but finding the breakthrough role to make him a household name has been more elusive. Then, this September, came “Ugly Betty,” with his starring turn as Daniel Meade, the boss of the title character played by America Ferrera. And the fame quotient has finally caught up with the talent for Mabius. Don’t say we didn’t tell you so. We did our first article on Mabius back when he made his feature film debut in Welcome to the Dollhouse, as the long-haired rocker stud Steve Rogers. The role as a high school beefcake of burnout could have been the framework for a fairly one-note performance, but Mabius found a lot of heart in it, as one of the few characters in the film who actually shows genuine kindness to outcast Dawn Weiner (Heather Mataro). That combination of edge and heart is exactly what the role of Daniel on “Ugly Betty” required as well, because with the wrong person wearing Daniel’s expensive suits, the character could have easily been more of a caricature. In the series storylines, Daniel has basically lived most of his life as the prodigal son of the Meade family, while his older brother Alex was the golden child who handled the family’s magazine empire, particularly its flagship publication Mode. Then Alex dies, and Daniels’ father Bradford (Alan Dale) gives his son a test-drive running Mode. But Daniel is so irresponsible at first that he can’t keep his hands off his assistant, so Bradford hires Betty for the job because he believes Daniel won’t be attracted to her. And Betty proves to be exactly what Daniel needed, as she helps bring out the nicer guy who is lurking beneath the surface of the cad. Mabius and Ferrera provide the heart at the center of “Betty,” which features some hilariously broad characters and outlandish plot twists, such as the most recent revelation that Alex Meade never died, but instead had a possible sex change and returned as Alexa (played by Rebecca Romijn). Essentially, the two root the show, allowing the wacky fashion universe in which it exists to spiral in many different directions, knowing that it always has the home base of Daniel and Betty to return to.
Venice: What was the audition process like for “Ugly Betty”?
Eric Mabius: I initially met with Silvio and Terry and Richard Shepherd. I had read the script and I thought it was fantastic. But I met with them and I thought there were going to be too many cooks in the kitchen. Inevitably, when you have something so brilliant, it doesn’t end up working out because they often end up dissipating what is heart the best parts of what’s been created in the first place. I was worried it was really going to be watered down and that it was going to changed quite a bit. Not knowing them, I just assumed that they weren’t going to be able to pull it off. And I moved on, and I was actually going to test for “Heroes”. Because it was down to Milo and myself. We were doing my test deal, and “Ugly Betty” found out and they said, “No, we want him.” I said, “No, thank you. I’m flattered, but -” I thought they were going to cast someone who was a spot-on pure rogue. Someone who didn’t really have much heart and someone who was easy to dislike and was strictly a womanizer. But they were serious and I got to go and meet Steve McPherson and the job was mine. It was incredible. A dream come true. Taking the leap back to New York was going to be tough, especially with the baby that was going to be coming. But I was so excited about working with America, because I was a fan of hers from her earlier work. All of these pieces started to come together. They cast Vanessa, for example. It just seemed too good to be true. When we had that first read-through, I was just in awe looking around the room. I couldn’t believe how well it had been cast.
I think you might have the strongest, deepest cast on television.
Absolutely. There were some complaints, I think initially, after the pilot, when some people just weren’t understanding the complexity of trying to introduce so many characters at once. But it was going to take time. All of those characters have deepened and gone in directions that no one could have anticipated. There are some major surprises coming up.
Everyone, even minor supporting characters, are getting an interesting arc of some sort. That’s something that is really setting the show apart.
I’m amazed. Like I watch Becky and Michael, or their characters Amanda and Marc….they’re just this perfect terrible twosome.
They add a whole different level to things. Becky Newton in the episode where her Amanda character is continually shoveling food in her mouth, while simultaneously talking and arguing, is hilarious.
What’s also great is that you’ll have moments like that, but it won’t upstage the warmer parts of the show. They go to Betty’s house in Queens, and Amanda is shoveling all that food. But then she encounters the Suarez family. Ignacio and Hilda are drawn up into that comedy she’s doing. And all of a sudden, Ignacio is the server of the food. Obviously, Amanda has eating problems, but Ignacio is so sweet and takes people at face value and doesn’t understand that she has an eating disorder. So it becomes this whole other type of comedy, with layers on top of layers of comedy.
At what point do you think you found Daniel? Or do you think you’ve completely found him yet?
No, and that’s the great thing about doing a series. You’re always fine-tuning things, because it’s just a reflection of how people are in life. They’re never just this thing or just that thing. They’re a combination of a lot of things. And some days you’re more this and some days you’re more that. So, in each episode there are certain aspects of Daniel that come to the forefront and others that fall back. Like his repoire with Betty; his desire to fill his big brother’s shoes; his desire to please his father and mother; his goal to be a peacemaker in the family; his wish to get his affairs of the heart right. Like in life, he’s fine-tuning all the time. It’s not a fixed point. I sometimes miss doing a film, but I love being able to work on a character week after week. It’s exciting and rare. I think that’s part of the reason that so many talented film actors are gravitating towards television now because we get the luxury of exploring those characters on a much deeper level than you’d necessarily be able to on film.
The series has to balance a lot of tones and does so very successfully. How much discussion is done amongst the actors regarding tone and questions such as how big to play a gag?
Well, at this point we don’t have a ton of discussions about that. Because what’s great now is that producers have faith in us, that we’re all at the same pitch and on the same page. Just being able to play around on camera…the result of that is what you see every week on the show. If anything, though, they’ll ask for a variation on a take for their editing purposes. Like the scene you just saw shot (between Eric and Rebecca Romjin), there was a fine line between Daniel maintaining control and losing control. Deciding where the cracks appear. You have a thru line there. You give them a beginning, a middle, and an end. And you give them the full pendulum swing. This choice, that choice, and one in the middle. It depends on the director each week, as to what direction you’re going, but there’s always that sort of subtle fine-tuning. And as an actor, trying it each of those different ways is helpful, because if you end up discovering something you hadn’t anticipated, that could be something you could go and explore in more takes. Of course, if the director is unsure of that, you’ll have a discussion. But the directors they bring on are very good. They know that we have a better grasp on our character than just about anybody. The writers also. There’s a writer assigned to fine-tune each episode, but they have a lot of faith in us. They’re not like so many other horror story writer-producers you hear about on other shows, where their word is law. As opposed to this synthesis that occurs as the result of collaborating. To trust the actors on your show is a heady thing, especially when there’s so much money involved. But it’s like when you’re out with your friends at night and random things occur, and you wake up the next day and the things you remember are those funny, spontaneous moments. That’s like what happens when we’re doing our scenes. We got together and had fun and the result is what we get to watch. It’s very rare and totally cool. I’ve never learned as well from any other show how to not anticipate moments. How to be spontaneous. A lot of times we’ll get lines right before we go to shoot. You get new scenes handed to you at the last moment. As an actor, it’s kind of freaky because you don’t have time to prepare. But this show has taught me not to worry about over preparing. Which has never happened before. Actors are kind of control freaks. But this thing is, in a wonderful way, sort of driving itself. The writers have hit their stride. There are some episodes coming up which are just so funny, you just can’t believe it. Everything is just cooking. The cast is cooking. The writing staff is just flying. Things are kind of in this incredible steady state right now.
How much of the bigger story arcs and twists, such as the one that was just revealed with Rebecca Romijn, are you aware of well in advance?
Well, there are so many rewrites, and I get attached to scenes very quickly, so I tend to not read the scripts prior to the read-throughs that we have the day before shooting. That way, I’m surprised and I don’t get married to any one scene or concept too quickly. But sometimes we hear rumblings about big twists ahead of time. For example, I knew about the Rebecca twist a long time ago.
It took a little while to hit me, but this is really a dual fish-out-of-water story, that of both Betty and Daniel.
Yes, and initially, I don’t know why, but I just didn’t see that, from the beginning, that’s what Silvio was trying to do. They’re the same person, from completely different worlds. We’ll have an episode where Betty is trying to get her relationships right and the same with Daniel. Or there’s the episode where she’s having really difficult father issues, trying to get him to give up that secret he was hiding, and so am I. There are those dual struggles, without being too overt, which keep echoing throughout the series. But it wasn’t until I saw the pilot that I realized that this is what Silvio set out to do. Which is either a testament to me being really dumb [laughs], or to Silvio being really good about getting messages across without preaching.
The first promotional stills of America as Betty, with the bad braces and fashions, made the show look like it was going to be pretty cartoonish. But she gives the character a lot of depth, so it evens out the broader aspects. That’s a difficult balance for an actor. How fully formed was her take on Betty from the start?
America, as a person and as an actress, can’t be anything other than genuine and honest. She’s constantly acting and reacting in a spontaneous way. She never comes to the table with a fixed performance, which is what makes it so much fun to work with her. I get along great with America, but there’s this other thing when we do scenes together, that can’t be anticipated. And it’s far better than I could have ever hoped, because we’re reacting in a purely spontaneous way, and I haven’t had that very many times. As an actor, you look at a scene and try to prepare in your mind’s eye the ideal situation and the ideal responses to your actions and words in the scene. But here, there’s none of that. It all just gets thrown away, and we just have this kinetic, wonderful thing. Obviously, my opinion’s biased, but I think the scenes between Betty and Daniel are, to a great extent, the backbone of the show. And it all sort of ripples out from there. Which was the intent of the original series, “Yo Soy Betty La Fea,” as well.
In the Columbian version of the show, Daniel and Betty ultimately get together. Has a conscious decision been made not to do that here?
Well, it was pretty much the death of the series there. As it was the death of “Moonlighting,” and “Cheers,” and “Remington Steele,” and on and on and on. Audiences really think that they want Daniel and Betty to get together, because they’re so attached to the fortitude of their platonic relationship that they think the next logical step would be a romantic one. But once they get that, there’s no where left to go. I think that unrequited love will be much more powerful. We pine after the relationships that almost happened much more than the ones that did.
How was seeing America, as well as the show, win the Golden Globes?
Next to the birth of my son, I don’t think I’ve had an outer body experience other than that. I Tivo’d it, but I didn’t get to watch the show until a few days later because we’ve been working straight through. First of all, I didn’t even know that James Woods and Geena Davis presented the awards to us for our show. I just completely did not remember that, because it became like a straight line of electricity between my eyes and the envelope and whomever’s hand was on the envelope. I then I think that I was in such a state of shock when the announcement came around for America, that I was totally out of my body and floating at that point [laughs]. But I do remember jumping straight up in the air and screaming so loud that my eardrums hurt.
You’ve been working so much that you may still not be aware how much of a phenomenon the show has become.
Yeah, there’s kind of a disconnect. The fan mail’s been incredible. That’s been the main connection I have to that, because I don’t really get to go out much. And a lot of the people that I spend time with anyway are like off-the-boat Irishmen, who are always willing to take the piss out of you and make what you do feel insignificant anyway [laughs].
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