Sofía Vergara

This interview originally appeared in the MIPTV 2014 issue of World Screen.

Sofía Vergara is known to millions of TV fans as Gloria on the hit comedy Modern Family. Vergara shares many traits with the hilarious character she plays—she speaks with a heavy accent, and has a fierce sense of family loyalty and a self-deprecating sense of humor—but behind the beauty and the body is a woman with sharp business acumen. Vergara is a 50 percent partner in Latin World Enter­tainment (Latin WE), which she set up in the late ’90s with her business partner, Luis Balaguer. Vergara, who according to Forbes Magazine is the highest-paid television actor in the U.S., is the spokesperson for a number of renowned brands, including Diet Pepsi, CoverGirl and State Farm Insurance, and has a clothing line at Kmart. She also executive produced Killer Women, which ran on ABC earlier this year, and is working on two other shows. She talks to World Screen about these new shows, the craft of acting and how laughter has guided her through life, in good times and bad.

WS: Tell us about Killer Women, which is based on the Argentinian show Mujeres Asesinas.
VERGARA: Like most Hispanics, I am a huge, huge fan of Mujeres Asesinas, of both the original Argentinian format from Pol-ka Producciones, and also of the Mexican show produced by Televisa. They were addictingly amazing! The thing is that real-life female assassins are extremely complex, crazy, passionate, and why not say it—interesting. A woman can snap because after years of abuse her husband implied she’s fat, or because he didn’t raise the toilet seat and peed all over, or simply because he loves something too much—like his money! [Laughs] These are not silly and simple states of mind. Women mainly kill not for what they hate, but for what they love, for what they are obsessed with in their minds and hearts. And what makes them plot, endure, stab a mother-in-law 47 times or bury an ex in the backyard under a guava tree or a rose bush is incredibly interesting. [Laughs] We all have seen in the news how crazy these women’s crimes can be and how addicting it can be to understand them. The female crimes we see on cop shows don’t go into that psychological part as we did in Killer Women.

WS: You have two more shows in the works. There is Raising Mom for ABC—is this based on your own experiences as a parent? And you have Speak American for FOX. Tell us about these two shows.
VERGARA: I can’t say Raising Mom is autobiographical, but it did inspire my team to come up with an idea based on my relationship with my son Manolo. The truth is, it’s the story of lots of young, single, working moms with smart Millennial kids who grow up together and help raise each other in a cute and funny way. Mothers like me and our kids love each other and go through a lot of crazy situations, and relationships like that have not been explored yet on TV. Anyone who is raising a Millennial kid is going to identify with this and enjoy it like crazy. Millennial kids don’t hurry or rush like us, they don’t get our stress, they have a whole different vision of what success, friendship, tolerance, respect, happiness and rules mean—and of what huge tattoos are! There’s a lot of comedy there. Things get crazier when these kids officially become adults and their moms are not even 20 years older than them, are not ready to face the empty-nest syndrome and are mistaken for their own child’s hot sister or girlfriend all the time. There are extremely funny situations between millions of “young” moms and their “adult” kids today, with so much heart and comedy, and thank God this idea caught the interest of ABC to give us an opportunity. Our writer is the super-talented Christine Zander, who has a Millennial son, and our director Gail Mancuso just won an Emmy for directing Modern Family.

The idea of Speak American was brought to us and our partners at Electus by producer Andrew Lenchewski and writer Benjamin Brand in July, and my team flipped for the idea. Who better than us to produce a sitcom about an accent-reduction center to help immigrants fulfill their American dream? Huh? [Laughs] Most of our production team at Latin WE needs those services! Including me! [Laughs] The original idea had a female lead teacher, an American girl with a European background, and we made her a Latina! Andrew and Ben, our writers, worked on the project with our team to come up with the unconventional methods [the teacher would use] in her school and the amazingly funny students that would attend. They added some crazy love tension here and there, and FOX said “Claro que YES” with an accent—and we are thrilled! Crossing our fingers that together we’re going to do something great!

WS: What appealed to you about the character of Gloria in Modern Family? What do you like about her?
VERGARA: At the beginning Gloria scared, terrified me. The idea of playing a sexy, young, big-mouthed stepmother who was loud, dramatic and married to a rich older man, [prompted] two questions: Are Latinos going to hate me and be offended? Are Americans going to dislike me, and her, for being too much of a gold-digger symbol? That’s the truth, I was nervous. The challenge was to give her so much heart, empathy, and strength in her values of love for her husband and family to make her likable, and thank God it worked. And I absolutely love her. She has given me all I have now—my career, my life in Hollywood. What I admire most in Gloria is that she has so much love for her family, for the truth. She is so unapologetic and honest with her flaws that you have to at least forgive her even if you don’t like her.

WS: When did you first realize you could make people laugh and that you had a talent for comedy?
VERGARA: My family in Barranquilla [in Colombia] and my friends from elementary school say I was the class clown, the one with the funny faces and best imitations at family gatherings. I do believe that comedic timing is something that you get better at with practice and to a certain point, sure, it can be learned, but you have to be born with at least a little seed of humor, and some sharpness, cynicism, self-deprecation or wit to be able to make a living out of it. I feel lucky to be able to make a career of this, because I love to have fun, to make people laugh and to give them a break from a real life that can be very hard at times for all of us. Trust me, it’s not easy to make guys laugh or to make women take you seriously in comedy when you look like me, with big everything: big boobs, big accent, big teeth, big attitude, huge heels, plus a transvestite voice no one seems to understand, not even me at times.

WS: How do you choose products to endorse in commercials?
VERGARA: I have to like them, really like them, and they have to pay me, really pay me…well! [Laughs] Really, I have to be honest in both senses, I endorse things I like, use and believe in and I like to be well paid for sharing that with the world.

WS: You have a very strong sense of humor. What role has a sense of humor played in your life, both in times of great success and also when you were battling cancer?
VERGARA: I try to compartmentalize so the absurdity, craziness, unfairness and bad surprises in life don’t become an excuse for me to get down, and I consciously try to get a good laugh or make a joke in the middle of every crisis to alleviate things and not go down the wrong way of unnecessary drama…of course, all this after I calm down. It’s difficult to live by those standards or maintain an upbeat pose when bad things happen. But you really have to do it because the other option of drama is really horrible. I hope I never lose that resource of laughing things out. For example, something silly like a dress ripping apart, exposing your butt, during a live, national award ceremony can be for many, understandably, an embarrassing PR disaster where people are fired, tears flow, the fear of ridicule sets over, etc. For me, it just became a chance to get some laughs and share a funny picture with fans. In the case of my cancer, that is no laughing matter, of course, especially before 30, and with me being a single mom and being the sole breadwinner I did have a dark moment. But then I said, OK, enough, you’re a mom, grow more balls, your son and family cannot see you like this. You are young, strong; just fight it. And I just laughed away the fear with “wig” jokes, feeling like “the hot girl in the plastic bubble” when isolated for radiation therapies. And with a couple of jokes it all started to look brighter. If I laughed then, I can laugh forever.