Exclusive Interview with Aimee Garcia of George Lopez

Aimee Garcia knows what it's like to work with her idols, after all, she works with comedian George Lopez as George's niece Veronica on George Lopez.  This proud Latina is also set to be the atypical weather girl in Fox's new comedy Action News.  Aimee took some time from her busy schedule to talk to BuddyTV about working with George, the challenge of comedy and being a Latina in the industry.
BuddyTV: Looking at your bio, you started acting at a really young age and you've been acting since then, and you went to school.  Was acting something you always wanted to do or did you ever entertain thoughts of doing something else?

Aimee: I always knew since I was two that I loved this thing called "put on a show for the peeps."  And I started dancing at a really early age and then got into commercials when I was about nine.  It went from a hobby to a part-time job throughout my high school years, and I did theater.   So it was always a fun outlet for me as a kid and a great alternative to working at the Gap for minimum wage.  I instead got to work with sports legends like Michael Jordon, Sammy Sosa, and be flown out to LA to meet Charles Barkley and eat a bunch of fries. I always associated a lot of fun with these things called acting and performing.

 When I went to college, there was this social pressure of "you got to get a real job, you can't just eat fries with Michael Jordon for a living."  So I majored in economics and journalism because I thought that writing was and is an invaluable skill necessary for anything from getting out of traffic tickets to writing cool e-mails to your friends.  I was actually a mutual fund analyst for an investment survey company in New York because I wanted to merge my two degrees together.  So I not only entertained a polar opposite career, I was involved in a finance career, which is a polar opposite to acting.

I even considered doing photography because National Geographic is my favorite magazine and I also considered being a translator and going to Switzerland to learn more languages because I know three but I wanted to learn a lot more and maybe translate for the United Nations.  Those are the other two careers I flirted with.  Then I realized that I could have a lot more time to travel and learn languages and it wasn't so bad to go back to what you love to do.  So essentially I returned to my first love after dating these other careers.  I've never really looked back since.


Can you talk a little about how you ended up on George Lopez?

Sure.  I had to try out like everybody else and I guess George had known me through other projects I was on and always said, "Oh, we should have this girl on the show," which I didn't know until later.  As far as I was concerned, I didn't think anyone knew who I was.  I did work on American Family with Constance, who plays his wife on the show.  I went in and bombed my audition and I don't do that too often.  I'm usually pretty good when I go up to bat but I don't know, I think I had just come in from out of the country and I didn't do too well, not too funny in that room.  He gave me a second shot and had me come back and I was back to my homeostasis state. I got the job and got to work with Andy Garcia, George Lopez, Belita Moreno, and essentially all of my idols.  It was really lucky.


How is it working with a comedy icon like George Lopez every day?

It's great for my abs; I no longer work out because I laugh so hard at work. It's exhilarating, it's inspiring, it's shocking at times, it's embarrassing when he's making fun of you for thinking the guy who is guest starring in that episode is cute.   It's an incredibly steep learning curve.  I am working with someone who holds the attention of 7,000 people on a daily basis when he goes all around the country putting on live performances.  His comedic timing is impeccable and I am essentially working with what I think to be a legend.  He can segway between the small screen, live performances and features.  He's just a ball of laughs and you have to be on your toes because he may say his line or he may make up his own line, you really have to be listening.   You can't be on robot automatic mode because you will not survive.  He is definitely a dynamic performer and an unpredictable one, so you have to be on your complete high alert to even consider rolling with him in a scene.


Which do you find more rewarding and difficult, comedy or drama?

Comedy and comedy.  I think it's really difficult to make someone laugh because people have very different comedic sensibilities.  Timing is necessary in comedy.  In drama, you can get away, I think, with being a great actor and surrounded by great actors and having good writing.  But in comedy you have to listen and you have to perform with a certain rhythm, because if you don't, it's like playing a wrong note in the orchestra and you can hear the off key and it will fall flat and you won't get that instant response.  I think comedy is much more rewarding because it's a very specific skill that can be learned by anybody.  I think that raw talent is necessary for drama but I think with comedy, it's something that you can learn.  I love performing in front of live audiences and hearing what they get a kick out of, there's nothing like it.  Comedy is so much more rewarding.


You've done a bunch of films and also have some upcoming films, which do you prefer doing, television or film?

I'd like to do both.  The other thing I love about comedy is the schedule.  You work six months out of the year and have one week off per month.  You don't work such long hours and you have energy to do studio and idie films.  In dramas they work hard.  They work for ten months out of the year, twelve-hour days, and when they have their two months off the last thing a lot of dramatic actors want to do is do a film.  I'm living the dream right now.  I'm working six months out of the year and I get to do films on my time off.  I would love to continue in the sitcom drama and then explore my dramatic muscles and build completely different characters on the big screen.  I'd like to keep doing what I'm doing.


Are there any films that you have coming out that you'd like to discuss?

Sure.  I have a film coming out called D-War, short for Dragon Wars.  It's a sixty million dollar budget movie that took four years to make because of the special effects.  It's essentially a Braveheart with dragons and I got to be superimposed in the mouth of a dragon, which is probably one of the coolest things ever.  That's going to be a great film for twelve-year-old boys because it's essentially like a video game. 

Then on a more serious note, I have a movie coming out called Graduation, which I am especially proud of because the role wasn't written for a Latina and they didn't change my name to Rosita Cochita Lolita Garcia.  I was cast as this punky, green-haired, Middle America, sarcastic, dry, girl in high school.  That movie is about four kids who rob a bank on graduation day.  I'm especially proud of getting to play a dry, sarcastic, green-haired, punky character because those are adjectives that you usually don't associate with a Latina.  I mean we're really not that dry.  We're pretty unapologetic and feisty and colorful and we make our presence known. So it was really great to be in a movie that's similar to a John Hughes Breakfast Club type of movie.  They put me through the ringer.  I had to back eight times because they clearly didn't envision a Latina as a Middle America punk girl. 

Two other ones I have coming out are a horror movie being distributed by Magic Johnson and then I did a festival film with a deaf actor.  I play the wife of a deaf actor and I am a terrible, terrible character.  I am cold, I don't want to learn sign language, and I'm a very ungrateful wife.  That was really fun to play, to the point where after takes I would have to hug the actor who in real life was deaf and apologize in my small knowledge of sign language, for being such a jerk in the scene.  It's so cool to be paid to explore these other sides of you that you don't usually get to explore.


I heard you are in a pilot called Action News, is there any truth to that?

It's true.  It's with Kelsey Grammer, Patricia Heaton and Fred Willard.  At first they didn't even want to see me because the role was for a weather girl and they wrote the role with a buxom, blonde, pageant girl in mind.  I go in and very seriously they say, "That was very funny."  And I said, "You look so serious."  And they said, "Well that's how we are when we write."  I ended up doing a studio test and it was between me and five other beautiful brown and blonde haired, light eyed, Caucasian actresses and I just got a kick out of it.  I just did not pander and I tried to ground the comedy as much as possible.  I went in and I nailed it.

They wanted me to speak with an accent and I said, "Well what if she speaks two languages without an accent?"  So I said a line in Spanish and they were very receptive to that.  I thought it was important to maintain the integrity of who I am and I am Latin, I speak Spanish fluently but I speak like I speak.  I was really lucky to have confidence to really portray a Hispanic character that is named Montana Stevens, the weather girl, without an accent and without being the typical Latin girl.  Fox bought the idea and Kelsey signed off of me and I feel very blessed to be working with a director who has won five Emmys and producers who have won Emmys.  I don't think they had me in mind at all when they wrote the role but I feel like I have a big responsibility to not get fired.


Does this mean you will be replacing your role on George Lopez next year with Action News?

I don't know.  We'll see how it all turns out.  I've been around enough to know that someone's head is always on the chopping block, so first things first, whatever project I have at hand I make sure to work hard and put my best work forward.  I seriously have to keep this job and then we'll see what happens with George.  Our ratings are really great – we're the number one ABC comedy on Wednesday nights.  I really don't know what's going to happen.  I would have never gotten this opportunity on Action News if it weren't for George and I called and told him that.  I'm just taking it day by day and I'll make decisions when I have to.

(Interview Conducted by Oscar Dahl)

Photo Courtesy of ABC.com

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Original article at http://www.buddytv.com/articles/george-lopez/exclusive_interview_with_aimee-4938.aspx

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