Eric Mabius: (Success) ‘Humbling and Flattering”
Eric Mabius was truly surprised by the instant success of “Ugly Betty”. An interview with Monaco Review, (associated with the Monaco Television Festival) has the scoop:
Cocooned at work on the Ugly Bettyset for 70 hours a week, he [Mabius] didn’t quite catch the significance of the rating figurers that said 15 million Americans were turning in weekly, he admitted. It only hit him when he first travelled to New York to do interviews for the show.
“It was pretty overwhelming,” the 36-year-old Pennsylvania-born actor said. “There were police barricades outside the hotel; there were hundreds of people outside. It’s exciting, it means people are watching the show, but it’s intense.”
Wow -I had no idea it had gotten to that kind of intensity. We had heard that America Ferrera was getting mail addressed to “Betty”, but police barricades? That’s pretty huge. Mabius then gets to the heart of why the show is such a success:
Mabius suggested Ugly Betty, a take-off from a popular Spanish-language soap, has quickly embedded itself in the cultural conscience because viewers can relate with its broad range of characters, and because the show addresses intense issues (such as gay character Marc coming out of the closet to his mother) in a way that doesn’t speak down to the audience.
I think that’s key (not speaking down to the audience). There are many “important”, “serious” shows that get this wrong. Ugly Betty strikes just the right tone. The characters are what they are; the producers just let the characters “be”, without undue preaching.
Will Daniel and Betty ever get together?
“The quickest way to kill a show is to have that unrequited love consumated,” Mabius said. But, given the decade-long life-span of most television series, he added: “We joke it’ll happen in season nine or ten.”
I’ve always said that in the end, Daniel should propose to Betty, only to get turned down because she has another love. I have no idea if it’ll be Henry by that time.
Tags: abc, eric+mabius, Television, ugly+bettyRelated Stories
POSTED IN: Betty Suarez, Daniel Meade, Eric Mabius, Interviews
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