Ausiello, Urie Give Ugly Betty Fans Hope

The news about Ugly Betty’s future has been all over the place. The original press release from ABC about the show’s benching was way too open-ended, and caused all kinds of speculation. Many web (and even news) sites erroneously reported that Ugly Betty was being “cancelled”, or the almost-as-ominous-sounding “shelved”.

[...Pats self on back for resisting and sticking with the word "benching"]

Thank goodness for blogging. Yesterday, Michael Urie, one of the show’s stars, helped calm many of us with this posting at his blog. He says,

come on, really? Here are the facts:

We are going to finish shooting our original 3rd season order – 24
episodes (currently on 16).

At the end of March, we’re going off the air for a while, at a time
when we would normally be on for a few weeks, off for a few,
confusing and angering fans with repeats.

In June, we come back, and finish the last 6 episodes of the season
without interruption!

Then, EW’s Ausiello, in his Ask Ausiello report, gives us a little more insight, and softens his language a little bit from his earlier report. He says the Betty situation is “Not nearly as dire as I first thought. Shortly after my story posted, several very trustworthy ABC insiders came forward to assure me that the perception is much worse than the reality in this case. The reality, they say, is it’s highly unlikely that Betty will be forced to close out its third season in June, as the network’s ominously worded press release seemed to suggest.”

This is a little different from what Michael Urie said in his post, but more on that in a minute. Ausiello then relays the best news of all: “And regarding next season, two of the three sources I queried seemed very confident that Betty would be back next season.”

I think what’s been confusing everyone is that ABC has given no indication (that I can tell) about the length of Samantha Who? and In the Motherhood’s run. The signs seem to point to a shorter run than many of us had guessed. Will this mean Betty will be back in time for May sweeps? We’ll all just have to wait until ABC tells us.

Nevertheless, things are looking much brighter for the show than they were two days ago!

Image: Bauer-Griffin