Ugly Betty Producers Give The Scoop!
Bummed out that Ausiello didn’t mention Ugly Betty in his Ask Ausiello post? Don’t be! The Futon Critic has an interview with Ugly Betty executive producers Tracy Poust and Jon Kinnally, and they give some great indications about the direction of the show.
First thing: they say that Betty is "unofficially" renewed. I know sometimes I sound like a sourpuss about ratings here, but deep down, I’ve always believed the show was coming back (although I HAVE to report the good and the bad). I’m glad the producers say the show is "unofficially" returning. Also, the show will stay in New York, for now.
As for keeping all the various story lines under control (a problem in season 2), Poust says, "We try to arc out different character arcs but we work really hard to figure out how to possibly put Betty into each story." I’ve noticed that this year – they’ve done a much better job of keeping Betty at the center.
Now for a pet peeve of some of the readers here: will Betty remain an assistant forever? Kinnally says, "…at the end of the season… she’s getting a promotion but it’s going to come with strings attached. We love Betty most when she’s an underdog and when she’s vulnerable. That’s when she’s most relatable. When people hate her, we like her more so we have to keep some people disliking her." Does Matt, or his parents, attach the strings, maybe?
About Justin, Poust says, "The interesting thing is that we really haven’t come up against anyone putting any boundaries on him yet. Right now, he’s a 13-year-old kid on the show so we’re trying to take it slowly, not make it an ‘issue show’ and try to keep what’s fun about Justin in that he’s completely embraced for who he is." Kinnally adds, "We do have to be careful because he is only 13 so we don’t want to sexualize him in any way. I hope the series goes long enough where we see Justin with his first boyfriend."
As for those braces that cause so much contention, Poust says, "We don’t know. You know, it’s a hard thing because you don’t want it to be, "Oh, she finally gets to be pretty." Kinnally adds, "That’s the message you don’t want to put out there. You want the message to be that she’s beautiful with braces so we don’t want to do a ‘Betty makeover’ but, having said that, we’ve talked about the episode where that happens. "
Great stuff. I’d say the show is in very good hands, and hopefully we’ll have two or three more seasons to see the show blossom. It’s a great interview – go read the whole thing!
Image: splashnewsonline.com
Although “Ugly Betty” has been the only version of “Yo soy Betty, la fea” that hasn’t followed the story lines of the Colombian original, this whole situation with a bankrupt Meade Publications could possibly be a way in which the writers are doing there UB version of YSBLF’s main story arc. In the original, Eco Moda (the fashion company where Betty worked) was losing money, so Armando, the Daniel character, persuaded Betty to help him by creating a dummy company that would hold the remaining assets of the parent company and would occasionally pour money back into the parent (it’s all confusing money stuff to me, but the writers could make it believable). Armando made Betty the president of this dummy corporation. That would definitely be a strings-attached kind of promotion for our Betty. Plus, since Connor took all of the company’s money, there is already $100,000 in Betty’s name, so there might be a situation in which they have to keep the money in her name for some legal (or quasi-legal) business reasons. Maybe our writers and producers aren’t going that way at all, and perhaps they have no intentions of EVER following any of YSBLF’s plots, but if they are planning to do it, this looks like the open door through which they’re going to start the process.