FILM INTERVIEW: AMERICA FERRERA

Emerging From the Shadow of 'Ugly Betty' the Star Discusses a Drama that Will Turn Heads

By: Izumi Hasegawa

July 31, 2010

Izumi Hasegawa: The last time I saw you, a couple months ago, Ryan Piers Williams hadn’t popped the question. So how did it feel to get to boss him around as executive producer, and how was it having him boss you around as director?

America Ferrera: I wouldn’t really say that we did any bossing around so much as collaborating. We met working together; we worked on a short film he did about the murders of many women in Juarez, Mexico. When we met, he was talking to me about this project and how he was researching the topic, so we had a lot of conversations for a couple of years before he even sat down to write it, and by that time, I felt like I had an understanding of what his vision was, and I could be there to support his vision and help him achieve that vision and be his second pair of eyes. I’m an opinionated person; I have strong opinions. But at the end of the day, he’s our captain. Why the film got made, why the film is even being seen, why we’re getting wonderful people to pay attention — we wouldn’t have the caliber of actors we have in it if the script wasn’t as thought-out and researched and edited and refined as he made it. It wasn’t a lot of work to be his producer because he works harder than anyone I’ve ever known in my entire life.

IH: To prepare for the role of Sarah, the army wife, it’s not what everyone sees on Lifetime’s Army Wives. How did you prepare for the role? Did you meet with wives, or talk to them?

AF: A big part of my preparation was speaking to women whose husbands have returned home. Some of them have been said to have “PTSD” (“Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder”), and others not really diagnosed but had battle symptoms and ranged from aloofness and drinking to waking up with their hands around your neck… And the loss of the person you know and looking into the eyes of your best friend and your partner, your life confidant, and not seeing the person that you know — the isolation, loneliness, the guilt, and the anger — all of the emotions that come with losing the person you expected to live your life with and the frustration of trying to get them back… Because really, no matter how much the family members and the friends do to show that you love them, show that you care, try to understand, try to get them to talk, try not to talk to them, try to avoid things that bug them, we can dance around all these issues. But until that person — the soldier — is willing to say, “I need help,” nothing can be done until that moment. And unfortunately, not a lot of them get to that place. A lot of them refuse to even go there. What has also been remarkable is that we’ve had a lot of veterans of past wars — World War II, Vietnam… One of Ryan Williams’s – my director’s – mentors is a WWII vet, and he sent him the script first and really based a lot of what he knew off the stories of his mentor in WWII. So we do get a lot of Vietnam vets and WWII vets, and children of those vets relating to it and saying, “My brother never asked for help.” One lady said, “I didn’t even know my father fought at Vietnam until he died and we found his stuff in the basement.” They just wouldn’t talk about it because it was such a stigma. Personally, I think mental illness is stigmatized anyway. As a civilian, to say, “I’m a depressed person who needs help,” is a very hard place to get to. But then to be a soldier who is trained to be strong and self-reliant, not show weakness — for them to get beyond that training and then beyond the social stigma of mental illness, and then saying, “I need help,” is the hardest thing for them. What was wonderful is that Ryan submitted the script to the U.S. Army to get their support because it would open enormous resources for the film, and it did. The liaison who reads all their scripts that come in to them at the state department and decides whether or not to support it — once they gave us their support, he was on set, and in my first conversation with him, he said, “A lot of people thought I shouldn’t put my support behind this film, that it wasn’t painting the military experience in a good light. But for me, the thing I struggle with the most, day in and day out, is getting a young soldier to ask for help. If this film could reach even one person and show them they’re not alone and it’s okay to ask for help, then I’ve done my job.” It was really, I think, encouraging to see that there was somebody inside the system who understood that, not to mention we screened the film in Washington, D.C., for the chief of staff of the army, Gen. George Casey, and the first thing he said to us was how honest the film felt to him. To be getting that reaction from the people that live it makes us feel like there is a part of art that can start to remove those stigmas, and just having those conversations, saying we realize and recognize that it is a hard transition to go from being a soldier to being a civilian, just that alone — that recognition could do wonders for a person who comes home and feels completely isolated from civilian life.

IH: From your perspective as a producer, were you finding that the military seems more open to showing the dark side of the story? Because it seemed like there was a time when war films could only be propaganda films.

AF: I feel like now, in the world of independent film-making, whether or not this movie gets welcomed and is seen by a lot of people, is yet to be seen. But I think we’ve come across all of it. We’ve come across people who don’t want to talk about it, people who come into it with all sorts of preconceptions that it’s gonna be this kind of movie or that kind of movie, and that’s the ultimate reward — when an army wife stands up and says, “I didn’t want to come see this movie because I feel like I always know what these movies are, and they always do this, and they always do that. And you guys did none of that. You showed a true story…”  You’re gonna find the hesitation, but what I think is happening, along with Obama’s announcement last week about “PTSD” and how there’s more of an awareness, we didn’t even have a word for it a couple of decades ago. In past wars, it was “shell-shock.” It was “soldier’s heart.” It was all these other words. I mean, “PTSD” is relatively new to us and there’s a lot we don’t know about it, so I think that scares people. At the same time, when the number of suicides of returned soldiers supersedes the number of casualties in the war, how long can you ignore that? I don’t think anybody wants Vietnam to be repeated, and none of us want to see returned soldiers begging for money on the street. I think, as a society, we have to start having those conversations, and I think, just compared to five years ago, I see more of it in the news and more of it in conversation, and wonderful to see it coming from the White House. We’ve got miles and miles and miles to go, but I certainly think we’ve come a long way from previous wars.

IH: Is there a sense that this movie could be made a thousand more times and still be necessary?

AF: Absolutely. And there are a thousand more perspectives to this film, and that’s what we get. That’s what’s so great when we screen it for a military audience — you get, “Why didn’t you have a girl soldier?” or “Why didn’t you talk about this issue?” or “What about this issue? And that issue, and this issue?” That’s awesome! All of those movies deserve to be made and told, and books, and plays, and songs — do it! All of these stories should be told. We feel like this is one branch of an enormous tree. That was the ultimate hope with the film — to inspire those conversations.

IH: Could you speak a little bit about your involvement with the Save The Children foundation? What is an Artist Ambassador?

AF: I’m an Artist Ambassador for education, for Save The Children, and to bring attention to the work that Save The Children does around the world and here at home. I’ve traveled to their sites in the U.S., down in Arizona in the Navajo nation for the work they did there, to a school that we built in a rural village. We built a school and we’re going back in October to open it up. But I was there last December just to visit the site, and we raised the money and we got it built, and now we get to go back in October and open up the school, which is really exciting. It’s just about bringing attention to the importance of education, and mainly the importance of early education.

IH: You’ve each done so well as actors and producers. What drives you to succeed?

AF: I feel like I’ve been so blessed, from the very beginning of my career, to have beautiful, meaningful projects come my way. My career started with Real Women Have Curves, which, at that time, I would have done an Oreo cookie commercial if that’s what they offered me. But this beautiful thing came to me, and I was just doing it because I was getting to act, and once I saw the power that film had to connect people, to start in a room of people of so many different walks of life and, by the end, they’re all crying together, or laughing together… You’ve got a 50-year-old Jewish man saying, “That’s my mother,” or you have an old woman from Lebanon or a man from wherever, all around the world — we took the film everywhere — people can say, “That’s like me. That’s like my family. That’s like my culture,” and the power that had and the catharsis that people get — that’s something I had experienced as an audience member. That’s why I got driven into doing what I do, because I was so affected by the things I watched. But to get to experience being a part of something that opens those avenues to people — once you feel the power of it, when it’s not there, there’s a hole there. You’re like, well, I did this thing and it’s fine, it’s good, it’s sort of funny, but you feel the absence of it when it’s not there, when it’s not inspired. Not that everything has to be some huge cause. To me, I think what’s beautiful about art and why I do what I do is because it connects people, and when it lacks that genuine inspiration… Our art is to make people laugh and connect people from different walks of life through laughter — that, in itself, is beautiful. I feel like that’s what drives me — to make our differences seem smaller and smaller by telling these stories that connect us. I don’t feel like I went in search of that; I feel like it just fell in my lap, and I’d be an idiot not to recognize it and pursue it.

IH: Do you miss Ugly Betty?

AF: I miss my cast terribly, and I miss the character and I miss the story. Yes, it was such a huge part of my life, and it was still only a couple of months ago that I was Betty. It’s raw, but it was such a beautiful time in my life. It’s when you get to be a part of something that means so much to you and means so much to other people, you just never stop being grateful for that.

IH: What are you doing right now? Are you flipping through wedding magazines?

AF: I’m sort of traveling everywhere, trying to get the word out about the film. We came back from Iraq, Scotland, Boise… We’ve gone from, literally in one week, I think we were in Idaho, Washington, Iraq, and Scotland. How do you pack for that trip? [Laughs] So I’m just traveling, doing the film. That’s all. I’m like in tunnel vision right now.