Episode Report Card Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT Jalapeno speaks
By Gustave | Season 1 | Episode 14 | Aired on 03.07.2002
In the first episode, you had these pigtails and a leather jacket and you were chewing gum and being all sassy…
I was chewing gum?
Okay, maybe I imagined that. But you were kind of "street." You were this "Latina spitfire." Then all of a sudden you were this conservative office person.
Jamey wasn't a spitfire in the first episode. I think the only thing that gave that impression was that Jamey had just come from a nightclub.
Oh!
And they never really say that or make that clear. The only reference is when Nina says, "Are we interrupting your social life?" and I say, "At least I have a social life." So that's why I looked that way in the pilot. And they couldn't have me looking that way for the whole show because it wasn't that professional.
When I found out that the pilot had been picked up and stuff, I said to myself, I want to do something different with this because it's unlike anything I've ever done. I didn't want her to be a stereotypical Latin character and I was finally given the opportunity to do something different. I had been dying to do something different. I cannot stress that enough. So I purposefully underplayed her because in previous work I'd done, I'd been sort of…intense. I didn't want to be intense with her. I want her to be normal. And actually that was a challenge for me. I didn't find out how challenging something like that could be until I did this Touched By An Angel episode where things don't get rough for my character until the end. For most of the show she's this normal lady and she's happy and everything, and that was a challenge for me. So that's why I said that Jamey wasn't a spitfire. [laughs] I've played that before so I was making a conscious effort to do something different.
How did you hear about the part and how did you get it?
It was a last-minute thing. I found out at eleven that morning that I had an audition at two and I had another audition to go to, so there was no time to do anything but go and pick up the material and just show up. My audition was only a couple of lines.
What were the lines?
They were later re-written out of the script. I don't even remember. [laughs] I saw the character description and I just kind of laughed. I was like [sarcastically], "Yeah, right, I'll get this."
What was the character description?