Tag Archive: Dania Ramirez

Seychelle Gabriel on a New “Falling Skies” and “Devious Maids” Finally Premiere’s, Sunday

Last year, Saychelle Gabriel was definitely in the background of the alien-apocalypse series Falling Skies. This year she’s center stage, with a larger role (and more lines in the first episode than in the whole previous year). See her shine in the newest episode of Season 3, 10P on TNT. Also at 10P, Marc Cherry’s Devious Maids premiere’s tonight on the Lifetime channel. And no matter what your feelings on the concept of the show, it stars some very talented actors, like Judy Reyes, Ana Ortiz, Dania Ramirez, Roselyn Sanchez, Edy Ganem, Paula Garcés, Matt Cedeño, and others to come. It all takes place at 10P tonight.

“Entourage” to “Arthur Christmas:” Wide range of DVD choices this Tuesday

Whether you like drama, horror, or animation, you’ll find Latinos in the mix on DVDs releasing this week. Among the opportunities:

Javier Bardem 3-Film Collection: the compilation includes No Country for Old Men, Biutiful, and Mondays in the Sun, all in one package.

Entourage, The Complete Series stars Adrian Grenier, and includes arcs by Jamie-Lynn Sigler (13 episodes), Dania Ramirez (9 episodes), Genesis Rodriguez (3 episodes), JR Garcia (3 episodes), Edy Ganem (3 episodes), Mercedes Ruehl (2 episodes), and many others.

Eva Longoria as Chief De Silva

Arthur Christmas, the under-seen holiday animation from last year, returns with Eva Longoria as the voice of Chief De Silva and young actress Ramona Marquez as the voice of Gwen.

…Or you can revisit the performance of honorary Latino Lou Diamond Phillips in the unexpected release of Wolf Lake: The Complete Season. Has it really been more than a decade?

And the ALMA Awards go to…

It was a heck of a party at the Pasadena Convention Center last Sunday: beautiful gowns, beautiful tuxes, and plenty of happy surprises as the 2012 NCLR ALMA Awards® were announced. (You can see an edited version of the show on Friday, September 21 at 8P on NBC).

Eva Longoria and George Lopez co-hosted; presenters included Robert Rodriguez, Zoë Saldaña, Michael Peña, Jake Gyllenhaal, Nicole Richie, Ryan Lochte, America Ferrera, Wilmer Valderrama, Andy Garcia, Natalie Morales, Ana Ortiz, Dania Ramirez, Edy Ganem, Judy Reyes, Rafael Amaya, Rodrigo Santoro and Taboo. Martina McBride performed with Luis Fonsi and rap Superstar Flo Rida performed with Roselyn Sanchez. Special Achievement Awards were given to Christina Aguilera, veteran character actor (and our friend) Henry Darrow, the legendary Cheech Marin, and director Patricia Riggen. The NCLR offered a touching tribute to Lupe Ontiveros to commemorate her passing.

And the winners were:

Favorite Movie
Girl in Progress

Favorite Movie Actor
Diego Boneta, Rock of Ages

Favorite Movie Actress—Drama/Adventure
Zoë Saldaña, Colombiana

Favorite Movie Actress—Comedy/Musical
Aubrey Plaza, Safety Not Guaranteed

Favorite Movie Actor—Supporting Role
Édgar Ramírez, Wrath of the Titans

Favorite Movie Actress—Supporting Role
Cierra Ramirez, Girl in Progress

Favorite TV Reality, Variety, or Comedy Personality or Act
Christina Aguilera, The Voice (NBC)

Favorite TV Actor
Tyler Posey, Teen Wolf (MTV)

Favorite TV Actress—Drama
Lana Parrilla, Once Upon a Time (ABC)

Favorite TV Actress—Comedy
Naya Rivera, Glee (FOX)

Favorite TV Actor—Supporting Role in a Drama
Jon Huertas, Castle (ABC)

Favorite TV Actor—Supporting Role in a Comedy
Rico Rodriguez, Modern Family (ABC)

Favorite TV Actress—Supporting Role
Constance Marie, Switched at Birth (ABC Family)

Favorite Male Music Artist
Pitbull

Favorite Female Music Artist
Naya Rivera

Photos: ©2012 Angela María Ortíz S.

Dania Ramirez, Joseph Gordon Levitt, and “Premium Rush” get the “Morning After” Treatment

The Morning After is the increasingly sharp-tongued daily slap at all things TVish and movielike–one of the first original productions from Hulu.com. One of their continuing bits is to take clips or previews from upcoming movies and dub in new (and, as they happily admit, terribly unrealistic) voices for the actors, usually making comments on the movie itself or the careers of the players.

Friday, Joseph Gordon Leavitt’s new street-thriller Premium Rush got the treatment, and his co-star, breakout Latina star Dania Ramirez was right there with him. Catch the satire–and get a quick review of Dania’s career in the process–right here.

Dania Ramirez: Hero, Girlfriend, Party Girl…Producer? (podcast included!)

You’ve seen Dania Ramirez as a cast member in everything from Entourage to X-Men to Heroes to The Sopranos. Now she’s the newest member of the American Pie franchise in their newest edition, Reunion. But that doesn’t begin to tell her story…

For someone who’s been visible in Hollywood for less than ten years, Dania Ramirez has made a heck of an impression, and appeared as part of more iconic franchises and cult hits than you can easily count. She first showed up in the legendary Buffy the Vampire Slayer as one of the ‘Buffies’ in 2003. She was Callisto in X-Men: The Last Stand, and went toe-to-toe with Storm (Hallie Berry) more than once. She was a girlfriend on The Sopranos, a deadly Latina mutation on Heroes, and part of Entourage. Next, she’s part of the ensemble in Devious Maids, Marc Cherry’s new show that was supposed to be on ABC and landed on Lifetime (we’ll see it sometime next year).

In the meantime, Dania has joined another powerful franchise, the newly re-energized American Pie movie series that’s made a bit of a splash this summer with Reunion, now available on DVD.

CLICK ON THE BUTTON BELOW TO LISTEN TO OUR EXCLUSIVE PODCAST

Read the rest of this entry »

“Devious Maids” Lands at Lifetime

L-r: Roselyn Sanchez, Dania Ramirez, Judy Reyes

Mark Cherry’s dubiously named nighttime soap, starring four talented Latinas, finds a home on cable… 

As ABC’s Desperate Housewives was rolling out its last original episodes before retirement, Marc Cherry pitched a new pilot, cleverly titled Devious Maids, hoping–most likely–that the familiar adjective/plural noun construction would make everyone think the shows were somehow related. They weren’t; in fact Cherry based the new show on the popular telenovela from Mexico, Ellas son la Alegria del Hogar, which doesn’t translate as “devious maids” at all (actually, it’s something closer to They are the Joy of the Home.)

Lifetime is picking up the series for a 13-episode run, premiering sometime in 2013.

ABC approved the making of the pilot, and Cherry recruited a remarkably strong cast, including a host of beautiful and accomplished Latinas for the leads: Ana Ortiz, star, along with Susan Lucci, Edy Ganem, Grant Show, Brianna Brown, Rebecca Wisocky, Tom Irwin, Mariana Klaveno, Brett Cullen and Drew Van Acker. There was a certain amount of grumbling about the title and the implicit concept even at the beginning–simply put: “Just what we need: a show about dishonest Latinos.” The discomfort was shrugged off for a while, then later defended by Eva Longoria, who joined the project after the pilot’s completion as one of its many executive producers. (Michael Garcia, a relative newcomer to the producing game, is also on e.p. on the show.)

At first, buzz about the show was good. Cherry even started staffing up for the anticipated greenlight from the network. Then–ironically enough–on the day that the last episode of Housewives aired, Cherry got the word: ABC was passing on the show. There was, of course, much talking about taking the show elsewhere. ABC had done this kind of thing before, most recently ‘allowing’ Cougar Town (featuring Ian Gomez in the ensemble) to move to TNT. Read the rest of this entry »

The New Season on ABC: Many of the shows with Latinos in the mix survive to tell more tales, but relatively few of the new shows join in

Rebecca Delgado Smith

A while back, we saw that six of the twenty-four pilots that ABC was looking over had Latinos in the lead or in the cast. There was a Delta Burke sitcom with Luis Guzmán, and Many More. A project with Eva La Rue, a really interesting con-artist show starring John Leguizamo, with Dustin Ybarra in a supporting role, and–of course–the infamous Devious Maids, Marc Cherry’s follow-up to Desperate Housewives, starring Judy Reyes, Ana Ortiz, Dania Ramirez, Angelique Cabral, and Roselyn Sanchez (see here). Eva Longoria even signed on as an executive producer, and they were starting to hire staff. That one looked like a lock.

Except…on the same day that the series finale of Housewives aired, ABC quietly announced they were giving Maids a pass. As usual, no explanation why; it just wasn’t going to happen.

Now ABC has announced its full schedule for the fall. The good news: 8 of the 13 scripted series that have been renewed have Latinos in the cast: Castle, Grey’s Anatomy, Last Man Standing, Modern Family, Once Upon a Time, Private Practice, Revenge, and Scandal. Not so good: the much-bally-hoo’d GCB, with Marisol Nichols, didn’t make the cut. And the less said about last seasons starters like The River and Work It!, the better. Read the rest of this entry »

Eva Longoria talks about the “Devious Maids” backlash

It’s no secret that many in the Latino community are uncomfortable with the concept of Marc Cherry’s (Desperate Housewives) new pilot for ABC: Devious Maids. Though it stars four powerhouse Latinas–Ana Ortiz, Dania Ramirez, Judy Reyes, Roselyn Sanchez—all of them will be portraying household domestics–a role that, not so long ago, was the only kind of role that Latinas could get on television.

Just a couple of weeks ago, Eva Longoria joined the project as an executive producer. And even more recently, the folks at the Huffington Post’s Latino Voices had a chance to ask her about the controversy. As usual, Eva was direct and articulate, offering an answer that does make us stop and think–and wishes we could ask a couple more.

Take a look at her response:

…and thanks to Huffington Post’s Latino Voices for asking the tough question. You can see more here.

Photo: ©2012 Anselmo S. Ortiz

Dania Ramirez: Making It Happen

Ten years ago, Dania Ramirez, a beautiful young Dominican starlet, was part of ABC’s “Talent Showcase.” The folks that saw promise in her when she was just starting out must be feeling very proud these days: Dania is one of the few “new” faces in American Reunion, the long-awaited sequel to American Pie (opening today, April 6), and she’s one of the increasingly awesome cast of Latina actresses who are making Marc Cherry’s pilot for ABC, Devious Maids (Se Fija!) . Things are really coming together. Read the rest of this entry »

“Devious Maids” gets a cast

The dubiously named ABC pilot has some well-known players in the mix

What to think? When Marc Cherry, creator of the phenomenally successful nighttime soap Desperate Housewives, announced that Devious Maids was the name of his new pilot for ABC, it almost sounded like a joke. Here was a man who had produced and promoted some of the most attractive Latino characters in nighttime television for almost a decade–Eva Longoria’s Gabrielle Solis and Ricardo Chavira rakish Carlos Solis, as well as a number of other supporting characters over the years. And now he was proposing a program that seemed to fall back on one of the most grating Latino stereotypes around–the Latino maid–and making the characters “devious” in the bargain.

Maybe it was nothing more than a play on words; the women in his first wildly successful program were neither typical housewives nor particularly desperate (most of the time), but it was a catchy, melodramatic title that caught people’s attention–and held it. And, he claimed, it was a loose but true-to-the-spirit translation of Ellas son…la alegría del hogar, the name of the Spanish-language telenovela he said was the basis for this new show. (Though, in fact, the more accurate translation would be something like Heaven is the Home, while the colloquial version might be more about “Disorderly Maids” than “Devious.” And the log-line description of the show didn’t seem quite so bad. Devious Maids, we were told, would follow “four maids with ambition and dreams of their own while they work for the rich and famous in Beverly Hills.” Read the rest of this entry »

» Newer posts