The Tony Plana interview...

Tony Plana knows that having the opportunity to play the patriarch of a Latino family on a hit prime-time show is nothing short of a miracle.
But that’s what he gets to do each week on ABC’s “Ugly Betty” when he steps into the role of Ignacio Suarez.
“It feels like an epiphany for me after so many years of struggling and watching Latinos as a group try to penetrate the industry and become an intregal part of it, an included part of it,” Tony told me last week at the Television Academy’s “Hispanics and Television: In Transition” event.
Tony has nearly 140 television and movie credits in a career that has included roles in such films as last year’s “Goal!” as well as “Primal Fear,” “Lone Star” and “Salavador.” But I remember him so fondly from the late, great Showtimes series “Resurrection Blvd” where he also played a widowed family patriarch who was a former boxer and far different from Ignacio. While “Resurrection” only lasted two seasons, “Betty” seems destined for a long run given its popularity with viewers and its critical acclaim.
"The fact that we're starting to see an evolution of Latino characters in television that are almost automatically included now as part of the central world in most series. That's huge," said Tony, who remembers a far different situation not so long ago.
"It was bad. The only time you hired a Latino is when they did the gang show, the drug show or the illegal immigrant show. I believe that ‘Ugly Betty’ has gone a long way towards eradicating these very deeply established stereotypes toward Latinos...It has tackled issues in a very intelligent way and still entertained us. That’s what I think is remarkable about this program.”
At the end of last season, Ignacio was deported to Mexico after it was learned that he had illegally immigrated to the U.S. several decades earlier. He hopes the storyline helped to out a human face on the immigration debate that continues to rage in the U.S.

“If anything, I’m hoping that it illicited some kind of compassion and understanding of the complexity of the human element of this problem and the familial element,” he said. “The season finale seperated this family and kind of puts a knife through the heart of this family. ...The people who were watching, I don’t think will ever be able to be dispassionate or cold or cynical about separating families and what that represents."
It's story acrs like that like which provide what Plana calls "disguised learning" to viewers.
"I believe that's the function of art. Art should make us feel and think about those complexities in our society that are difficult to figure out."
The show has also not shied away from including a transgendered character (Rebecca Romijn's Alex) or a gay character (Michael Urie's Marc) or a possibly gay character in Ignacio's grandson, Justin (Mark Indelicante) who is a fashion and Broadway loving junior high schooler whose personality is embraced by the Suarez family.
"That's huge," Tony says. "Especially for a culture that is predominately macho in its ethos and for a male latino father. That was basically the learning lessons for Ignacio in that first season to go from a being afraid for the kid and wanting to change him to a place of acceptance and support and nurturing, encouragement."
So, is Justin gay?
"He's not sexualized yet, he's a boy. So we can't really be talking about a gay character. What's more important is that he's an artist and he;s extremely sensitive to design, to color, to music to art. So if you have a boy born into your family that is different that way, that is not an athlete or he's got these special gifts, you need to not supress those gifts but support them, encourage them, nurture them, celebrate them. That's the real lesson, I think, of Justin's character. His sexuality will be an issue hopefully in the fourth or fifth season, down the line. And either way, it will be interesting. We could explore the stereotype of the gay. Are they always effeminate? No. There are effeminate gays and there are effeminate straights. It does not define them."