YBFREE.comIn Pursuit of Human Interests
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Fun With Dick And Jane - the remake is just exuding with extremely talented actors. The film stars Jim Carrey, [previously played by George Segal] Tea Leoni [previously played by Jane Fonda], and a very gifted newcomer, to the silver screen, 
Gloria Garayua. The Bronx native is a Latina who is not afraid of going after what she wants with a vehement dedication, and furthermore, she has learned firsthand that you have struggle for your art. Although she has persevered, and her impressive resume boasts several celebrated TV show such as NYPD Blue, Six Feet Under, The Shield and Strong Medicine, not to mention she has also flawlessly mastered complex theater roles.
Best of all - this focused and educated actress is just getting started. She dubs herself an academic and that is just one of the reasons why she is so far removed from being a pampered starlet. Gloria concerns herself with how she feels Latinos should be represented on camera, giving back to her community and is very much in touch with her familial and spiritual sides. Indeed this is one star whose light shines from the inside out.
YBFREE.com spoke with Gloria only a day after she had attended the premiere of Fun With Dick And Jane, and the artist was still beaming with enthusiasm. However, she took the time to candidly express her past trails, kindly offered her advice to fellow aspiring thespians and of course talked about her experience as Blanca on the set of Fun With Dick And Jane.
YBFREE.com: Tell us about your first film role?
Gloria: My movie is Fun With Dick And Jane, and I just saw it last night. Oh my goodness I was so excited, and what I really wanted to point out to people is that it's not just s a slapstick comedy. Jim Carrey is in it, so there is a little bit of that in there, but I was excited to see that the director [Dean Parisot] actually focused on making it a very touching, emotional story. He just did a great job, and there were a lot of scenes that I wasn't there for when he shot and I was really surprised at the final footage.
Both he [Carrey] and Tea had one or two crying scenes, and it was really just intense. I could see why they edited it why they did, they actually made it about an American family who struggled to make their way to the top worked their butts off, and when they finally got there just had everything stripped away from them. The whole journey of the movie is how they get revenge, and along the way, you stumble upon some hysterical stuff, but it is really just about someone who is trying to get back what was taken away.
And my character [Blanca] was originally written as someone who was hysterically funny. I mean she was the stable rock between Jim and Tea, because Jim who plays Dick and Tea who plays Jane are parents to a little boy named Billy and I play their caretaker of the little boy.
Eventually, Jim gets Tea to quit her job, because he got a promotion, and then they find out that his company tanked, so they lose everything. Their car, they area about to take away the house until Jim gets this bright idea that if people are going to take away from him, then he is going to take away from others. So he starts this whole escape of robberies, and then Tea joins him and they get so caught up in the game that they lose sight of their priorities… one of them being their son. I become the rock that holds the family together.
The way it was originally written…my character was the one who resolved my conflict at the end, and when I saw the movie last night, they stripped away the comedic stuff of my character, and it actually worked. Like I had a whole improv scene with Jim Carrey, it was this fifteen-minute thing that established my character as someone who was really loyal and wouldn't leave despite the fact that they couldn't pay them any longer. They kept the scene when they pay me in appliances. They just stripped away the comedy, and made her grounded, down-to-earth, loyal and it works!
You realize that it's really about servicing the show, it's never about you or the character as an actor, it's about adding to the story and it worked. I thought it was beautiful.
YBFREE.com: What attracted you to the script to begin with? Was it the fact that the character was a grounding force for the family or was it being able to work beside the comedic energies of someone so well known for that as Jim Carrey?
Gloria: Well, that was attractive, too! But I was very cautious when I first got the breakdown. I thought, "Wow, another Latina nanny? Oh…" You know, I wanted to do it only if it depicted her in a certain way. In fact, when I read a little bit more about the script and then I landed the role and I read the whole entire script, I was very happy to see that she was more a part of the family and they really respected her and they looked to her for opinions, and she is like a surrogate mom to this little boy. So the fact that they put her on a pedal stool… that was really important to me, and I asked the director, "How intensive was her role within the family?" He said, "She is there every single day, she takes care of the little boy from morning till night, she is not a live-in, and the housekeeping that she does is very, very light. They don't abuse her; it's not like a maid." That was so important to me…
I walked the red carpet to some premiere, and some reporter asked me, "Do you want to represent Latinas in a positive light?" I said, "Of course! That is so important to me." She said, "Oh, because you don't have an accent or anything?"
I thought havening an accent doesn't make you weaker, and I didn't say that to her, but I can't believe people really see it that way. Having an accent is just a regionalism and having an accent just makes you smarter, because she speaks two languages. So that is the main thing that attracted me, how they saw her, and how she was utilized in the family. She was really a tool, and the more Jim and Tea strayed from being family-oriented…the stronger she became, and the more she took the challenge to raise the kid.
And actually, working with Jim was a challenge, because he is actually not a ham. He is very easy to talk to, and the first that I met him was at the camera test and he approached me and he said, "Oh, you are Blanca. I saw your tape, it was hysterical." So my walls just dropped and I thought, "Oh my God, it's going to be great working with him." It sure enough was, I was able to give my opinion on certain scenes and he took them. Even though he didn't follow them, he listened and he told me what was a good point and where he thought was where we didn't want to go, he valued my opinion. And so did Tea, and that is so important, because I felt that I was a part of a team.
Working with these people who have huge names can be intimidating, but I tried to mentally prepare myself, and say they are actors just like I am and there is no reason why I can't step up to the bat. And it all turned out really, really great.