Recently Sorcerer Radio's William Hershey (host of the
Weekend Expedition Podcast) and Kyle DeFrancesco (co-host of the
Lost Boys List Podcast) had the pleasure of interviewing actress Constance Marie of the ABC Family original series
Switched at Birth for the
WDW Tiki Room radio show.
Constance Marie is most known for her role as the hard hard-working and devoted wife, Angie, in
George Lopez. For this beloved role, The Imagen Awards honored her with a “Best Actress in a TV series” award and a nomination for “Best Actress in a Comedy Series.” Recently, she has made guest appearances on
CSI,
The Secret Life of an American Teenager and
According to Jim and starred opposite Jodi Lyn O’Keefe and Eric Roberts in The Hallmark Channel movie
Class. Constance is also currently writing a baby blog for People.com, sharing her experiences and thoughts on trying to conceive, pregnancy, her daughter’s first year, and green living. In the debut year of George Lopez, Constance also starred in the Golden Globe®-nominated series
American Family, alongside Edward James Olmos, Sonia Braga, Esai Morales and Raquel Welch. She was simultaneously starring in two television shows.
In
Switched at Birth Constance Marie stars as Regina Vasquez, Daphne's hard-working single mom. Her whole life is flipped on its head when it's discovered that her biological daughter has grown up under an entirely unfamiliar roof, while she's raised a baby not her own. The following is an excerpt of their chat. Enjoy.
Sorcerer Radio: I know that you have been involved with the whole green movement and everything behind that. How has that actually played in to your life in terms of the new baby and everything like that?
Constance Marie: Oh, my gosh, honey, can we talk? I mean, there are many, many things that I realized when I was even trying to get pregnant that impact the body, and impact body chemistry. So, when it came to dealing with my baby, everything from using cloth diapers to soaps with no sodium lauryl sulfate in them, which supposedly causes cancer, and trying to keep cut down on the plastic as much as possible; all organic food. She hasn’t had her vaccines yet. She is now two and a half; she is going to start doing that. I mean, I’ve got like a wheelbarrow of alternative information, if anybody wants to know any.
Sorcerer Radio: Let me ask you for the show itself, is there anything special that you do green in that area?
Constance Marie: Well, it’s a little bit crazy, and I think the transportation department tells secrets about me behind my back; but, I do have my own recycling bin set up inside my trailer. Where all my paper, and I’m very proud of the production because they recycle all their paper that they have. We have bins all over the place for plastic bottles and stuff. A lot of it is plastic; a lot of this stuff is disposable, so I set up my own bin in my room and I have my paper, my plastic, and I separate it and I keep it in there and every once in a while the transportation fairy empties it for me as a hint to get rid of it. Doing that, and one of the things that we started in our makeup and hair room is we all bring our own cup, so that way we don’t use so much paper and plastic cups. We have our own coffee. I donated a coffee machine; so that way everybody can have fresh coffee without having to necessarily go to Starbuck’s. It’s a really good, good machine.
Sorcerer Radio: Well that’s fantastic.
Constance Marie: Oh yeah. We wash them in the sink there; and you know try to cut down on everything.
Sorcerer Radio: What do you think is the single most important thing that you want everybody to get from the show?
Constance Marie: Okay. I would have to say that the most important thing about this show is, the most number one thing, is that it literally teaches America and merges the hearing world with the deaf community. Since the deaf community is fifteen million strong, the fact that it merges those two seamlessly, I think it’s a huge gift to America. I really do; and that’s one of the reasons I’m a part of it is because it’s never before have there been like three major leads on a show. You know, in particular, my character, Regina, bridges the hearing world and the deaf world just seamlessly. Of course, behind the scenes I’m working my butt off learning sign language. I would have to say that’s the single most important thing, but then if you go into like the three other things behind that is that it calls into question the nature versus nurture question, the racial differences, cultural differences, socioeconomic differences in families. How, no matter if you’re a single parent family, a two-parent family, you have money, no money, you’re Puerto Rican or you’re white, every body’s got issues. And how the conflict comes from that. I mean, I think that’s amazing. It is just a melting pot of drama. It’s fabulous.
Sorcerer Radio: How did you prepare for this role of working in the deaf community?
Constance Marie: Oh my gosh; sign language boot camp. I didn’t know anything about it. I watched a tremendous amount of documentaries and I have a wonderful master’s certified sign language teacher, an ALS instructor who came and literally beat me into submission. I say that in a loving way, but really, I had to hunker down and essentially learn a language that I had no clue as to anything about it. It’s so funny because in my Mommy and Me group with my young baby, all the moms, every single mom, taught their child sign language, except for me and of course, I’m the one who ends up having to do a TV series where I have to become fluent in sign language in a matter of weeks. Ironic.
Sorcerer Radio: Regarding sign language, you said you went through sign language boot camp, is there an interpreter on the set with you?
Constance Marie: We have that same master’s certified sign language instructor. We call him the signing police, but we love him. He actually has to monitor all the sign language stuff. I’m taught directly through him, and then we have Katie Leclerc, who is fluent. She plays Daphne. And then we have Sean Berdy, who plays Emmett, and he’s fluent; and then we also have Marlee Matlin, and she’s fluent; but everybody has different ways of signing. So, it’s like if we were doing a show in Texas and we all had to have the same dialect, that’s essentially what Anthony, his name’s Anthony Natale, the sign language instructor, he monitors and makes sure that we’re all speaking the same dialect so there is uniformity to all of it. So we create this fabulous world in Kansas.
Sorcerer Radio: Now that you are a mom how is that relationship similar to the relationship you have each of the young adults who play your children in Switched at Birth?
Constance Marie: Oh my gosh. I think I’m a little more Type A and a little more bossy and a little more controlling and way more mothering. I was always that way and people used to always say to me, “God, Constance, you’ll make a great mother some day,” and I had no idea what they were talking about. But it was that they just wanted me to back off from telling them not to smoke and take a sweater and make sure that they eat properly; but now I have a baby, you know and some of our actors are young, I just do. It’s so funny. I just did a yoga with Sean Berdy the other day. I invited him to my yoga class.
Sorcerer Radio: How does the the role of Regina is different from, or similar to, the role of Marcella and Selena?
Constance Marie: Marcella, well first of all she was a real person, and she was based upon Marcella Quintanilla, Selena’s mom. Marcella was much more docile, and she worked everything kind of behind the scenes, and she was much more laid back overtly, but then kind of controlled things underneath. Marcella had Abraham Quintanilla, the father, to be the bad cop and so she could be good cop. Regina needs to be both; so she has to be a lot more up front, a lot more in your face, and she also is a recovering alcoholic, so she has that sort of disability, I guess it would be. She has to do everything; it’s all on her shoulders. So she’s a lot more in your face and if I were to like, I don’t know, do a celebrity boxing match or celebrity death match, I’d put my money on Regina.
Sorcerer Radio: I would love to see you dance on the show. Is there any chance that you are going to get an opportunity to share with us your awesome dance skills?
Constance Marie: Oh my gosh. You know what, the thing about break dancing is - it is for the young - and my break dancing is broke, okay. I’m 45 years old and we don’t age very well, but a little bit of salsa might not hurt me. I might be able to bring a little, because I was also in that movie Salsa. I might be able to bring a little bit of salsa.
Constance Marie: Do you have a guilty pleasure TV show and would you tell us why you like it?
Constance Marie: Guilty pleasure? Well, True Blood is the first thing that comes to me. Is that a guilty pleasure? You know, it’s so crazy is because if that, and Dexter, if those scripts had been given to me, I would have probably thought, “You know what, this world is a little too dark for me,” you know like all those crime shows and stuff. They’re really hard for me because you pay a price living in that world all the time, but to visit it and watch it and watch Sookie Stackhouse and Bill get it on, you know, in vampire lust is pretty awesome.
Sorcerer Radio: What sort of preparation is the cast given about deaf culture? Like did you guys learn about how name signs are given? And how deaf people use phones in advance, or do you kind of learn those things as they come up in the show?
Constance Marie: You know, it’s interesting because I really was blessed to be able to work with my sign language coach well before, like about three weeks before we started production. His first phone call to me was on the, I guess it is the video phone? So I got exposed to that early on and I also got exposed to the name sign thing early on. I kept trying to pick my name sign and nobody would let me. Darn it. I want Regina’s name sign to be the same sign for beautiful but nobody would buy it. So I lost and I learned that a deaf person had to give you an actual name sign so mine is a dancing C, because I was a dancer back in the day. What else did I learn? I also learned that deaf people, at least this is what Anthony and what I’ve seen, are very straightforward; like they don’t mince words, and I love that, and it’s also very, very consistent with my Regina character.
Sorcerer Radio: Fun, well as you learn ASL, do you have a favorite sign?
Constance Marie: I think my favorite sign is “beautiful” because it’s just done with such flair across your face, like a dance move. It’s like when I watch Marlee Matlin sign, they’re all my favorite because she is just a sexy signer; the sexiest signer I’ve ever seen is Marlee Matlin. She does this full body sign. It’s beautiful to watch; and I’m like, “What did you say,” and she says, “I had to go to the bathroom!” It’s not even anything like really exotic that she’s saying, it just looks gorgeous.
Sorcerer Radio: We actually have a couple of questions sent in from your fans today. The first one is, what has it been like working with Marlee Matlin? I know you mentioned her earlier, and did you know her prior to Switched at Birth?
Constance Marie: I had no idea. I had never met her before. I mean, I was a big fan from what I did know and, in doing part of my research I watched Children of Lesser God, and I just thought, oh my god, she’s absolutely amazing and she is going to play my BFF! Oh my gosh, I’m not worthy.
That was the first thought that went through my head, and then when I met her, she could not have been more warm and sweeter and smarter and funnier and we both this rat nasty same sense of humor. She was just incredibly, incredibly supportive of me and I just never felt judged by her; you know, like I was less than as far as my signing is concerned. She was just awesome. She is just like the best pretend BFF to have and we’re also twitter junkies. We talk via twitter all the time.
Sorcerer Radio: What do you hope people learn from the show?
Constance Marie: What do I hope they learn? Well, I hope they learn, number one, that deaf people are just like everybody else except they speak fabulously with their hands. I hope not that they learn, but I hope they question as to what a family really is and how it doesn’t necessarily have to be like the perfect mom and dad and 2.5 children, how families are completely different, but yet, the love underneath that is the most important thing however you skin that family cat.
Tune in to the ABC Family Original Series
Switched at Birth Mondays at 9/8c on ABC Family!
Please check out the official
Switched at Birth site for webisodes, cast bios, galleries and behind-the-scenes footage!
http://abcfamily.go.com/shows/switched-at-birth
Learn the American Sign Language alphabet from the cast of
Switched at Birth HERE:
http://abcfamily.go.com/shows/switched-at-birth/photos-details/learn-american-sign-language-cast-switched-birth/811784/807870
About Switched At Birth:
Switched at Birth tells the story of two teen girls who discover that they were accidentally switched at birth. Bay Kennish grew up in a wealthy family with two parents and a brother, while Daphne Vasquez, who lost her hearing as a child due to a case of meningitis, grew up with a single mother in a poor neighborhood. Things come to a dramatic head when both families meet and struggle to learn how to live together for the sake of the girls.
About WDW Tiki Room:
WDW Tiki Room, the show about all things Disney, is hosted by the husband and wife team of Aljon Go and Kristen Hoetzel. Every week they discuss Disney in pop-culture, theme parks, Disney news, celebrity interviews, Disney fan events and play the best mix of Disney artists and Disney attraction audio. The show airs every Fridays at 8 a.m./7 p.m. eastern on Sorcerer Radio -
www.SRSounds.com. For more information on Kristen and Aljon as well as on-demand playback of archived shows please visit this
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