Author: Emma Loggins
Date: 2009-04-14

Interview:
We had the pleasure of talking with Cristian de la Fuente from USA Network's hit series In Plain Sight. Check out our interview below!

I was wondering, what about your role continues to challenge you?

C. de la Fuente: The first thing that challenged me was playing baseball. I was born and raised in Santiago, Chile where the biggest sport is soccer. We don't play baseball here. I think baseball stops in Venezuela, that's the farthest you go by playing baseball. And also working with a great cast is always challenging, because you have to really give your 180%, but mainly the baseball part. The rest at the beginning was scary, "Oh my gosh, I'm going to work with Lesley Ann Warren and Mary McCormack," but then when I got to meet them then that was the best part of the job, not the hardest one.

Why do you think people continue to watch the show?

C. de la Fuente: First, I don't think there's a lot of female driven shows and in this case In Plain Sight follows the life and work of Mary McCormack's character, Mary.

And on the other hand, I think what's very unique about this show, we have a lot of cop shows, law shows, Law and Order, or all the CSI's, but they all tell one crime or they all investigate one crime or one suspect or they have one story. In this case, Mary has to protect the witness every week, but she also has a personal life. She has to deal with her mother, with her sister. She has to deal with her boyfriend. So there's a lot of the personal life of Mary that we see and I think that's unique. That really makes a difference in the show.

So how did you come to get this part? Did you audition for it and why did you decide that you were going to take it?

C. de la Fuente: I auditioned for it and my agent sent me the script and I read it and I loved it, but Raphael was first written as Devin and was supposed to be an American. And I called my agent and I said, "You know, I love this role. Can you call them and see if they could see me, because you know I think I can play this role." Besides nowadays if you look at all the baseball players, probably 70% of them have Latino names, so then it's not a big stretch to go from Raphael Ramirez to Latino. But I said, like maybe let's try to give it a shot, and then I got this job and then they changed it from Devin to Raphael, because it had to be more believable than me named Devin, I don't think it would have worked.

What do you like most about your character?

C. de la Fuente: Raphael, I think goes against all the stereotypes. It's like he's not the typical Latin lover. He's not the typical Latino. As a joke always I think we've made history in television and film, because on the last episode of the first season, on the season finale, I think it's the first time that you see a Latino character with a lot of kilograms of drugs and instead of starting dealing them, he threw them away. I think that's the first time that's happened in TV, that Latinos are not portrayed as drug dealers but people that you know they have good hearts and they want the best for their family and their loved ones. And I think that's the beauty about Raphael, he's really in love with Mary and he's a nice guy and I think he's going to do always the right thing and it's great to play those kinds of roles nowadays.