![]() Her third go-round in L.A., Newton auditioned for Ugly Betty and got the role of Amanda.Īt this point in our conversation, a middle-aged woman at the table next to us leans over. Somehow that prepped me for what I do now, because I’m not afraid to look stupid.” Newton eventually found work in commercials, which paid well and allowed her to make occasional trips to Los Angeles for pilot season (the period when potential new TV shows are cast). “Looking back, it’s horribly embarrassing, but I thought I was amazing. “I auditioned for every play, even if they were looking for a 50-year-old African-American person, which confused a lot of casting directors,” Newton says drily. Ugly Betty was Newton’s first serious gig after graduating from the University of Pennsylvania with a history degree, she decided to pursue acting in New York, with the usual lack of success. I knew exactly how I wanted to portray her.” “But based on what? All my exquisite comedic work in a Nike commercial? Yet something about the character made perfect sense in my head, even though she’s so demented. “I said to my husband, ‘I’m going to get it!,’ ” she says. She’s wearing a knit hobo cap and a loose-fitting sweater-a strikingly different ensemble from that of her gladiator-heeled character. “When I read the Ugly Betty pilot, I thought, Oh, this part’s funny,” says Newton, 30, who’s sitting across from me in the Upper West Side’s Cafe Lalo. But that Amanda is also vulnerable, rather than just another mean girl, is entirely thanks to Newton. Newton’s distinctly low-pitched voice and perfectly arched eyebrow accompany her devastating zingers, provoking a wealth of heh-heh rather than ha-ha moments, courtesy of the show’s writers. The standout among that crew-Michael Urie as Marc, Vanessa Williams as Wilhelmina, Judith Light as Claire Meade-is Becki Newton, who plays Amanda, Mode’s sexy receptionist and resident underminer. How long do people actually wear braces, anyway? But if Betty herself is losing steam, this has only provided more scene-stealing opportunities for her entertaining supporting cast. The conceit of Betty-that she’s a hardworking, wrong-side-of-the-tracks magazine assistant at Mode, a fictional Vogue populated with high-fashionista backstabbing-is getting stale. Not the show Ugly Betty, which still draws obsessive fans on Thursday nights, but the eponymous lead character, the plucky ugly duckling played by America Ferrera in a bad wig and braces. Now in its third season, Ugly Betty is beside the point.
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