What if Sofía Vergara was also overrated?
The highest paid actress on television only knows how to play herself on "Modern Family."
She has a powerful physique, sports dizzying necklines and poses beautifully on the red carpets to the delight of the photographers. In addition, in short distances she seems like a nice woman who promises some evenings and awakenings in which laughter will abound, sprinkled with some outbreak of genius because she is seen as a woman of character.
We are not talking about a model, which could be one, since she is a reference for Latin women, but about Sofía Vergara, an actress and star of "Modern Family" by profession and whose acting qualities must be quarantined.
Objective data: for the fifth consecutive year, in September of last year, "Forbes" magazine established her as the highest paid actress on television with annual earnings of more than 38 million euros. The increase over the previous year was 66 percent, thanks mainly to her advertising contracts. The interpreter is a brand in herself and advertisers know this well, who want her to be their image. And she reciprocates them. Thus, the same can be seen in advertisements for furniture, shampoos, coffee shops, bars and hospital gowns. Of course, her salary in "Modern Family" is not negligible: 250,000 euros per episode. If the seventh season of fiction had 22 episodes, the total amount is 5.5 million.
Another issue is that these figures translate into the appreciation of specialized critics. At the Emmy Awards and the Golden Globes, she has become the eternal nominee. Between 2010 and 2014 she has always been a candidate and has finished the galas empty and with a smile of circumstances. The actors union does laugh at her thanks with five awards. Also the audience, since last Wednesday she won the award for best actress in a comedy at the People's Choice Awards, voted by the public, for her performance in "Modern Family." And period.
Sofía Vergara's problem is none other than Sofía Vergara, or in other words, she only knows how to interpret herself. Gloria's character in the comedy has barely evolved since the first season, in 2009. Okay, she has adapted to living with the children and partners of her 60-year-old husband, Jay Pritchett, but she is still the histrionic, screaming Colombian, a point hysterical and somewhat childish from the beginning. Her range of expressions is limited: only three, joy, emotion - quite primary - and anger. The presumed maturity that supposes that she would already have to have the character of hers has long passed. There is not a slightest change in registration.
What are we fooling ourselves? Gloria is not a demanding role from an interpretive point of view. Not that we intended for her to follow the Stanislavski method, but we did expect her to take any risks. We would settle for a tear-jerker TV movie drama, but not even that. Her case is very reminiscent of Eva Longoria, another Latina who was also the highest paid actress on television for "Desperate Housewives" and who has not eaten a tail in a long time.
At the People Choice Awards she stated that "I never thought, in a million years, that with this ridiculous accent she was going to be able to be part of something so successful." Well that ...
