‘The Mick’ blog: Star Carla Jimenez on subverting the maid stereotype
Every week, the cast and crew of Fox’s The Mick — the new comedy series that follows Kaitlin Olson’s reckless Mackenzie, a.k.a. “Mickey,” who’s tasked with caring for her on-the-lam sister’s three children — is taking EW behind the scenes of the latest episode. This week, star Carla Jimenez (Alba) takes us inside the eighth episode, “The Snitch,” where Alba starts to play a little dirty.
Carla Jimenez caught some flak when people heard she would be playing a maid, a profession usually reduced to stereotypes in media, on The Mick.
“But people are maids,” she laughs. “That’s the way it is in life. And it doesn’t make it wrong. My own mom was a nanny and a maid when she came to this country. The thing is, that’s not who my mom is, it’s just what she does. That’s what I like about this: They started this like, that’s what you do, but that’s not what you are.”
And The Mick crew made it very clear from the get-go that Alba wouldn’t be a one-dimensional minor character. “My manager sent me the script, and said this is the breakdown, and it was actually nothing like I thought it would be, because it just said, ‘She’s the maid,’ but the scene I asked to audition with is actually the one that viewers got to see in the second episode where I get drugged,” Jimenez recalls.
“It’s more of her being meek at first and then being kind of tricked by Mickey,” she continues, “but then really just digging it and getting to cut loose. I never really had to think, ‘Oh, am I gonna have to break out of this?’ Because they showed it to me in the audition.”
Alba reaches a new step in her evolution in this episode, where she tries to find out who scratched her car (a.k.a. her wealthy bosses’ car) from the crime’s only witness: Ben (Jack Stanton). But he doesn’t want to be a snitch, so he refuses to give her any details — that is, until she tickles him so aggressively he has an asthma attack.
“It was the most adorable intimidation scene I have ever had to do in my life,” Jimenez, whose character then holds Ben’s inhaler hostage until he spills some intel, says. “ comes from such a sweet place of discovery that it makes his acting look so good and natural. We’re just playing, and he’s loving it.”
And he’s not alone. “This is unlike anything I’ve ever done before,” she adds. “And I’m loving it.”
The Mick airs Tuesdays at 8:30 p.m. ET on Fox.
