TakeFive Gal Spends Some Time With Joanna Garcia
Photo: Michael Yarish/CBS ©2007 CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved.
I recently had the wonderful opportunity to chat for a while with Joanna Garcia, from CBS’ Welcome to the Captain. She was great!
TakeFiveGal: I’m so glad to get to talk to you! I got to see the first two episodes of the show and I think you are absolutely charming!
Joanna Garcia: Thank you so much. I’m really proud of it. It’s one of those shows. Ratings, I don’t know about any of that stuff, but I know that I really enjoy doing it and I’m really proud of it. I’m excited to promote it!
What about Hope made you want to play this character?
The lovely people at CBS were kind enough to think of me as hope which I was really thrilled about because it was so different from Cheyenne. I loved playing Cheyenne for six years on Reba. It was such a wonderful experience. Venturing out of a really steady job for six years, and into the world of the unknown, the only thing I did know is that I wanted to do something a little bit different and check it out. And along came this script. I’ve always been a massive fan of John Hamburg. He’s a massively talented writer. I just fell in love. She was so cool. I envy her, I would want to be friends with her, so that’s how it happened and then the love affair continued with her. And John and the writing staff built such a wonderful character for me. It just got better and better.
You mentioned of course Cheyenne. I literally watch Reba every single day. It’s always on.
Thank you so much! It’s funny how you’re kind of in that bubble and you don’t realize what you’re doing. We all had such a good time and we all love each other so much and are still so close. So I don’t think we really realized, especially being on the WB, not going to every television set in the world. It just changed our lives in the way that it brought quality to our lives and like family. Now having the show be done, and talking to people, I realize how much it impacted people. I’m really proud of it. I’m glad that we could entertain for so long. It really makes me proud. And more and more, I think, as years go on, I think I’ll be more and more proud to have been a part of the show.
That’s one of the shows that was always consistent and was always so much fun.
It was, it was a lot of fun. We had a lot of fun doing it, and I think it showed.
So getting back to the new show, is the set of Welcome to the Captain a lot of fun? I can just imagine with Jeffrey Tambor being there…
He is wild! I have the biggest crush on him. He’s so funny and charming, I just cannot tell you. He’s so talented. I could watch him read a menu and laugh and think it was funny. And we have Raquel Welch who is just an icon, one of those people that I’m in awe of. We got to have an episode together. It was kind of a girls’ episode, the girls hang with the girls, and I got to have scenes with the other two girls in the show. It was so fun. And Raquel is just so hilarious. She’s so hilarious. Everyone’s really good. Obviously, our set was struck with striking writers and John Hamburg wasn’t there as much as we had hoped him to be, because of the strike and stuff like that. It was such a strange time for us to launch a new show. We really made the best of it.
How many episodes did you guys get to finish?
We have 5 in the can, and we got picked up for 7. So we have 2 more if they’ll have us, and we really hope that we’re able to do it.
I was going to say, in the episodes I saw, you don’t get to spend much time with anyone but Fran [Kranz]’s character, but it sounds like you’re able to branch out and get everyone involved.
Yeah it’s nice. All the characters are so great. Raquel and Astrid, Valerie Azlynn’s character, who is, by the way, hilarious. If you ever get a chance to interview her, she’s amazing and such a brilliant comedy talent. They’re not in every episode, so I really was the only chick. I was like, bring on the girls, I want some female energy over here. My hair and makeup girls, it was like just us. We’re like, alright. We’re surrounded by a bunch of boys.
What would you say to viewers about why they should watch?
I think there’s a tremendous amount of chemistry between Josh and Hope. We don’t really know where that’s going. I think Saul and Jesus are hilarious. I know that when a show is launching, you’re forging new ground, everyone has a quote unquote opinion about different characters. I think there’s a really beautiful friendship that comes out in the next 5 episodes that I think people will really tune into watch. It’s an awkward love story and it’s kind of everyone at this point, rallying around, to see if Josh and Hope are going to make it. It’s a sweet show. It has a lot of funny moments.
Did you have to learn about acupuncture?
When we shot the pilot, on a Saturday morning I got up, Fran, and myself, and John met at his office at Universal and we had an acupuncturist come in. And Fran was kind enough to actually let me stick a needle in him, so I was really appreciative of that. I’m certainly not an acupuncturist, and would never attempt to do acupuncture, but I got the basics now. How to hold the needle in my hand.
How to look like you sort of know what you’re doing!
Exactly!
Who are some of your inspirations?
Grace Kelly. I’m probably a bigger fan of her than anything and I would love to have had a chance to have met her. I was in Monte Carlo when Prince Ranier was lying in state and I was just so profoundly affected by that. Such a fan of her work and her whole life is just fascinating to me. Meryl Streep is also someone that I’m wildly amazed by. Whether it’s an amazing movie she’s in or not, she’s so extraordinary and she really does blow my mind. There’s a lot of young talent too, that I think are amazing. Rachel McAdams, I think is brilliant. Our generation has a lot to offer. Not the early twenty somethings, I mean there’s tremendous talent in that area, too, but the girls that I’m really in the trenches with, I’m really impressed by and in awe of. I love comedy. I’m amazed by comedic talent. So for me, people like Michael Cera, blow my mind and stuff like that. I loved Juno, I loved Ellen Page and her performance in that. I like the new fresh young talent. They inspire me.
What do you watch on TV?
My boyfriend and I love Dirty Jobs. I watch HGTV and The Food Network relentlessly. We loved Kid Nation. That was one we tuned into. I think Grey’s Anatomy has quite an extraordinary cast of people. I do enjoy watching that. It’s fun to watch. I don’t really get to watch a ton of television. When I’m not working, I’m with my animals up at the barn, getting dirty or doing something like that.
I read that you’re involved in charity – what is some of the charity you’re involved in, or the “We Reach” foundation that you’re involved in?
That’s an organization that I am hoping to launch this year. It’s my organization and it’s an empowerment organization for young women. Tomorrow is our first meeting about it. I’m really excited about where this could go, and who we might partner up with. When we launch it, I will be calling you back for some support. [laughs]
It’s nice to hear, like you said in our generation, there are so many things that could wrong, but we have people with the mindset of wanting to empower and wanting to help.
It’s so important. Honestly, the idea for the organization came about five years ago when I was driving to Reba. I felt an overwhelming sense of gratefulness for my life and my dreams coming true, and amazing family. I wanted other girls to feel that way because I think we don’t support each other enough and there is a lot of pressure we put on each other as women. Which to a certain extent can be great, because it’ll urge us to continually achieve more and do more. It’s the other kind of pressures that we shouldn’t be too proud of putting on each other. Instead of hatin’ I think we should be lovin’. There are a lot of amazing young women in this world, some that weren’t as lucky as I was to have this supportive family and have my dreams comet rue in the way that they did. I hope that this organization, by giving back to the community, will nurture bright young driven girls.
What besides Welcome To The Captain do you have coming up?
I actually just wrapped a movie in Canada in 40 below 0. It’s called Daughter of the Bride. It’s a Christmas movie; it will be out Christmas of 08. Myself and Helen Shaver, who has done quite a bit of directing in the last 5 years, she’s an amazingly talented woman. She plays my mother. The movie’s kind of a coming of age story. I own a wedding planning business and my mom goes off to Paris and comes back engaged. And I’m not really thrilled. And Luke Perry is in it. An amazingly talented Canadian actor named Ken Welsh, who is actually a Knight. He got the Order of Canada, so he has a fun title. It was a lot of fun. Leslie Hope, who is an actress, but it was her directorial debut. We kind of shot it with rapid fire, it was like guerilla film making, and we had the most amazing time, even though it was 40 below! I’ve seen some of the first cut, and the dailies, and I’m really excited to have people see it.
Well we’re excited for that, and we’re excited for more episodes of the Captain. Hopefully the strike will end soon and we’ll get to see more!
I really, really would like that! I know that it’s affecting a lot of people. I’ve been lucky enough to work through it, but I really want it to be over for everyone else involved, too. Hopefully this week!
Fingers crossed, maybe something will happen over the weekend.
Thank you! Take care, good luck with everything!
Thanks, you too!
Episode 2 of Welcome to the Captain airs Monday February 11th at 8:30 ET/PT on CBS!
