Nearly 15 years after Ugly Betty went off the air, Michael Urie and Becki Newton are giving the show the podcast treatment… again.
The pair recently reminded Deadline they were early adopters of the rewatch trend, recapping the ABC sitcom with a “pioneering podcast” during its original four-season run from 2006 to 2010, before launching their new Still Ugly podcast later this month.
“We talked about every single episode,” recalled Urie. “So, this was inevitable. And then as we’ve gone to the cast to ask them to come be on it, we’re like, ‘We are, as you might imagine, doing another podcast.’ It just feels like riding a bike being together again.”
Developed by Silvio Horta as a U.S. adaptation of the Colombian telenovela, Ugly Betty followed the awkward titular writer Betty Suarez (America Ferrera) as she takes a job as the assistant to Daniel Meade (Eric Mabius), editor-in-chief of the snobbish Mode fashion magazine.
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Urie and Newton shined as Marc St. James and Amanda Tanen, two bitchy assistants who bond over their love of fashion, celebrity and teasing Betty, providing plenty of hilarious quips through the years. But that bond was unwritten, as the pair was a happy accident for Horta.
“There was no plan for Marc and Amanda to be a duo,” Urie noted. “And it wasn’t until it was like Episode 3 or 4 where Becki and I had a like a three-line exchange in a scene. There was just like a side exchange, not an important part of the scene at all, and we turned it into like a 10-line exchange, and a producer clocked it and said, ‘OK, these two, this is something. Let’s keep going back to this well.’”
Years later, Urie and Newton’s careers have taken them to different shows. But it was actually their respective current runs on the Apple TV+ series Shrinking and Netflix’s Lincoln Lawyer that allowed the podcast to happen.
“I’m grateful that all these years later, Michael and I — by the way, are both playing lawyers on TV. Who would have seen Amanda turning into a lawyer? — but that we still somehow together are on this crazy ride of showbiz,” said Newton. “And I find that pretty great that we still get to laugh about it and enjoy it and call each other with funny set stories.”
Newton joined us in between camera tests for Season 4 of Lincoln Lawyer. Meanwhile, Urie Zoomed in from the comfort of his New York home while preparing to return for Season 3 of Shrinking next week.
Read on about Michael Urie and Becki Newton’s memories from the set of Ugly Betty, as well as details from their upcoming rewatch podcast Still Ugly.
DEADLINE: Ugly Betty is low-key the reason I wanted to become a writer, so it’s cool to be sitting here talking to you because Marc and Amanda were like the bitchy gay and cool mean girl that I’d never had in life.
MICHAEL URIE: Come on! We hear this all the time and it’s always special. And the reason that we’re doing this podcast is because the the show still is so meaningful to people, and young people. … but then, we meet people who are definitely too young to have watched the show when it was on, and they’ve discovered it on Netflix or their parents have showed it to them or whatever. And it’s ringing true, and it’s meaningful to like a new generation of people. Every time a really young person says they love the show, I think you, “You mean you weren’t thrown off by flip phones? That didn’t bother you?” But It still works.
BECKI NEWTON: It’s sweet. To your point though, one thing that I’ve heard over and over is people say, Marc and Amanda, they feel so deeply connected to this friendship. These two, everyone wished they had a friend, like for Amanda, who was mean and maybe misunderstood, she had Marc, who loved her so much. And conversely, Marc with all of his faults, everything about Marc, Amanda embraced. And I think there was something about how much these characters loved each other and watched out for each other and connected and just simply needed each other, that’s something that I think has resonated with people, even all these years later. Not only do people want to hear about, when they talk to me, about Marc and Amanda, they want to talk about Michael and Becki. And they want to know that in real life, we’re friends. So, I tell them that he’s one of my best friends, he’s the godfather of my one child, but basically all my kids love him so much, that it warms their heart to know that that connection that they could feel was very real. And it was real for us as well.
DEADLINE: So can you tell me your first memories of like auditioning for these characters? Did they put you together at first to make sure you had that chemistry?
URIE: No, our chemistry is what brought Marc and Amanda together in the show. Because they’d write us together occasionally, but we weren’t meant to be — I mean, my character wasn’t even meant to be in Episode 2. I was only supposed to be in the pilot, and Vanessa [Williams] was gonna have a new assistant every episode because she was such a demanding boss. But thankfully, because she and I were good together, and she was generous enough to let me go nuts with my role, whereas she could have been like, “Calm down, Mary, and get out of my shot,” she was instead like, “Stand close to be in the shot.” And so I was in the pilot more than I should have been, and by the end of the pilot shoot, they put me in the cast photo. So, there was no plan for Marc and Amanda to be a duo, and it wasn’t until it was like Episode 3 or 4 where Becki and I had a like a three-line exchange in a scene. There was just like a side exchange, not an important part of the scene at all, and we turned it into like a 10-line exchange, and a producer clocked it and said, “OK, these two, this is something. Let’s keep going back to this well.” And so no, I wasn’t even really aware of the character of Amanda when I auditioned. I was just a toadie, a lackey — I had a couple of auditions in New York, and It was the scene where I’m injecting Botox into Wilhelmina’s head.
NEWTON: I remember the breakdown [for Amanda] referenced “supermodel, about 6′ something, bitchy supermodel fashion girl,” and I am 5’3. I read the script and right away I thought, this is the funniest thing I’ve ever read, and I thought, well, nobody’s gonna buy that I’m a supermodel, but wouldn’t it be funny to play almost like — I think I used to have a Jack Russell terrier dog who thought he was way bigger than he actually was — and I thought, wouldn’t it be really funny to play someone who’s overcompensating and thinks she’s a supermodel? So that was sort of how I went in to audition as this girl that had no right to have that attitude, but I was like, “Yeah, I’m a supermodel.” And there’s something right away that I latched on to about the overcompensating that Amanda is doing at all times. She’s walking too much, she’s wearing too much. Everything’s just too much, and I right away understood that that was part of her desperately trying to fit in. And there was this sort of typical Mode girl, but I don’t think Amanda was. I think she actually was just trying so very hard, and that explains a lot of the behavior, the mean girl behavior, the bullying. She just was trying harder than anyone to fit in. And in my audition, I read for Sylvio, it was the scene, “Are you the before? The before and after the photo shoot? Are you delivering something?” All of that. And I did my audition, and I got a call a few days later to please come back and sound less like a Valley girl. I didn’t know really what that meant, and I was trying to figure out, I was like, “I didn’t even think I sounded like a Valley girl, but OK.” And then I believe that I was supposed to go back for another audition and they canceled it. And I thought, that means I didn’t get the part. I guess I sound too much like a Valley girl. And then I got a call that they wanted me to come screen test against someone else. And at that point, I knew in my heart, I have to get this. I loved the project so much. I loved the part already, and my take on it really was someone who was desperately overcompensating. And where that leads into Marc and Amanda, I think when someone is that insecure, and they find a friend that they can latch onto, they latch. And I think when Amanda found Marc, and when Becki found Michael, I found a soulmate. Someone who, apart from all that overcompensating and all that, they genuinely understood each other, connected with each other and made each other feel less alone, and I think that was really obvious. I think Michael and I, individually, were just so new to being on TV, never mind being at award shows. We would go to award shows in matching outfits. We were so happy to have a friend to go through all of this with, and I think that was both our characters and us personally. And I think Amanda stayed on the show because of her friendship with Marc. He saw her as more of a human. Marc could laugh at Amanda and suddenly it’s like, “Oh, it’s funny, as opposed to just kind of icky or mean.” And everyone needs a friend no matter who you are, and that really is what kind of led us to this podcast. It makes everyone feel less lonely when even Marc and Amanda have really good friends.
URIE: We’ve both had lots of jobs since Ugly Betty and I’ve had other work wives or work husbands, you know, people that you work with that become your number-one person at work, but I’ve never had another work soulmate.
NEWTON: Michael, you are my soulmate for sure.
URIE: And all these years, we’ve tried to work together, we have worked together, we did a musical together, we did a cabaret together, we tried to do a pilot, it didn’t shoot because the pandemic. We’ve done so many things together over the years that this felt sort of inevitable. And when we did the first run of the show, when we did the show, we had a pioneering podcast that we hosted, where we talked about every single episode. So, this was inevitable. And then as we’ve gone to the cast to ask them to come be on it, we’re like, “We are, as you might imagine, doing another podcast.” It just feels so like it just feels like riding a bike being together again.
NEWTON: And I think in all of those projects that we’ve explored, we kind of just want to hang out with each other. I think that’s really what it was, like, “How can we spend time together at work again?” And the experience of doing this podcast and going to work every day and seeing Michael Urie, that’s what I’ve been missing in life. It doesn’t ever feel like work when I’m sitting with Michael anywhere, and nothing’s ever boring when I’m sitting with Michael anywhere. So, I’m really grateful for this time that Michael and I have been able to set aside together in this context.
DEADLINE: Aw, that’s sweet. Do you have any specific episode or maybe a guest star that you’re looking forward to revisiting on the podcast?
URIE: Well, what’s interesting is the first several episodes, we’ve only done a handful so far, and those from the early days were so vivid. Those memories are so vivid because we were so young, we were so fresh, we’d never been on TV before, we’re watching things over and over again. And so I remember them really, really vividly. And I don’t know how long that’s gonna last. I don’t know at what point it became more of a casual thing. So, I think eventually there’s gonna be some surprises. And I’m really looking forward to that. I’m looking forward to turning on an episode and not immediately saying, “Oh yeah, this is the one where I did this and I did that, and I wore plaid and I had that and this ascot and that blah blah blah.” So, we’ve interviewed America and Eric Mabius and Tony Plana and Chris Gorham. So ,there’s a lot of people we have yet to interview, and we intend to interview them all. So that is gonna be really exciting. I think the thing I’m most excited for is what I don’t remember, the surprises. I can’t wait to see the things that we did, that we were the most important moment in our life then, that I have forgotten about. We have these three segments on every episode. One is, “When did you cry?” One is, “What’s your favorite look of the episode?” And one is, “What did Ana Ortiz do this episode that was brilliant?”
NEWTON: And Ana Ortiz is very hard because she’s a genius all the time.
DEADLINE: I know you probably get asked this all the time, but what’s the talk about a revival or a reboot? After the show ended, I wanted there to be a spinoff with Justin working at Mode, but that never happened unfortunately.
URIE: We had spinoff ideas. We had a lot of — we wanted to do Mode UK, we wanted to do the the The Becky and Michael Show, we had a lot of ideas. And so this podcast, it’s so meaningful to go back and revisit these episodes, and we’re so lucky that we have this record. It’s such a privilege to be able to go back and see four years of your life that’s perfectly maintained in this beautiful little bow. And so it’s really nice to do that, and it’s really beautiful to reconnect with fans and reconnect with the cast members. But yeah, we want to do a reboot. Yeah, we want to do another.
NEWTON: Everyone says that every time. It’s like, when are we gonna do reboot? We’re like, I don’t know, but we must do it. I think we all want to. We all loved it, and I don’t think there’s any cast member that would say, “No, I don’t feel like doing that.” We all had a great experience. So who knows where the road will lead? But I think there’s so much more to discuss with these characters, and it would be so much fun to see where they ended up in their lives.
DEADLINE: That’s pretty much all I had about Ugly Betty, but is there anything you wanted to tease about Lincoln Lawyer or Shrinking?
NEWTON: I feel so lucky that all these years later I’m still on TV, and I’m still talking to Michael. So, one thing Michael and I have had in common ever since this adventure began is we love what we do. We find great joy in it, and we’re still so lucky every time we get to walk on a set. So, I’m grateful that all these years later, Michael and I, by the way, are both playing lawyers on TV. Who would have seen Amanda turning into a lawyer? But that we still somehow together are on this crazy ride of showbiz, and I find that pretty great that we still get to laugh about it and enjoy it and call each other with funny set stories. It’s pretty amazing.
URIE: Or that we’re shooting in the same city at the same time, which is great.
NEWTON: And that it’s taken this many years for that to happen. That’s the craziest part.
URIE: Yeah, that’s true. And that’s kind of how this podcast was able to work, was that we’re in the same place at the same time with the same breaks. So, we’re very lucky and very grateful for that. We’re starting Season 3 very soon, next week, of Shrinking. And they’ve just started Lincoln Lawyer this week, so we’re on exactly the same schedule. And I’ve only seen a little bit of Shrinking, the new season, and it’s very good. I make it a point not to try to guess what they’re gonna do, because it’s always way better than what I guess. And I’m very lucky to have this big break in TV, and at the same time to be exploring our first big breaks… re-exploring.