When CBS announced that 'Ugly Betty' star and Emmy and Golden Globe winner America Ferrera had temporarily joined the cast of their courtroom drama 'The Good Wife' as a nanny, we became curious and a little skeptical. And thankfully, we were pleasantly surprised. The creators of the show not only break free of common racial stereotypes about Latinos in the media, but they also shed light on the very pertinent DREAM Act issue that is a hot-button issue within the immigration debate.
From the Restore Fairness blog-
CBS has been in the news as of late about the troubled Charlie Sheen. While fascinating, we're more excited when mainstream media is used to shed light on important issues our country is facing today. But when CBS announced that 'Ugly Betty' star and Emmy and Golden Globe winner America Ferrera had temporarily joined the cast of their courtroom drama 'The Good Wife' as a nanny, we became curious and a little skeptical. And thankfully, we were pleasantly surprised. The creators of the show not only break free of common racial stereotypes about Latinos in the media, but they also shed light on the very pertinent DREAM Act issue that is a hot-button issue within the immigration debate.
Ferrera plays Natalie Flores, an undocumented immigrant who works as a nanny for Wendy Scott-Carr, a prominent politician on the show. Much unlike widespread negative stereotypes of Latina nannies as often uneducated, older women with little knowledge of English, Ferrera's character on 'The Good Wife' is portrayed as a sharp young woman who is working as a nanny simply to finance her graduate studies in economics, while at the same time trying to become a citizen. Ferrera, in her first TV role since the ABC comedy 'Ugly Betty' ended last year, says she feels close to this role. In an interview with TV Guide, Ferrera commented-
[Natalie] is sort of the anti-stereotype of what people imagine when they hear those labels. It felt like the Kings [the show's creators] would be really great people to explore that world in ways that could show their audience an alternative to general preconceived notions about illegal immigrants.
On the show, Ferrera's character even admits that she was not born in the U.S, but came here with her parents at the age of 2. The character sketch seems to be a realistic portrait of the millions of young DREAMers across the country fighting for U.S citizenship. The National Hispanic Media Coalition (NHMC), who have praised 'The Good Wife' , stated-
America’s character on 'The Good Wife' captures the struggles of a generation of young, Latino men and women in our country who face obstacles because their parents brought them into this country as infants, in search of a better life. These men and women, who work so hard to better themselves and become productive members of the only society that they have ever known, are precisely the type of people that would have their lives changed by the passage of the DREAM Act.
Ferrera's character first appears in Episode 15 - titled 'Silver Bullet' - of the current season and her storyline has been continued since, including an episode where her father is wrongly arrested based on racial profiling for a crime he didn't commit, leading to the risk of him being deported by ICE. We won't give too much of the storyline away in case you plan to watch it, but such a narrative in a popular mainstream TV drama is a very positive sign and we applaud that. Here's hoping other major networks and TV shows follow suit.