Growing up in in Medellín and Spanish Harlem, a single mom at 18, Paula Garces is not exactly unaccustomed to obstacles on the road to success. But this thing with The Shield really ticked her off. Nobody had ever before refused to give her a part because she was too pretty.
''That's what they said,'' she recalls, laughing but still slightly exasperated over what she went through two years ago to get the part of the ambitious but inept Officer Tina Hanlon on the gritty, violent FX cop drama. ``They thought I was too pretty, too soft, too feminine -- that I didn't have the chops for it, basically.''
That set the stage for a perverse contest of wills, with a gorgeous actress insisting her looks didn't matter, and TV producers insisting they wanted to keep their cast relatively unattractive: That is, the show business universe was stood on its head.
''I became obsessed,'' Garces admits. ``I bugged them and bugged them until they finally agreed to let me read for the part. I didn't wear any makeup, I put my hair in a bun, and I wore my husband's button-down shirt, black jeans and a pair of heavy boots.''
LITTLE ATTITUDE
Even her annoyance with the producers helped. ''I thought the way to go with the character would be to have a little attitude, a little chip on my shoulder,'' Garces recalls. ``And I was mad that I had to fly myself to Los Angeles, mad that they didn't think I could do it, and I guess I used all that in the room.''
Result: Not only did Garces get the part, but the role also was expanded from two episodes to a recurring character to -- in the seventh and final season of The Shield that will begin sometime this fall -- a series regular. For Garces, 34, it's the meatiest role by far in a career in which she has played mainly arm candy (like Maria, the hottie-next-door in Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle) or dizzy teens (Pilar, the flighty young girl of The Guiding Light who killed her mom's boyfriend and then became a nun).
''The Shield is sort of like filming a play guerrilla style,'' Garces says. ``The action is nearly continuous, the camera is always on, and you have to be always on -- it's almost like you never know when they might be filming you. . . .
``I like that, though, and I like my character. I grew up in Spanish Harlem. So I know what it was like to be dirty and sweaty and ragged. I know what the air is on the streets; I know what skin I have to wear, because I've worn that skin.''
The show, set in a rough, racially conflicted neighborhood in Los Angeles, follows the adventures of a rogue police unit headed by Detective Vic Mackey that's no longer distinguishable from the criminals it's pursuing. Hanlon showed up as a rookie whose police work is disastrous (during one operation, she arrests an undercover cop while letting the real criminal get away) and whose personal reputation for sleeping around is even worse.
''But I'm growing up this season,'' says Garces. ``I'm going to redeem myself as a woman and as a cop. The writers have really moved me into the story and closer to the character of Vic Mackey. I'm pretty integral to the show's conclusion.''
Though The Shield won't air for another six months or so, shooting on the final season actually ended last fall. But the three-month strike by Hollywood writers delayed editing of the last two episodes, laying waste to FX's planned schedule. Garces compares the delay to a long, lonnnnng pregnancy.
''I'm so frustrated, because it's really good work, and I want everybody to see it,'' she says. ``The final episode is going to blow everybody away, like The Sopranos did.''
So, in the final scene, Mackey and Hanlon will be sitting in the precinct house and everything will just go black?
''No-no-no-no,'' Garces hurriedly corrects. ``Not that much like The Sopranos.In impact, I mean.''
Meanwhile, Garces' career is moving on. She talked with The Herald during one of her regular stopovers in Miami (the Colombian-American actress has family here) during a break in work: She has produced and done voice work for an anime short, Red Princess Blues Animated: The Book of Violence,and has completed shooting on the sequel Harold & Kumar Escape From Guantanamo Bay.
ANOTHER `HAROLD'
A second Harold & Kumar, about the shaggy-dog adventures of a couple of dope-addled guys trying to get a hamburger, may seem problematic, given that the first film grossed less than $20 million. But it turned into a crazed cult hit on DVD and cable movie channels. And the sequel, which premiered last week at the South by Southwest film festival in Austin to a raucous packed house, shows signs of being bigger.
''I'm so proud of that movie,'' Garces says. ``A lot of people judged it as just another stoner film. Which it is, in a way. But it touched on a lot of important social issues, on things we all face.''
In fact, Garces says, the first Harold & Kumar approached the level of sociology, albeit scatological, sexually obsessed sociology. It probed questions of ethnic identity, conformism and family expectations vs. personal satisfaction.
''John Cho, who played Harold, was this uptight Korean business person who couldn't let go of his career, even when he was stoned,'' she says. ``And Kal Penn, who played Kumar, was an Indian guy whose parents wanted him to be a doctor, but he just wants to smoke dope all day -- even though he has fabulous talent for medicine.
``It's a little bit stereotypical, but sometimes there's truth in stereotypes. I mean, is it so bad to say Indian people are good doctors?''
Harold & Kumar Escape From Guantanamo Bay is more -- much more -- of the same, Garces says. Instead of hamburgers, Harold and Kumar are chasing her character, Maria, who has gone to Amsterdam, and their misadventures are truly epic in scale: Among other things, they're arrested as terrorists for smuggling a high-tech bong aboard an airplane.
''All sorts of things happen to them -- let your imagination run wild,'' she says. 'Working with [writers] Jon Hurwitz and Hayden Schlossberg, you just never know what's going to happen. They really delighted in trying to gross me out. Once they said, `Hey, come watch the dailies with us. We want to see if you like it.' It turned out they had shot a bottomless party scene. Even as a woman and a respectable member of society, I found it funny. I don't know what that says about me.''
