Ugly Betty Star America Farrera Will Open Superstore on NBC

Ottoniel Campos

March 19, 2015

America Farrera is creating a Superstore. Well, not an actual store. More like an upcoming sitcom, “Superstore”, for NBC, according to The Hollywood Reporter.

The Ugly Betty star will produce and star-in the sitcom (actually a pilot), which will bring her back to television after five years away doing movies and independent projects.

Ferrera plays Amy – a floor supervisor who has 10-years of doing things by the book at the store. But then the overly confident Jonah (“A to Z’s Ben Feldman) arrives and shakes things up with his free-spirit attitude at work, which creates an unlikely bond between Amy and Jonah. The series also showcases an eclectic group of characters at the big-box store Cloud 9 that is somewhere in America, reports The Hollywood Reporter.

Ferrera, 30, won the Golden Globe award for Best Performance by an Actress in 2007. The award-winning role of Betty Suarez in the hit ABC series Ugly Betty – an adaptation of the popular Colombian telenovela Yo Soy Betty, La Fea – was the first award given to a Latina… ever!

Ferrera was ecstatic when her close friend, Gina Rodrigues, became the second Latina to win the Golden Globe in January but was upset with the lack of recognition given to Latina actresses.

“I’m very, very happy for her,” Ferrera told online news site HuffPost. “[But] it’s a little disheartening to know that there are only two of us.”

“The problem isn’t in the awards,” Ferrera, daughter of Honduran parents, said in an Huffpost interview.

“It’s not a Golden Globes problem, it’s not an award ceremony problem. It’s a creation of content issue. We need more in art and entertainment that is reflective of the world that we live in. And there’s just not enough reflection in it for women, for people of color. There’s still a huge amount of stories that have yet to be told, and we need those voices to find those platforms so that they can share those experiences.”
“As an audience member, I take it very personally, I take it extremely personally when I watch,” she said. “I’m a huge lover of television and of film — I have been my whole life — and when there’s too much of the same thing and not enough to reflect the world that I live in, I take it personally.”

During her five-year hiatus from starring in television, Ferrera has appeared in movies like the 2014 biopic of the civil rights leader, Cesar Chavez, and the animation franchise, “How to Train Your Dragon”.