Vanessa Williams is reflecting on just how little support Ugly Betty had in its early days, despite the acclaim it eventually earned.
Speaking on a recent episode of Dinner’s On Me with Jesse Tyler Ferguson, the 63-year-old actress, who played fashion magazine editor Wilhelmina Slater on the ABC dramedy, recalled the show’s rocky start: “So basically, we were a Friday night show. No one cared about us at all.”
Williams described a production so under-resourced that even award recognition didn’t move the needle.
“They did not provide breakfast for us,” she said.
“When we got nominated and won the Golden Globe, I paid for like a waffle, one of those pop-up waffle [stations]. Because we had zero, they still didn’t care.”
As the show’s audience and acclaim grew, new obstacles kept surfacing.
“And then we had the writers’ strike,” Williams said.
“That was one of those shows that just, obstacle after obstacle, but our audience loved us, but they kept moving us, and it was the 2008 financial crisis and you know, we just kept chugging along and then they finally just said, ‘nope,’ which is unfortunate.”
She said the cast fought hard to keep the show alive despite the mounting pressures. “We were heartbroken. Because we tried and tried to cut corners.”
Reflecting on the show’s production value, she added, “The visual value of what we would produce on a weekly basis was extraordinary. And it just got too expensive for the time period. But it was the best show I’ve ever done on television.”
Based on the Colombian telenovela Yo soy Betty, la fea, Ugly Betty ran from 2006 to 2010 and followed America Ferrera’s Betty Suarez as she defied fashion-industry beauty standards while working her way up at the prestigious magazine Mode.
After ABC repeatedly shifted its timeslot, eventually landing it on Fridays, the show’s live viewership declined, and it was ultimately canceled in 2010.
