Why NCIS star Wilmer Valderrama wants to encourage more diversity on TV
HAVING freshly inked a new contract to continue his role as Agent Nick Torres on NCIS, Latino star Wilmer Valderrama is determined to use his success to encourage more diversity on TV.
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HOLLYWOOD can be a fickle town. But for one of its hottest TV stars, the success he’s continued since landing his first role — just four years after arriving in the US as a teenager who did not speak English — has also brought priceless personal rewards beyond fame.
Wilmer Valderrama, best known to many as Fez from That ’70s Show, is heating up NCIS — recently named as the fifth-highest rated TV show in the US.
And having freshly inked a new contract to continue his role as Agent Nick Torres for a further two seasons, the Latino star is determined to use his success to encourage more diversity on TV.
“When I first got to the US in ’93/’94 I didn’t see myself on television and when I did, the characters portrayed weren’t aspirational for me,” he tells BW Magazine.
“It’s important to me to create images that kind of fulfil that dream I had as a kid of seeing myself on TV and film.”
It was a rapid rise for Valderrama, who had arrived in the US from Venezuela, with his parents and younger sisters, had landed the role of Fez.
He says, however, that his experience of arriving as a young teenager — thinking he’d figured out life, only to be thrown into a new world with different rules and liberties and scared to speak to anyone in anything other than Spanish — lit a fire in him to succeed.
Success arrived in That ’70s Show, which he describes as life-changing, beyond the fame and A-list invites, in allowing him to make life easier for his parents, who — like many immigrants — had to rebuild their lives from the ground up.
“The show changed everything,” he says.
“It woke up many things in me: the ability to believe to hope for something better than we grew up with. It gave me an opportunity to dream out loud and voice my opinion.
“It also enabled and empowered me to take care of my family on a level that we couldn’t before. That was the biggest part, the show allowed me to really provide a roof for them and to pay tribute to the sacrifices that my parents made in selling everything they had to bring us to America.”
Vocal about his own experiences and in his criticisms of recent policies separating families trying to cross the US border, Valderrama says he’s determined to give a bigger platform for stories of those who have come to the US as immigrants, saying that aside from Native Americans, every American is an immigrant.
This is something he aims to do through a recent partnership between his production company Wilmer Valderrama Enterprises and CBS TV Studios to develop content that puts minorities at the forefront.
And bringing a Latino character to prime time in NCIS has been a personal highlight for the star, who says he’s loving the chance to play a darker character. And he’s quick to dismiss the notion that joining a hit show in its 14th season brought with it added pressure, he says it’s been great to shake up the show.
“The point of my character was to be disruptive and to dynamically change some things,” Valderrama says.
“I asked myself what contribution am I going to give, the audience was growing and evolving and with that comes the need to pivot and look for a new direction. I think Torres services that notion. It’s been a good chance to expand the universe of NCIS and change the show’s dynamic.”
But as for talk of a That ’70s Show revival, fans could be waiting a little while longer, with Valderrama saying he and other alumni, including Ashton Kutcher and Mila Kunis, feel it’s too soon. He does, however, hint at a movie.
“I don’t think so at the moment, everyone is a little too busy right now to think about it,” he says.
“It’s a still a little too soon. But I’ve always joked about That ‘70s Movie, that’s one thing we could probably come together and do, to get a couple of us together and do a road trip movie.
“We obviously look older so I think we’d probably maybe do 10 years later. That ’70s Movie but a 10-year high school reunion or something, everyone still looks young enough that we can play that.”
Catch double episodes NCIS on Sunday from 9pm on Network Ten