My Name Is Earl

Nadine Velazquez spills the beans on playing Catalina.

Catalina's a great character, why do you think people like her so much?
There is something endearing about her, a 'wanting' to learn, to live and explore this new life. Her life has always been obscure and crazy, and now she wants to know what the American life is like, what these rednecks are up to that she can get involved in and I think people really like that.

She has these wonderful throw away lines - whole chapters in her life revealed that we didn't previously know anything about...
Yeah (laughs), exactly. I like how that's written and how it's delivered. She gives you a whole load in just a sentence or two. You get exactly what happened two years before and what happened and then it's like nothing.

She's certainly more developed in the second season.
It seems like she is, yeah. What's taking off now is Catalina's dancing. So a couple of the episodes, I'm in the stripper outfit and you just see me going to work and coming from work. The audience seems to really like that!

How would you like that to develop?
It's a good question. I would like her to have a love interest. It would be cool if it remained Ethan, somehow, now that we've established that he's an amazing lover. If they could write that again, that we do end up together, I think that would be interesting. Right now I'm alone while they're out on their adventures. And it would be fun to just have this odd relationship with Ethan.

Did they change the character at all to fit you?
Yeah, she was originally Russian. I came in with my version of a Russian accent, which I'm sure was terrible. They enjoyed my trying to do Russian but finally they said, "Nadine, no one is going to believe you're Russian. Let's just do an accent that you can comfortably do". And so of course, it's a Spanish accent. That was the only change really.

How do you feel becomming a pin-up?
You know, there's a part of me where things like that just go completely over my head. I don't really spend too much time thinking about it. It's something I share in common with Catalina. We're very into being oblivious (laughs). I don't really think about that very much. I mean, I get it. My publicist will call and tell me and it's like "Great." But really, my goal in this career is just to continue working and do the best I can. Everything else isn't in my control. It's nice, you know. But it's OK if I'm not on those lists too.