Cristián de la Fuente has been with the cast of In Plain Sight since the beginning when it first aired last summer.  In Plain Sight is a drama about U.S. Marshals Mary Shannon (Mary McCormack) and Marshall Mann (Fred Weller) working for the Federal Witness Protection Program (WITSEC).  De la Fuente plays the role of Raphael Ramirez, Mary’s on-again, off-again boyfriend. Christián recently took the time to answer questions about the series and his role.

Question>  What about your role continues to challenge you?

Cristián>    The first thing that challenged me was playing baseball.  I was born and raised in Santiago, Chile where the biggest sport is soccer.  We don't play baseball here.  I think baseball stops in Venezuela, that's the farthest you go by playing baseball.  And also working with a great cast is always challenging, because you have to really give your 180%, but mainly the baseball part.  The rest at the beginning was scary, "Oh my gosh, I'm going to work with Lesley Ann Warren and Mary McCormack," but then when I got to meet them then that was the best part of the job, not the hardest one.

Question>  Why do you think people continue to watch the show?

Cristián>    First, I don't think there's a lot of female driven shows and in this case In Plain Sight follows the life and work of Mary McCormack's character, Mary.    And on the other hand, I think what's very unique about this show, we have a lot of cop shows, law shows, Law and Order, or all the CSI's, but they all tell one crime or they all investigate one crime or one suspect or they have one story.  In this case, Mary has to protect the witness every week, but she also has a personal life.  She has to deal with her mother, with her sister.  She has to deal with her boyfriend.  So there's a lot of the personal life of Mary that we see and I think that's unique.  That really makes a difference in the show.

Question>  So how did you come to get this part?  Did you audition for it and why did you decide that you were going to take it?

Cristián>    I auditioned for it and my agent sent me the script and I read it and I loved it, but Raphael was first written as Devin and was supposed to be an American.  And I called my agent and I said, "You know, I love this role.  Can you call them and see if they could see me, because you know I think I can play this role."  Besides nowadays if you look at all the baseball players, probably 70% of them have Latino names, so then it's not a big stretch to go from Raphael Ramirez to Latino.  But I said, like maybe let's try to give it a shot, and then I got this job and then they changed it from Devin to Raphael, because it had to be more believable than me named Devin, I don't think it would have worked.

Question>  What do you like most about your character?

Cristián>    Raphael, I think goes against all the stereotypes.  It's like he's not the typical Latin lover.  He's not the typical Latino.  As a joke always I think we've made history in television and film, because on the last episode of the first season, on the season finale, I think it's the first time that you see a Latino character with a lot of kilograms of drugs and instead of starting dealing them, he threw them away.  I think that's the first time that's happened in TV, that Latinos are not portrayed as drug dealers but people that you know they have good hearts and they want the best for their family and their loved ones.  And I think that's the beauty about Raphael, he's really in love with Mary and he's a nice guy and I think he's going to do always the right thing and it's great to play those kinds of roles nowadays.

Question>  Where do you draw your inspiration from when you play the character?

Cristián>    Well I try to draw the inspiration the way I would like to be.  I think how would I like to be if I was like the perfect guy?  And the perfect version of me, that's Raphael. The non-perfect one, that's me.

Question>  What should fans be expecting to see in store for your character this season?  Are there any big surprises?

Cristián>    Yes, there are big surprises.  Let me see, how can I say it without ruining it?  There's going to be a change in my career.  I can say that.  I'm going to get closer to, however, changing my marital status. So those are the two biggest surprises.

Question>  Where are you hoping to see Mary and Raphael's relationship go?  Are we going to see him kind of run out of patience with her indecision with things?

Cristián>    Mary's very hard to deal with, Mary the character, because Mary McCormack, I love her. I also love the other one in different ways, but Raph would like to marry her and have a family, but it's tough.  Mary is hard to get and she's a little bit afraid of commitment.  In the ideal world, which doesn't exist, not even in fiction, Raphael would like to marry her and have children and be happy.  But he's going to try to do everything in his power and hopefully Mary's going to try to do something too.

Question>  You guest starred on Brothers and Sisters , what was that was like working with that cast and getting to work with Sally Field?

Cristián>    When I got the call, I was really surprised.  My first reaction was, "You want me to play that role?  Are you sure you've got the right guy?"  Every time you work with a great cast, it's something that’s not only good for your resume, it's good for your soul working with people that are talented and that have been around.  It's always a good thing.  It was a great experience and it would be great if we do it again in the future.

Question>  What is the cast dynamic like on In Plain Sight?  How do you guys all get along?

Cristián>    I'm going to answer you the truth, which is that we all get along very well and we have a great relationship with each other, and even though that didn't happen, I would never say it.  But in this case, I'm saying the truth, I'm not lying.  Sometimes you don't get along and you still have to lie and say, "We really get along," but I'm happy to say that on this occasion it's true that we all get along very well and we act together.    Of course, you have a better relationship with those that you work more often, with Nichole Hiltz with Lesley Ann Warren and with Mary.  I'm not involved in all the cop scenes with Fred Weller or with Paul Ben-Victor.  I don't get to do a lot of scenes, but sometimes we go out to dinner and sometimes we go on the same plane back and forth from LA, especially with Paul, so we all have a great relationship.  And that's good, because I spend more time sometimes with them than with my family.

Question>  If you could work with any actor, if you guys could have any guest on the show, who would you have?

Cristián>    I would love to have Al Pacino, but I don't think he would go to our show.  I'm going to apply to see if I can serve him coffee on the set of his movie. Maybe that will work.

Question>  How did you get started in acting in the first place?

Cristián>    I got started 17 years ago in Chile where I am right now, thanks to the technology, I'm having this conference from Chile.  I've always wanted to be an actor and my dad wanted me to be a civil engineer because actors don't make money here in Chile.  They don't ride in limousines and live in big mansions.  Actors here, we live in normal houses and sometimes there are actors that have to ride the bus, because they don't have a car.  You do this because you love it.  It's not, "Oh my gosh, I'm going to get to make $20 million a picture."  So my dad was really afraid of me being an actor.  But then I got to a point that I decided why am I going to be an engineer if that's not what I really love to do, and that's when I decided to go to a network and apply for a job doing a show and I was part of the show. And then after that they offered me the option of studying all the afternoons while I was working in the mornings to start studying acting and I did that and that was how it really started.

Question>  Would you ever be interested in writing or directing for In Plain Sight?  I know you wrote before, not for this, but for something else, but would you ever be interested in that?

Cristián>    Yes, I've written some stuff and I love to write.  I have to get better at that and I think it's a process.  But the only way I think to learn is just to write and write and write and maybe in a couple years I'm going to come to something that is better than what I've written before.  But it's a process and the only way to do it is to start it at some point.  The first thing that I wrote wasn't good.  The second was a little bit better, and now I'm getting, not that I'm great, but I'm getting better and better every day.  And even if I write a book that my daughter is going to read, I'll be happy.  But yes, I would love to write.  I would love to express in other ways than just acting.

Question>  Do you ever get to offer input on your character?

Cristián>    We do a meeting before the season, we meet with all the writers, and there are a lot of things about myself that are in character.  And one of the things that I really appreciate and I'm very thankful from the show, and especially for David Maples, the creator, is that in many jobs that I've done, they always say, "Okay, you have to take care of your accent," and I can work on it.  I can go to an accent coach and speak more Mexican or speak less Mexican or speak normal or try to even do a neutral.  In this case, In Plain Sight, David was like, "No, you can embrace your accent."  And even there are some episodes that other characters like especially Brandi played by Nichole Hiltz, she makes fun of my accent and she doesn't understand some of the things that I'm trying to say.  And besides that that I was able to embrace that and to let it go and be more natural instead of trying to hide it, that's something that I really appreciate from the show and from David especially.

Question>  What  has been your favorite scene to film so far, either past or future that we haven't seen yet?

Cristián>    Well from the first season, there was this scene in the last episode when I go to Mary's house and I'm drunk and I'm trying to convince her to have a better relationship with her sister, with Brandi.  That scene I think especially was challenging, because to play drunk is tough and not going through a cliché of really being drunk and playing the drunk and also it was very emotional. And on this season there was a very beautiful scene in one of the episodes towards the middle of the season where I proposed again and where I explain to Mary why I want to marry her and why I feel the way I feel towards her.  I think that was really nice, mostly like the scenes when the character is vulnerable, I think those are beautiful scenes that you can really open yourself and do a better job.

Question>  Could you maybe tell us the biggest difference between the first and the second season, either with the show on the whole or just in your character and your relationship with Mary?

Cristián>    Well with my character, he's going to switch his career.  He's going to start working with something different, and in the relationship with Mary we’ll get to a point that Mary's going to have to decide that if she wants to get married with Raphael or not.  So I think those are two big changes that is going to happen to Raphael in the relationship and to Mary also.

Question>  You  mentioned that your father didn't really want you to go into acting.  Did he ever turn around and become proud of you?  What does he think of it now?

Cristián>    I think one of the biggest compliments that I had from my father was the day that he died.  He was in his bed, he was sick and they asked him, “Do you want me to turn the TV off?”  And he said, "No, I want to watch Cristián and then I want to fall asleep."  So he watched my show, then he turned off the TV and he passed away.  So I think that at the end of the day was the biggest compliment that I can have from my father.

Question>  What  would you advise for somebody who wanted to go into acting as a young actor?  What kind of advice would you give them now?

Cristián>    I would give them two, as a friend of mine says, life is too short and then you die.  So you have to do everything that you want even if people tell you that you're crazy, that that's not for you, that it's hard, or all the bad things that they can tell you, you just have to do it. And then the second advice is, you need a lot of patience.  You need a lot of patience, because there's a lot of things and a lot of times that doors are going to be closed, that people are going to say, no, and you just have to keep believing in you, believing your dream, and just keep going.  Keep going, keep going, because one day you're going to make it. 

  Maybe you're not going to make it huge, big, maybe you're not going to be the star of a big action movie, maybe you're going to do a play in a theatre, maybe you're going to do a local TV show, maybe you're going to do a national TV show, but you're going to do it, and that satisfaction of having a dream and really being able to accomplish it that's priceless.

Question>  Are there any special guest stars booking up this season we can look forward to seeing?

Cristián>    Yes.  I don't have the complete names and lists of the guest stars, because most of the guest stars, they always come on the side of the witness that is being protected and I don't get the privilege of working with them.  But I can guarantee that there's going to be some big names and big people guest starring.  We're doing 16 episodes and we have kind of like more than half like kind of 10 big names that are going to be guest starring on the show.  So be prepared for a lot of big actors.

Question>  Can you kind of give us a run through of a typical day on the set?

Cristián>    A typical day on the set for me is landing the day before from LA, because I'm still living in LA.  So the day before I have to work I have to travel.  That means going through the airport, which it used to be nice.  Now they assume that everybody's a criminal or a terrorist, so they ask you to take your shoes off, take your everything, and it's like that's kind of the bad part of it. Then finally I land, I arrive in Albuquerque, and then the day starts with breakfast, very early, around 5:30 or 6:00 in the morning; then we rehearse the scene with the director and with the crew; then we go for makeup and hair, which for me takes five minutes, thank God, where the girls will take a little longer.

  And then we go back and we shoot the scene.  We do that for six hours; then we break for lunch, and then we do it for six more hours again.  Sometimes it's six, sometimes it's seven or eight or even nine more hours, which after six we have a snack, which is called second meal for people to eat. And then we finish the day.  Then we go rest.  We have a 10 to 11 hour turnaround where we can rest and sleep, and then the next day, we start again in the morning and then we try to shoot all the scenes, and then when I'm done after three or four days, I get on a plane and I go back to LA to see my family.  And then Mary stays in Albuquerque, because I think she's in 99% of all the scenes.  She has to do that for seven days straight.  I do it only for three or four.

Question>  At least you get a break then.

Cristián>    Yes, ... she's very happy that she's going on hiatus and she's going to have a break now.

Question>  What would be your ultimate dream role?

Cristián>    I've always wanted to do like a modern version of I Love Lucy.  What would happen today if a guy like Raphael married an American?  How would they live and all the issues that they have to deal with?  I think that would be a nice role to play.

Question>  That would be cool.  I could see that.  So do you have any new projects coming up?

Cristián>    Not yet.  My biggest project after the show is done is vacation with my wife and my daughter, try to spend some time with them, because thank God, I've been working a lot, and then start looking for the next one.  Try to see if we can squeeze in a movie or two and keep our fingers crossed and hopefully have a third season of In Plain Sight, but that depends on the viewers.  So hopefully, they'll watch the show, they will like it and then we'll have a third season.

You can catch Christián de la Fuente on In Plain Sight, Sunday nights on USA, starting with the season two premiere on April 19^th.