Annie Shak
July 25, 2017
In The Mix

Clean Slate

Carla Jimenez takes pride in her work - no matter what it is.

Barry Garron

Carla Jimenez knows more than most about housekeeping.

Before being cast as Alba on Fox’s The Mick, Jimenez was Rosa, who worked for a housekeeping company on Raising Hope. And before that, she was Blanca, the maid on Last Man Standing. And then there was the time on Devious Maids when she had a guest role as a forensic accountant, disguised as a maid.

“As a Latina actress, it’s hard,” she observes. “You know when you’re first starting out, you gotta do what you gotta do. I just always took pride in it.”

Jimenez was born in Los Angeles and grew up in neighboring Simi Valley; her mother, who immigrated from Mexico, worked as a maid and nanny.

“There’s no shame in being a maid,” she says. “People are maids. On TV, the point I make is, this is what I do — not who I am.”

Meanwhile, her roles have become richer and more complex. On The Mick, renewed for a second season, quirky but devoted Alba is an integral part of the cast. Like her character, Jimenez is unpretentious and easily approachable. Small wonder that aspiring actors turn to her for tips and advice.

“I tell them, you need to have a passion for it,” she says. “You sit on the set for hours, and there are just snippets of time when you are in front of the camera. You really have to love what you do to get through the time you hurry up and wait.”

Actors must learn to accept disappointments, too. “One time I had a really big audition and I got super close to a part that everyone told me I was sure to get. It ended up going to someone else. It broke me for a while, but then it taught me not to make any audition the be-all and end-all. Now I go in there and give the best audition, and then I let it go.

“If they don’t like that, then I wasn’t right for that role. I’ll be right for the next.”


This article originally appeared in emmy magazine, Issue No. 5, 2017

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