Ugly Betty's Tony Plana: Our Favorite TV Dad

Sara De Boer / Retna Ltd.

Every time we see Ugly Betty's Ignacio Suarez pull a batch of enchiladas out of the oven, or offer unsolicited (but straight from the heart) advice to his daughters Betty and Hilda, we secretly wish we were in their shoes. Endlessly nurturing and intensely protective, Ignacio has become this generation's iconoclastic Latino father figure. But Tony Plana, the man who puts on an apron over his short-sleeved shirt week after week to play Ignacio, is no stranger to fatherhood himself.

With a daughter (Isabel) entering high school, and a son (Alex) headed to Yale this fall, Tony has managed to beat the odds and raise compassionate, motivated kids in a generation plagued by increasing teen pregnancies and adolescent crime. In honor of Father's Day, Tony spoke to us about bringing up teenagers in America, his conventionally-dysfunctional Cuban family, and what makes Ignacio Suarez TV's favorite papi.

You were born in Cuba and lived there for several years before immigrating to the United States. What was your family like back home?

Dysfunctional! We were poor, but passionate. We had a live-in grandmother that was always fighting with my grandfather and us children watching it all and suffering right along with them, but at the same time we were very much there for each other, very involved with each other.

Our father was very distant, as a of lot Latino fathers are, so my father did not interact with us in terms of activities in school, sports and all that. He was a very much a detached individual. I think that has been the M.O. of the stereotypical Latino father.

Did you use any of that as background for Ignacio Suarez, your character on Ugly Betty?

Yeah, I went the opposite of that. I think [Ignacio] is one of the few Latino men on the planet that likes to cook clean and do laundry, and is very fulfilled by it. He feels that the mother has passed, no one is there to do it, the kids are busy doing their thing. So I am very proud of that because there is a very feminine side to Ignacio.