HOLAwave: Our Adventure at the 2015 Emmy Awards, Part 2

[HOLAwave represents a series of guest blogs by industry insiders giving informative and educational tidbits for the Latino performer. They can range from acting and auditioning advice, tech tips, legal advice, marketing, producing tips, and so on. Get caught up in the wave– the HOLAwave.]

Our Adventure at the 2015 Emmy Awards

[HOLA member Susanna Guzmán had a recurring role in the first season of the Emmy Award-nominated Netflix series "The Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt". As such, she and her husband, HOLA member Anthony Ruiz, were invited to the Emmy weekend. Ruiz tells us what it was like to be at the Emmys.]

We got up at 8am and had leftovers for breakfast (two tamales from last night). Then we got dressed to go to the Nokia Celebrity Gifting Suite (more FREE gifts) a few blocks away at the Staples Center. More of the same, get a free gift, take a picture. This one had better and bigger gifts. Again we where given a young man to carry the gifts. You walk into the Nokia suite and an announcer yells out your name and what you are nominated for. At first we thought, How corny, until we heard “Ladies and Gentleman, let’s welcome a TV icon, Jason Alexander”. Hey if Jason Alexander thought this was a cool place to hang out on a Saturday morning who am I to argue? After an hour of collecting free gifts and smiling for the cameras we left. 

Again, there was one stupid gift that was so STUPID, we just could NOT take a picture. A straw broom. Yes, a broom! Like the kind you find in any campo in any of our Latino countries. I know my grandmother María in Puerto Rico had several. A straw broom! Only in L.A.. And yes the broom was “organic”. Anyways, we decided to walk back to our hotel which was just a few blocks away. It was a nice day, sunny and warm. As we get to the corner of the Nokia Suite we see a crazy black man screaming into his cell phone, it's Emmy nominee Keegan-Michael Key of "Key and Peele". A handsome young man acting crazy because someone had him waiting and he was going to miss out on all the free gifts. Watching him on the phone all agitated made me think: We all like FREE. No matter how much money and fame we might have put the word FREE in front of us and we will follow. He put away the phone, looked at us, we crossed the street. We decide we’ll talk to him about it tomorrow at the Emmys. 

By now it was noon and we had to still buy a dress for another party. Susanna had brought only one dress from New York for the actual Emmy Awards ceremony. Somehow in the hundreds of texts and emails this party got lost. It was a pre-Emmy event hosted by Netflix  and the Emmys for all TV shows on the air. This was big. It was being held at the lawn at Century Park at Century City. An outside party under the stars and with the stars of Hollywood (que nice). So after dropping another truckload of free gifts at our hotel (actually a carload), we decide to have lunch. We found a pub and had a few drinks ("Hollywood lunch") and off to Macy’s we went. 

We hit Macy’s like a SWAT team. Within 20 minutes we found the perfect dress, a man's shirt and a cologne (I left mine in New York). Happy, we strolled back to our hotel to take a nap. The car was picking us up at 7:15pm on the dot. The TV industry takes pride on being very accurate on times. Not 7:13, not 7:16, 7:15pm. This is important because now the story gets interesting. So after making ourselves look pretty for the event, it was time to get dress. You see it coming, right? I get dressed like a good fireman at the sound of the bell. It took me 2 minutes. I’m ready at 6:55pm. (You see it coming right?) Sure you do. At seven my wife calls me over for the ritual we men like to call the CLOSING OF THE GATES. The zipper. So up it went, then it stopped. Down I take it, then up it goes again and it stops. (Here it comes.) Down I bring it again and this time I decide to drive through the “speed bump” and take it home. So up I go and SNAP! She had the dress but in my hand I had the zipper. I broke the zipper. 

I stand there in shock. Now all you Latino men out there know what I said (it’s in our handbook), “¡C*ñ*, se rompió el zíper! ¡EL ZÍPER SE ROMPIÓ!”, then we deflect the blame- “Ese zíper was bad– bad, bad zipper. It’s not my fault!” Now faster than Supergirl (premiering October 26, 2015 at 8:30pm on CBS), Susanna is in her jeans and top running down the street heading towards Macy’s, to buy the same “perfect dress”. It is now 7pm. I did mention that the car is picking us up at 7:15 sharp, right? Up the escalator, second floor, make a right, make a left, pass Michael Kors, turn right, third rack, grab dress, go into dressing room, run out dressed, find a cashier, have the cashier pull up the zipper (I was not touching that thing!), rip tags off, pull out a 20% off coupon (even in the most critical moments woman refuse to pay retail), run out of the store, run to the hotel, stop in front of hotel. It's 7:14pm. We turn around and the car pulls up. Yes, we did it again. We get into the car and rode off laughing and sweating. A half hour later we are going through security that would make the CIA proud. We were in. We spoke and mingled and drank. Who did we meet, you ask? EVERYONE. Everyone that has ever been in television. Only one thing was missing, the PRESS. It was kept that way so that attendees could be themselves and get plastered, before tomorrow's madhouse. It was nice. We talked a lot, drank a lot and mingled with the stars under the stars. Tomorrow: the awards.

[Above, with HOLA members Susanna Guzmán and Anthony Ruiz are Sam Jaeger (top left), Colman Domingo (top right), and Emmy Award winner Loretta Devine (bottom left).] 

To be continued....

Anthony Ruiz is an actor, playwright, screenwriter, director, cinematographer and photographer. Most recently he acted in the films Daughter of God (written and directed by gee Malik Linton, and starring Keanu Reeves, Ana de Armas, Mira Sorvino and Christopher McDonald) and Custody (written and directed by James Lapine, and starring Emmy Award winner Viola Davis, Ellen Burstyn, Hayden Pannettiere, Catalina Sandino Moreno and Olga Merediz); and in a commercial with John Leguizamo and (once again) Olga Merediz.