Phillip Garcia had already had a long career in which he had shown an impressive range both in drama and in comedy, acting in small roles in shows such as Scandal, Telenovela, Criminal Minds, Animal Kingdom and Mayans M.C., as well as in films like Terminator: Dark Fate and Bong Joon Ho‘s Okja. So when his namesake Greg Garcia (My Name is Earl, Raising Hope) cast him as one of the four leads in his new show Sprung, currently streaming on Amazon’s subsidiary Freevee, he was more than ready for stardom. Phillip Garcia grew up in a predominantly Latino neighborhood in San José, California, as a fifth-generation American kid of Mexican background who didn’t speak a word of Spanish, a language his family had lost several generations before he was born. As a kid, he was not accepted by other Spanish-speaking kids who didn’t understand why he didn’t speak it too; later on, as a graduate of the American Musical & Dramatic Academy in Los Angeles, he didn’t understand why he was confined to auditioning for commercials in Spanish, or for stereotypical roles for Latin actors such as the gardener, the gang member or the criminal. In Sprung, he plays Rooster, a jailed man who finds sudden freedom when the pandemic hits, and he and his mother, played by Martha Plimpton, end up sharing their house with Rooster’s former cellmate Jack (Garret Dillahunt) and Jack’s online girlfriend, Gloria (Shakira Barrera). Phillip spoke with us over Zoom about the biggest opportunity of his career and how he has found ways to break down the limitations the industry has tried to impose on him.

How surprised are you by the reception that Sprung is getting?

As an actor, a lot of my family members are, like, “Didn’t you expect this to be huge?” and at the time I think I did a good job of tempering my excitement. I knew it was going to be cool because of Greg Garcia, and I knew by just reading the scripts that there was something there. And I think when I initially wanted to be a part of it was when I read the first pilot and was, like, “Damn, so Greg just knows how to do comedy.” He knows the rhythm that a comedy needs to have. The characters that he writes are interesting and creative. I think there’s a piece of me that knew it could go when I heard that it was going straight to series. Though I only read the first episode, for a company to say, “Hey, we are going to give you ten episodes, go film them,” they had to have read the ten episodes and said, “Oh this is great, there’s something here.” But I think – me being the skeptic that I think that I am – I just see it as, I just try to temper my excitement down, just in case, just to protect my heart a bit. I think we all knew that there was something special when the cast got together, just a unique set of actors. I mean obviously Garret Dillahunt, he does everything, it’s so crazy. I asked him, I was, like, “Dude, how do you choose your roles?” ’Cause he is at the stage where he gets offers and things, so he doesn’t have to audition a whole lot of the time. And he’s, like, “I just try to do something different than what I did the last time.” And Martha came in last minute and she’s such a pro, she’s so clever with her choices. And while we are shooting it, you can’t really see the idiosyncrasies that she includes, and maybe she would say that she doesn’t really think about it and she just does it, and it’s a natural thing from years and years of doing this. But it’s so subtle, her choices, watching it back on screen now. And knowing that the three, Greg Garcia, Garret Dillahunt and Martha Plimpton have worked together before, for me it was such a treat, because they have such a camaraderie, and they were so welcoming to all of us new young kids coming in.  And it’s just cool to see them work, they are like a well-oiled machine. I remember the first day I was so nervous, because I think we all naturally want it to be great. And for me to say, “Oh I didn’t expect it to be great,” I think would be a lie, because I worked my ass off on it. And so did everyone else. 

How do you connect with this dumb character who seems not to deal well with life, but at the same time seems to have a good heart?

It’s funny because I have uncles like this, some of my uncles have traveled on the wrong side of the road and I definitely know guys like this, that have dumb luck in a way.  They are the scariest guys, and sometimes they get in trouble with the law, but at the same time, at parties, at barbecues growing up, they would be, like, “Hey, come over here and give me a hug.” They were always the sweetest people.  But from an actor’s perspective, I would be doing all these back stories with myself to try to understand what the underneath is for me, just to make it maybe a little bit more clear.  Greg did a good job in spelling it out on the page. Rooster’s not the sharpest tool in the shed – he is a lovable guy, but his confidence kind of gets him into trouble.  But for me the most important part is, how do I relate to that?  Yeah, I had to kind of spell it out for myself, and for me the biggest thing was figuring out who my character’s Dad was. Cause in the story, in the first episode you learn that Rooster’s Dad died when he was fixing the antenna on the roof to watch Blue Bloods, and he falls off the roof and he dies when I am, like, five.  So then I think, who would I want to play my Dad if I were casting him? I grew up with movies like Blood In Blood Out, all these super vato type stories or Latino films and stuff. So for me it was, like, maybe Edward James Olmos would be my Dad, or Cheech Marin. And actually I went with that. I sent a photo side by side of Cheech from Cheech and Chong and myself next to it with my mustache I had been growing through the pandemic. And I think I sent that to Greg and he hearted it in a text. So I think from that you figure out and you think, OK, so Rooster didn’t have a Dad growing up, what was that like? I think naturally when you don’t have a father figure in your life, you kind of search for that in the people around you. I think Rooster just got in with the wrong people. I grew up in Alum Rock in San José, I have a lot of friends that went that route.  So I definitely think I know this guy. And I had been around this guy growing up for sure. 

One of the risky options of this show is to go to the early days of the pandemic and to try to make it funny. How was it for you personally?

I did ask myself that early on. And mind you, we shot this during the pandemic, so we were shooting a show about a pandemic set during a pandemic, and shooting it in a pandemic. How crazy that is. I think I just have to refer to Greg on this, because I think it comes down to leadership and he was like, “Look, we definitely are not making fun of it, we are making light of it.” And also, I think he also said, “It’s not about the pandemic, it’s about these characters going through something that we all went through.” And I think at this point I am not alone when I say it’s time. I think we are just at a stage now where we can look back and say, “Yeah, we were kind of silly with the whole self-contaminating, touching our T-shirts and touching things, that was a little silly of us.” I think we want to relate to others who have gone through similar things, and you see it all, and you see Martha kind of listening to the fake news and taking everything that she sees in the news as gospel. Greg did such a good job in balancing the political and the zaniness of the show.

The show is also interesting in that, if you see the cast and the director, you could say, “This is a Latino show.”  But on the other hand, it’s not a Latino show by content.  We don’t need only to do Latino shows that talk about Latino culture, right?

Yes. I feel like we are at a stage right now, in the entertainment industry and beyond, where it’s important to have representation. I’m just glad to be a part of it, I’m glad to be on the wave of Latinx and moving forward in such a way that we can really start to make a difference. And I think we are doing that. I think it’s moving, I think slowly, but surely. And it’s kind of cool to be on set with Shakira and Greg too – I mean, Greg is technically Latino as well, come on. But it’s cool because I would have conversations on set with Shakira, talking about what it’s going to be like having two Latinx leads in a show, in every episode. I think that’s so important because when I was young, I didn’t really see people that looked like me on screen. I saw George Lopez, I saw Mario Lopez, and I saw Cheech and Chong. So to be a part of this new wave, for me, I think is so important. But you are right, I wouldn’t say it is a Latino show per se, and I think that’s good. I think it’s important to see Latinos speaking English: there is definitely a market for that. 

Now you have been working as an actor for 12 years and it seems to me, looking at the kind of characters you have played so far, that you were being offered roles based not on your range as an actor, but on your appearance.  How hard was it for you to fight against this typecasting?

I think early on you bring your headshot to an acting class, and the instructor looks at your last name, Garcia, Phillip Garcia, and – “Do you speak Spanish?” That’s the first question they ask. Then I say, “No, I don’t speak Spanish,” and they are, like, “But your last name is Garcia, you should learn.” And so then I started learning and I started going to Spanish-speaking commercial auditions. And I just remember being completely discounted immediately because of my accent. I could memorize lines in Spanish, but it wasn’t the same as a native speaking Spanish speaker. And so then after a certain point, I was, like, “Well what am I doing here?”  Like, “That is not me, there are other actors who can do that more authentically, why am I trying to be something that I am not?” And then you are faced with this conundrum of, “Who am I?” And it’s been this battle my entire life, this mental battle to figure out who am I. And that’s the biggest piece of advice that I give to young actors is, know who you are and know how you fit. And for me, I’ve played a gardener, I’ve played criminals, I’ve played just the typical Latino roles on TV – which is so sad that that’s what Hollywood is, or was, or still continues to be. But I think at some point – and my co-star Shakira is so inspiring to me because she is such an activist, she is so inspiring to me in terms of that – but it is our job as the actor now to say, “Hey, you know what, I don’t want to do that type of role anymore.” Or, like, dying on shows too, why does the brown or BIPOC person have to die on the show always? Why is the white male lead always the hero?  I think we are starting to see new opportunities come in, and it’s always been my dream to be a superhero.  But yeah, I will say it was tough early on because you take what you can get. You go on a hundred of these auditions and you get one. So you just take what you can get, and early on that’s what I got. 

Things seem to be changing right now…

Yes. And I don’t want to die on TV anymore. My poor grandma, she was the first person I went to when I got Sprung, I told her, “You don’t have to see me die on TV no more, I got a lead role in a show.” How do I deal with it? I don’t know if you have a choice really early on, you kind of just take what you can get. I just want to work and to create and early on, I took a lot of guest star roles and I was always the cyber terrorist or the token ambiguous ethnic guy in all these commercials. But now, you look at commercials and it’s all diverse, it’s Asian, Indian, Mexican, El Salvadorian, which is a really interesting thing. And a lot of my white friends are saying, “I’m struggling, man, I’m having trouble finding work.”  So there’s a balance I think that needs to happen. We all need to be equal, I don’t think it ultimately comes down to the color of your skin.