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Cloud Call Center Community Featured Article

TMCNet: Estrada: Hispanic TV icon for 'Hire'

[January 18, 2008]

Estrada: Hispanic TV icon for 'Hire'

(Albuquerque Journal (NM) (KRT) Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) Jan. 18--You can still call him "Ponch." Erik Estrada played Officer Francis Llewellyn "Ponch" Poncherello in the TV show "CHiPS" in the late 1970s and early 1980s. He was the iconic motorcycle cop.


These days, he's still acting. He stars in the made-for-TV -- and filmedin-Albuquerque -- "Husband for Hire,"

which will premiere at 6 p.m. Saturday on the Oxygen Network at Comcast channel 118. It also stars Mark Consuelos, Mario Lopez, Nadine Velazquez and Tempestt Bledsoe. It's one of four New Mexico-filmed television projects on the air this week.

Though he's played hundreds of characters, including himself on the recent reality TV show "Armed and Famous," it's Ponch people remember.

"Every day," he said, people call him Ponch. He doesn't mind. It's a badge of honor, he told the Journal. "I think it's great, Ponch was originally Poncharelli, and I made it Poncharello."

With an "o" instead of an "i," the character became Hispanic.

Now, almost 30 years since he was a police officer on TV, he's a real cop, arresting people and contributing to the national task force Internet Crimes Against Children.

But the role of Ponch on "CHiPs" was groundbreaking television. Estrada played one of the first mainstream Hispanic characters on TV.

"We had Desi Arnaz, and we had Ricardo Montalban, but those guys were movie stars. In TV, we didn't have that. I'm glad I could do what I could do," said Estrada, who is Puerto Rican.

Ironically, though it was playing a cop on TV that made him famous, his lifelong dream was to be a real cop.

"I was going to be a New York City cop instead of an actor," he said. "This girl I liked was an actress. I said, 'I can act. It's just words with some attitude.' ''

He took classes, joined workshops and performed in a troupe with Freddie Prinze in the early 1970s. He gave himself 10 years to make it and he made the big move to L.A. to try his hand at TV.

"If nothing happens by the time I'm 30, I'll move back," he said he told himself. "At 27 I got lucky. At 57, I got to do a reality show and become a real cop."

When he joined "Armed & Famous," he had the chance to go through a police academy (with Jack Osbourne, Trish Stratus and La Toya Jackson) and become a real, sworn officer.

"I'm a real police officer now. I give them 96 hours a year," he said. He serves in Muncie, Ind.

He's also a sworn deputy in Lynchburg, Va., and is a member of ICAC.

He's become interested in Internet crimes because he has a 7-year-old daughter, he said.

"I want to contribute. I want to walk in as the real deal, not just a celebrity," Estrada said.

And, yes, he has arrested people.

His biggest acting success since "CHiPs" was easily "Dos mujeres, un camino," where he played Johnny, the truck driver in the mid-1990s. Though the show was a success, Ponch -- um, Estrada -- isn't fluent in Spanish.

"I learned to read Spanish and speak it properly," he said. "I grew up in New York City, and in Spanish Harlem shining shoes and working in laundromats. I had to deal in English and I lost all my Spanish."

"When I was offered this novela I said, 'I can't do that,' '' he said, simply because he was unsure of his Spanish.

The producers told him he could read off a cue card, but Estrada didn't want to fake his Spanish.

"I tried to blow these guys off," he said. "I told my manager to tell then I wanted $500,000 for 100 episodes. Immediately they said OK. They gave me everything I asked for."

So how did he learn competent Spanish?

"Berlitz, baby. Eight hours a day," he said. "The show was so big, we did 457 shows."

AND THE OTHERS ...

Warm up the TiVo because three other New Mexico projects are on TV this week.

"Breaking Bad" was filmed in New Mexico and features Bryan Cranston ("Malcolm in the Middle") as a high-school chemistry teacher gone bad. The show airs at 8 p.m. Sunday on AMC.

New Mexico's first big TV show, "Wildfire," is returning with new episodes. The popular teen drama airs at 7 p.m. Monday on ABC Family.

And if you missed last week's premiere of

"Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles," you can catch more at 8 p.m. on KASATV, Channel 2. It featured quite a bit of Albuquerque, if you knew where to look. The show's premiere, two one-hour episodes that aired Sunday and Monday, laid out the plot for the next episodes.

Read more about these shows, and check out the week's television listings in Saturday's Entertainer magazine inside the Journal.

SEND US YOUR TIPS: If you know of a film shooting in the state, or are curious about one, e-mail film@abqjournal.com.

To see more of the Albuquerque Journal, or to subscribe to the newspaper, go to http://www.abqjournal.com.

Copyright (c) 2008, Albuquerque Journal, N.M.
Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services.
For reprints, email tmsreprints@permissionsgroup.com, call 800-374-7985 or 847-635-6550, send a fax to 847-635-6968, or write to The Permissions Group Inc., 1247 Milwaukee Ave., Suite 303, Glenview, IL 60025, USA.

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