‘Hot’ couple: Witherspoon, Vergara on women in Hollywood.
Behind Reese Witherspoon’s back, Sofia Vergara was lowering her eyelids in a mock, come hither stare. “You can really tell what Sofia is passionate about,” Witherspoon said, earnestly attempting to make a point about Vergara’s strong personal brand.
When Vergara started cackling, Witherspoon whipped around. “Why are you making that face? The entire time I talk she makes faces behind my back.”
Co-stars in the new comedy “Hot Pursuit,” Vergara and Witherspoon are physical and temperamental opposites. Petite, New Orleans-born Witherspoon, 39, is best known for her performances in dramatic movies like “Wild” and “Walk the Line” and comedies like “Legally Blonde,” and she cultivates a proper, Southern-belle persona filtered through a type-a personality.
Vergara, 42, curvy, born in Barranquilla, Colombia, is best known for her performance as feisty matriarch Gloria Delgado-Pritchett on ABC’S “Modern Family” and her high-profile brand endorsements such as Cover Girl, and she cultivates a spontaneous, hot Latina persona.
What the actresses share is a sharp business sense, which they brought to their work on “Hot Pursuit.” In the movie, which opens Friday, Witherspoon plays an uptight cop charged with protecting Vergara, the widow of a drug lord. The actresses, who developed the movie together, recently gathered to talk about money, media and the challenges of being women in show business.
Q. Reese, you speak some Spanish in this movie. Are you fluent?
Witherspoon: That would be seventhgrade Spanish.
Vergara: When I hear her speak Spanish, I realize why I’m funny to Americans. It was one of the great scenes for me because I would see how she was struggling and suffering. It’s hard to really be acting when you’re translating. The emotion can’t come. So I enjoyed this because she was feeling what I feel every day.
Q, You’re both credited as producers on this. How did the movie come about?
Witherspoon: There wasn’t a lot of development going on for female comedy. Whatever you want to do, you’ve got to sort of do it yourself. I was a big fan of Sofia’s, and I thought it would be a good idea just to talk and see if she even wanted to do a movie together. We talked about a couple of funny ideas, and this is the one we decided to develop together.
Q. Sofia, why do you think there is such a big gap between the size of the Latin moviegoing audience and the number of films starring Latin actors?
Vergara: Mainly, the problem is there aren’t Latin people creating content. Many of them are doing soap operas. It is a lack of
Latin people writing. It’s not the fault I think of an American writer. Usually when you write, you write what you know about. I admire the people who write for Gloria in “Modern Family.” They’re mostly men. Mostly they’ve had wives like Julie Bowen’s character, but they’ve never had a Latin woman.
Q. Reese, during the Oscars you shared the #Askhermore hashtag encouraging journalists on the red carpet to ask actresses about something besides their gowns. Did you feel like you got different questions?
Witherspoon: Yes. I did it about an hour before the show, and it wasn’t meant to say that the clothes aren’t beautiful or well made. It’s just, sometimes the conversation about women at the awards shows becomes so reductive and small, it’s embarrassing. We’re not models. They don’t spend any time asking men what they’re wearing.
Q. Sofia, I read in Forbes that you’re the highest-paid TV actor . . .
Vergara: Don’t listen to all the gossip.
Q. Is that gossip? It’s Forbes. Witherspoon: I think that’s amazing. We as women don’t communicate about how we’re doing financially. I was talking to this woman last night about young men who are actors who roll around with big entrepreneurs and they invest in Twitter and Uber, and there’s not a lot of women rolling around that way. We need to be more candid about those conversations.
Vergara: At the end of the day, women buy more products than men. We are really who spends the money in the house.
Witherspoon: My daughter came home one day crying and said, “Mommy, somebody told me you made a lot of money . . . ” and I was like, “Why are you crying? . . . I worked hard for that. You should never feel embarrassed about a woman doing well in this world.”