Brooklyn Nine-Nine's Melissa Fumero on How Timing Worked Out For the Show and Her Baby | Unfiltered

my parents at me down they were like this is how we're gonna make it work I'm gonna try not to cry but they basically we're like we're gonna empty our savings you're gonna take out a lot of loans and afterwards my dad said this is what I love to watch you do the most hi I'm Melissa Fumero and today I am unfiltered I'm taking off all my makeup and answering some questions if someone was meeting me for the first time I would describe myself as cheery nice and hopefully funny but it really depends on the day I have a lot of practice so I'm originally from New Jersey Northeast New Jersey about 13 miles outside of Manhattan my parents are Cuban I was born here we moved to this town called Lyndhurst when I was six and Lyndhurst at the time was mostly Italian and Irish but a lot of kids I grew up with had immigrant parents I didn't I never felt weird that my parents had really thick accents because so many of the houses I went into someone had an accent and there were like a lot of racial jokes and kidding around growing up but pretty much everyone got like a little piece of it and some groups got it worse than others what are you in that town there was a dance in theater school when I found that place I was about I think 10 or 11 and it was right after I saw my first Broadway show and that was like oh I found my home like I found the place that I feel the most myself and I don't have to worry about what I'm saying or what I look like and that was really like a haven for me and offense pretty fluently but when we were littler and my when my brother started elementary school the teacher called my parents in and asked them what they were speaking at home and they said Spanish and she was like me it's really messing him up at school and so my parents got scared and you know especially I think being immigrants they were like the whole reason we've been through everything we've been through it so their kids could do better than us and succeed here so they didn't stop speaking Spanish at home but they definitely stopped forcing us to speak Spanish but I don't really speak Spanish with anyone outside of my family because I'm really insecure about it I feel like immigrant parents sometimes fall into like two groups like there's the parents that are like you are going to be a doctor or a lawyer and make a lot of money and then there's the immigrant parents that are like I want you to be successful and happy and healthy but I don't care what you do because the reason we went through all of this is so that you could have freedom to do whatever you want and I had those parents especially escaping from Cuba that like makes sense where all their freedoms were stripped away and they were like we came here so you could be free free to do whatever you want but also don't like totally mess up your life every year I would want to take dance classes or acting classes and every year it was sitting down at the table with my dad and him saying this is how many classes you happen you can take you have to choose and then like me bring and be like and then I don't think it was until I got the acceptance letter to NYU that my parents are like maybe maybe maybe she can do this they were just really excited and really proud and I remember when I got the acceptance letter I was like it's okay and now we can't afford it it's enough for me to know that I got in and then again my parents sat me down they were like this is how we're gonna make it work I'm gonna try not to cry but they basically were like we're gonna empty our savings you're gonna take out a lot of loans I had like little scholarships that I got from NYU and you're gonna live at home then I remember towards the end of NYU I did a play in a theater festival in New York and my parents came to see it and afterwards my dad said this is what I love to watch you do the most you'd love to watch you act more than anything I'm pretty sure I cried because I don't think he'd ever like super articulated it and I was like oh thing like really have my back a mess yeah so I got lucky there so I booked my first job which was a soap opera would like to live for hours after my last exam of college which is um insane it was insane that I got the call that day that job completely changed my life I first of all was working right away which was something I didn't expect apology I was doing this really dramatic acting gig which I also didn't expect and I paid off my student loans pretty quickly which I did not expect and then I met my future husband Mike two years into the gig which I really didn't expect it was just this speeding train that I felt like I just jumped on and held on as best I could till my contract was up i sat through a whole play once so I can get through anything I took you to that play and you said you loved it because I did Oakland nine-nine was just like another audition and then I had a callback and I remember the callback was like right around the holidays and then nothing got a call in like January February your screen testing for that Andy Samberg pilot and I was like oh my gosh amazing I went into it like there's no way this was happening it was like five days later I think that I got the call that I had booked it I just call apps on the floor crying and then immediately after was terrified because then I had to actually do the thing and like try to pull it off yeah I husband and I kept having the baby talk should we try she'd go for it and we kept putting it off like a year after year and then it felt like the universe is like oh my god if you guys don't like that push to do this you're never gonna do it so we got a surprise pregnancy that weirdly timed out brilliantly where my due date was two weeks after we're supposed to wrap Brooklyn nine-nine so we felt like okay this is meant to be this feels very serendipitous and we were after we got over our initial shock we were very very excited working pregnant was not my fave I have a baby that's kicking me in the ribs while I'm trying to say my lines well I'm playing this like crazy character who's pretending she's pregnant because at this point I was so huge they were like we have to figure out a way to like write this in without her being pregnant so my character went undercover her as a pregnant lady you were gonna buy it do I look pregnant I mean I guess I can see it the day my son was born also ended up being the day that we got picked up for our fourth season so it was like all these weird things tied into like the timing of Brooklyn nine-nine and my husband picked up my phone and he was like you got another season you have a million texts on your phone I think I've always been a little secretly interested in directing started like putting the work in of like shadowing testing my knowledge at work which was also just fun to see how much I had learned at work how much was like already in my brain that I didn't know was there I loved hanging about it I do a bathroom oh okay of you to do it for the first time in this like super loving and supportive environment was incredible and I'm I'm so grateful that they gave me the opportunity to go for it when I remember when I first started seeing myself on the soap opera it just enhanced all of my insecurities I get to go to work and act every day the thing I've always wanted to do and someone's paying me to do that I don't want to be the person that misses out on all of the the joy and sort of this moment of all your hard work coming to fruition because because I think Mike torsos too short that's the thing too is everybody has their things I mean I'm gonna try to work really hard on being nicer to myself and not doing this anymore I don't want to all I'm doing is missing moments and missing life and there's definitely something about having a kid that makes you feel sort of powerful too because you're like oh my god my body did this and I survived it and eventually felt like myself again and when I did feel like myself again I was like oh it's so good to see you again it's a journey like any one and I think you have to find what works for you to find your version of your best self and the spirit of this interview to you guys I didn't even cover up my grades amazing yeah that's fun you guys I almost cried like a bunch of times what is it about this room [Music]

Channel: ET Style

Views: 1,417,501

Rating: 4.9773793 out of 5

Keywords: etstyle, et style, entertainment tonight style, entertainment tonight, etonline, Melissa Fumero, Melissa Fumero brooklyn nine nine, Melissa Fumero amy santiago, Brooklyn nine nine amy santiago, brooklyn nine nine jake and amy, unfiltered, et unfiltered, melissa fumero pregnant during brooklyn 99, Melissa Fumero husband, Melissa Fumero interview, Melissa Fumero brooklyn 99, brooklyn 99 season 6

Id: TXNGvTwhdEE

Length: 10min 14sec (614 seconds)

Published: Thu May 09 2019

Reddit Comments

[u/YOUREABOT]

What a stunning natural beauty.

[u/BKeaton2131975]

I kept waiting for her to look “bad” after the makeup came off, but no, she just looked amazing.