Actor Jon Huertas seems to have a knack for making himself at home on long-running television series. For eight seasons he portrayed homicide detective Javier Esposito on ABC’s Castle. Now, he is in season four of NBC’s This is Us, portraying Miguel Rivas on the large-ensemble comedy-drama. The series has recently received the announcement that it has been extended two more seasons.
“Miguel is a different kind of personality than I portrayed in Castle, where I played a police detective who had a loose, comedic rapport with my detective partner. We shot the show like a kind of detective noire series, infused with romantic comedy. It was fun, but it was much different than a family show like This is Us, which covers so many different kinds of issues, from body image to racial identity, inter-rational relationships, adoption, people with special needs. It is a much different type of show. You have to play your characters a little more grounded and real.”
The series chronicles the Pearson family across the decades, following Jack (Milo Ventimiglia) and Rebecca (Mandy Moore) as young parents in the 1980s, to the present day lives of their 37-year-old children, Kevin (Justin Hartley), Kate (Chrissy Metz) and Randall (Sterling K. Brown), searching for love and fulfillment.
Huertas’ Miguel began as a recurring character in Season One, a blue-collar salesman, who became friends with Jack. In season two, he became a series regular. “Now in season four, I know that my character, in the minds of the audience, is becoming more welcome, more integrated into the Pearson family, helping out the family and eventually becoming part of the family. In terms of the series timeline, Miguel has grown from someone who was a salesman to someone who owns his own construction company by the time he retires. He came from almost nothing, migrating from Puerto Rico to Pennsylvania, not being able to speak English, to becoming prominent in his field, the construction industry. As the series moves on, we are going to see little bit more of his personal arc.”
Huertas own personal arc is also interesting. “I was raised in New York until I was 13, but I was actually born in a hospital in Virginia,” he says. “I wanted to be an actor since I was in the second grade, but I didn’t come from a family with money. I didn’t have an opportunity to go to college. So, I forged my own path as an adult. I enlisted in the Air Force, which paid for my education, 75 percent of my tuition, which I did while still in the service. The universities from all over the country allow you to do correspondence. I enrolled at TCU in Texas. Of course, I got deployed to many places and I just earned my credits wherever I was.”
Huertas Served as an aircraft nuclear/conventional weapons specialist, participated in Operaton Just Cause in Panama and Operation Desert Storm in Iraq. “That’s why it takes military students a long time to earn the usual four-year Bachelor’s Degree,” he chuckled. “I was in the Air Force for eight years. As soon as I was discharged I moved to Los Angeles to launch an acting career. What I took from the military a sense of discipline and initiative that helped me not get discouraged, to just stay with it and keep moving forward.”
Indeed. Huerta got his first break in the ‘90s doing an ABC movie of the week, Spring Fling. “During the filming I met a guy who introduced me to his mother,” he recalls. “She became my first agent.” In 1998, Huertas was featured in the romantic drama, Why Do Fools Fall In Love? opposite Halle Berry and Ben Vereen. The next year he appeared in two films, the horror movie, Cold Hearts and the action movie, Stealth Fighter. From 1999 to 2000, he played Brad, a witch hunter, in Sabrina, the Teenage Witch. In the 2000s, his career took off, appearing in many films, but his biggest role was in 2008 as Sergeant Espera in HBO’s miniseries, Generation Kill. Then in 2009, Huertas began his eight-season series regular stint in Castle.
As Huerta says, he wants to keep moving forward, which has included directing. “I’ve been doing that for a while,” he reveals. “I just directed something last week. I also directed a Christmas special for ABC for the Home for the Holidays series. I produced my first film in 1999. It is very important for me as a Latino, having 25 years experience in this industry, to use that experience behind the camera.
“We don’t have a lot of Latinos who are directors. In all my experience acting in Hollywood, I’ve been directed just once by a Latino, someone I could identify with who had some of the same life experiences that I’ve had. So, I have felt a huge responsibility to step into those shoes. I want to assist in making that transition for Latinos as directors, writers and producers during the next few years. This is important and long overdue.”