‘Devious Maids’ Q&A: Dania Ramirez On Rosie’s Big Decision

Dania Ramirez in ‘Devious Maids’ (Lifetime)

Poor Rosie! Dania Ramirez’s darling “Devious Maids” character has a big decision to make on her Lifetime drama – Spence or Ernesto.

The newly-married-to-Spence (Grant Show) Rosie recently found out her late husband Ernesto (Cristian de la Fuente) isn’t dead at all. He’s alive, and he’s back, and he’s hoping to rekindle his romance with the mother of his child. Dania’s character is facing not just a decision of the heart over two men she’s very attracted to, but a decision where her strong faith plays a big role.

“She’s flawed,” Dania told Access Hollywood of Rosie. “That’s what I love the most about my character is that she is – even though she tries to do the right thing and she tries to live life by making as good of a decision as she can make, she’s still human and I love playing a flawed, humanized character. I feel like people can always relate to that. No matter how good you try to be, and no matter how much you weigh the pros and cons of life, which happens — is this the right decision, is this a wrong decision — she’s still going to make mistakes. She’s not perfect.”

PHOTOS: ‘Devious Maids’

For more details on how Rosie is figuring things out, Access turned to Dania for some hints. She also dished on the search for Naya Rivera’s character – the missing Blanca, and making the documentary, “An American Alien,” about her own family’s immigrant experiences as part of last month’s Immigrant Heritage Month and the Welcome.Us website.

AccessHollywood.com: What did people say on Twitter when they saw Rosie make that huge decision [in last week’s episode — to step apart from both men while she figures things out]?
Dania Ramirez: I think people are torn because I think at the end of the day, Rosie’s torn, and she’s made the [decision] as of right now — and I can’t tell you what’s coming up later on — to try to figure out what the best thing is to do, you know, considering her son, considering her relationship with God, so I think she’s just trying to do the right thing, but she’s also very conflicted. I don’t think this is a decision that she’s making lightly, which is why it was so heartbreaking. It was heartbreaking when I read it, it was heartbreaking when I actually played it, because she does love Spence, but she does have this incredible connection to the first love of her life, which is this guy that she thought was dead, so I think the Tweets were pretty much split between Team Ernesto and Team Spence.

Dania Ramirez and Christian de la Fuente in Lifetime’s ‘Devious Maids’ (Lifetime)

PHOTOS: The Stunning Ladies Of Primetime Television: Character Portraits & Scene Snaps

Access: I’ve got to assume, based on what happened in last week’s episode, that she’s going to have to spend a lot of time on her own and with her girlfriends going forward to try and figure things out.
Dania Ramirez: Ideally she has to figure out the best thing for her, because also, you’ve got to understand Rosie’s – she’s moved by love and family and so her main concerns right now are family and second, finding love and really just wanting to be happy. We do have only 13 episodes (laughs). I don’t think she’s going to be able to be alone for too long.

Grant Show and Dania Ramirez in ‘Devious Maids’ (Lifetime)

Access: Beyond her romantic struggles, it looks like we’re finally going to get to find out more about where Blanca is.
Dania: Yeah, that’s going to be really exciting. Now we’re sort of like stepping into the second sort of chapter for Rosie within the season, which is she’s going to get her hands really dirty within this mystery and… Rosie’s not considered a very devious character ’cause she’s not mean-hearted, or she doesn’t do things that people might consider — like she’s not like Mrs. Powell, who is constantly acting devious. I think from Rosie’s perspective, she just plays her role… to try to get the truth out of people and she’s really gonna — [in] very comedic ways — be playing a bit of a maid detective for the next couple of episodes that that’s going to be really fun to [see].

Access: A maid detective (laughs). Instead of a spy-glass, she has the duster.
Dania: Exactly. She’s playing a little maid detective and doing it all for Blanca.

Access: I love it. This must be a really fun show to work on.
Dania: It is a lot of fun. We do get to play in this fantastical world and it’s a girls show too, which I love because I don’t feel like we have a lot of things in television that are like that. You can watch with a bunch of girlfriends, or even with your boyfriends, if your boyfriends like to sit down with the girlfriends and watch hot girls on TV while their girlfriends are all involved in like what is really happening in these girls lives (laughs). They’re all trying to find love and making mistakes and what are they wearing? … It’s an easy way to escape life, so it is a lot of fun for me to get to go in and dive into that world. This season more than any other season I feel like I have gotten to – I get a script and I don’t know what’s going to happen. And I actually started a hashtag [on] Twitter… #QueQue, which is ‘What? What?’ [There are] so many moments in each episode where I’m like ‘Que? Que?’ like, ‘What happened? I can’t believe that’s going on.’

WATCH: Lifetime’s Devious Maids Los Angeles Premiere

Access: You recently did a documentary called ‘An American Alien.’ Was part of the motivation [to do that] having kids and wanting to tell a story that you could leave for them?
Dania: The motivation was really like – my family, we’re all very close. My husband’s a writer/director and [the] opportunity came to me from… Welcome.Us. There was an immigrant heritage month [in June]. It was something that I wasn’t even familiar with. So when they called me and said, ‘Hey, we know that you’re an immigrant, you have something to say about this,’ I had a discussion with my husband, and I sort of like told him my story and we just mutually came up with something that I could pass on to my children. It was really important for us to get a message across about what my immigrant experience was, what my parents’ immigrant experience was… not only for my children, but I think it’s important as a community and as a society to acknowledge what that really means. And it was important for me, because as a mother of children that are now born in America, that will live their lives as Americans, to really teach them and help them have an understanding from a positive place of like this is – it’s a misconception, but let’s not focus about the negative, let’s focus, like this why we’re here. We should love the fact that we came from really hard working immigrants and that their experience was really hard in order for us to have the freedoms that we have. It wasn’t just because of my children. I think it was more of like where the kind of empire that my husband and I are really trying to build is one of teaching and like trying to share our ideas with the masses if we can, so that’s where that came from.

Access: What were some of the interesting things you learned from family members when you interviewed them?
Dania: What I learned the most from them was really — it’s one thing when you think you know that it was hard for someone, and the sacrifice that they went through. The one thing that I learned the most by actually asking them the questions, and I thank God that my husband was actually able to kind of channel my ideas to… really ask the questions that needed to be asked, because when you’re living it, you don’t see it and so it’s hard for you to actually voice or focus what the intention is behind the things that you’re trying to make. And the questions that [my husband had] me had ask them were things that were sort that opened up the story that I didn’t know.

“Devious Maids” continues Monday at 9/8c on Lifetime.

— Jolie Lash