Efren Ramirez

0:03Hey, can I talk to Matt, please? That's me. Hey, what's up, Matt? It's deep for in Ramirez. How are you? Good. Where are you, man? I'm in Edmonton, no, no. Really? I'm in Los Angeles, my home. My home in that. Nice, man. Are you working today? Are you just chilling? What are you up to? No, no. I just got done working on a film with Will Perle. So is it wrapped? Are you still kind of out here just done for the day? Yeah, we're wrapped now. So it's all good. And I get to prepare myself for Halloween, right? Yeah, well, what are you going to be? I think I'm going to be a gorilla. A gorilla? Like a full-on gorilla? Or are you just going to paint your face kind of thing? No, like a hopeful, long gorilla. And then my friend told me, well, you know what? Do you want to just dress up as Pedro and just walk around? You can see if people recognize you.

0:50That would be funny. You would win every costume party. Yeah, huh? I'm at a convention that is a costume contest. I show up and they're like, sorry, you lose. But I'm him. I'm him. Let's start with the Will Ferrell film though. What tell me about it? Well, I live in a field called Casa de mi Parle, which means half of my father. It's an ex- Will Ferrell project. It's him speaking on Spanish. No way. Yeah, yeah. And when it's Will Ferrell comedy, it's funny. What are you in the film? I play his best friend. And my character's name is Estemon.

1:35And it stars Diego Luna as well as Gil Garcia Bernal and Will Ferrell and Dennis Rodriguez. And I mean, as I said before, the style and the structure of this piece is different because Will Ferrell has ever done anything in Spanish. So to take it to that leaf, you're like, OK, let's see how far I can get. And he's great. And the way he's done is it's funny. How's his Spanish? Good. Really? He's got you worked with a trainer with the coach for about two months prior working on the film. So I know it can be released sometime in the summertime, next year. So it's funny. Nice. How was your Spanish? Spanish, your first language or no? No, my second language.

2:22I grew up in Los Angeles. So it's like, you know, you're not getting English. That doesn't mean your first language is not going to be Spanish growing up in LA. No, true. But you would think that just to give, you know, I'm glad you think, OK, but the primary language is Spanish, but no, but English. No, no, I didn't ask. I get that. My twin brother and me actually didn't want to speak Spanish when we were little kids. So my parents and my brother and me to go to my grandparents in the project in East LA. Oh, no. Really? Yeah, we lived it for about two years. And in the two years, we watched Spanish television, Spanish music, spoke Spanish when a church in Spanish. So that's how we were able to learn Spanish. Crazy. And you're speaking Spanish in the film, I assume. Yeah.

3:07And it's a specific type of Spanish from Mexico. So you have to be very, very accurate. No, really? And I guess, is it going to be released everywhere? Is it going to be? Yeah, yeah, it will be released everywhere. Wow. Subtitled, I assume, probably for us up here in Canada because we don't have many Spanish speaking people. It is Spanish in second language. No, man, we got French up here. It's a whole new ball game. You guys should make a film in French next time, actually. I don't think it'd sell very well, mind you. But you never know. Eastbound and down. So there's two episodes left in the season. There is. There is. And everybody wants to know what happens next. Yes, that was my next question. Keep watching the show, man. Yeah, fair enough. I didn't think you'd give me anything,

3:53but I thought I'd try. But maybe you do know a little more about this, because they're talking Danny McBride to take over for Steve Carell in the office. And I'm sure you hang out with him often. Is he thinking about it? Is that something that's going down? It's quite like the talk of Hollywood. Like everybody talks about who was fit in the seat, especially some show of that caliber. But I, myself, personally say that Danny would do a great job in working in the office and taking over, because he has, he can carry that weight. Maybe carry on the character of that time. So I mean, working with Danny, he's kind of down at the normal where we're doing the takes. We would do what's scripted, but then after that,

4:39the director goes right and simplifies the season where we can go. And for every actor, that's every actor's dream, because you want to be able to go, OK, how? What extremities can we go? Right. And mind you, it's not TV, it's HBO, right? Yeah, well, yeah, there are no limits. Well, I'm sure there are some, but not really. No, there are. There are no limits. Well, that's good. Is that one of your, did you do a lot of improv or any of that stuff as a kid? Is that what your roots are? I did, actually. In Los Angeles, like growing up, I would do a lot of plays. And then I would watch people on TV and go, how does that happen? How does it want to appear on TV? So I would take the bus from East LA to Hollywood or to Beverly Hills and Chaima, like a study acting.

5:25I would do some, I would do an improv sketch group, and then we would do improv on Venice Beach. No, wow. $7 and then eat burgers, you know. So it was always so much fun to be able to just go and jump into scenes and play. That's awesome, man. And how different is that from doing, it must be very different to, I assume you're part of this animated TV series that they're doing now for Napoleon. What? No, I can't. You're not part of it. I'm so sorry. You're like, oh, sorry. Yeah, let me talk to Wilmer. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. I mean, for years, they had talked about it because of the success of Napoleon Dynamite. And they wanted to go, well, what can we do next? How far can we take it?

6:10And there are several ideas of having to do, like, I don't want to do a sequel or even a prequel. But the animated series is just a great way to go. Because even just recently I had a gun to the museum and there was a bunch of kids who were like, what, 10, 12 years old. And they saw me and they went bananas. And I thought, wait a minute. The Napoleon Dynamite shows, it came out, six years ago. Yeah, that's crazy. Because you're probably about five, six years old. So that's going to be cool. It's going to be great. Because we hit the audience of all of them. Crackers is great. Yeah. When can we expect to see it? Like, what's the deal with it? I'm still going to come up sometime in March or April. And it's got the original cast of Napoleon Dynamite. Cool. And any new information was hitting me up on my Twitter.

6:59Right. You know, any new information I get, I'll be posting up on Twitter. Well, why don't you plug your Twitter? What is your at? At what? It's just after it remarads that the Twitter info. Ah, there you go. Perfect. You put down my name. And then there you go. Follow me on Twitter. And then follow me and I'll follow you. Very nice. And I will do so after this interview. I heard you chose Napoleon Dynamite over the Alamo. I did. I was working on a TV show called, I don't know if you remember it, it's called Even Stephen with Charlotte Buck. Brink. Kind of not really though. What happened? Oh, I kind of remember it, but not really. It was a Disney show. And I got two auditions with from the point dynamite and the album for the Alamo. And my idea, the Alamo is a big studio picture

7:45with Billy Pothor and Dennis Quaid. And I thought, OK, why? You got hired for this film. But then, I just got hired for the point dynamite. And the point dynamite was, it was a lead role, it was a character role. And it was a bigger risk and a bigger, stronger choice. And you know what? Let me just go with that. I'm surprised that it blew by the dead, but I'm grateful to it and going, wow. All right. And then we run with this. And then you just keep doing great movies. Right. Yeah, there must be certain roles for certain actors and different people like Napoleon with you that kind of not define you, but you know you owe everything that happens afterwards kind of to that in a way. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And as an actor, you, after the point dynamite, there are a lot of films that are offered to me. They're a quite interesting character.

8:31And you want to go, I could take the money and run with it. But then what's the point of everything that I'm doing? And with the success and the point that I've been able to hit, it was like a shot heard around the world, you know, from a teacher's to the bobble head, the action figure, to the little, even little balls. You know, I'm like, wow, hey, that's me. I was able to take different types of roles. That's more the reason why I didn't like the crank series where I played Transvestite. Right. Well, you know, I did other films where I had gained a lot of weight or I just keep changing, you know, and to me, being able to do that now in films where I'm able to pick and choose where I want to go. That's awesome. Yeah, well, that's the prime place to be as an actor, I would think so. Yeah. And it would allow you to do other things as well,

9:18like write a book. Yeah. Like that segue? That wasn't bad. That is like, right in, like, do it. But in between player and opponent dynamite, I would go to high school and move to theater and perform for high school students and do good stuff. So after the point dynamite, I was able to go to not only in high school, but to university, then talk about education. So, and even, I gotta say this, before the point dynamite, I would actually DJ as a day job. So after the film, I was able to DJ in different places. I even DJed in Edmonton. Oh, no way. Yeah, I can't remember the name of the club. That's OK. But I know it's like a lot of tech music,

10:03a lot of how to music up there. Yeah, we got a good time. And you're still doing that now? You're still DJing around? Yeah, I'm going to be DJing in Los Angeles for Halloween, for Halloween party, pretty cool. Well, you're going to look like Deadmau5s then with your big gorilla costume. Exactly. Exactly. I don't have much of light in my face. Yes. I pass out my books. Yeah, that's it. Talking about that, to me being able to be a public speaker to university and talk about education, talk about theater history, it was one of a great outlet for me to be able to connect with my generation. So when I was a poet, my teacher's saying, you know what, you and your producing partner should write a book and I thought, well, yeah, what are the stuff to make that happen? And we did just that.

10:49So we promoted it and put the book out there. And it had a great review and great response. Right. Direct your own life. People can pick it up, I assume, at all major bookstores. That's absolutely right. And it really is the sky is the limit. And if you really pick a dream, go after it. And you have to create steps for yourself to actually make it into reality. That's fantastic. Before I let you go, we do something called five questions. One word answers. You got it. Acting or DJing? Acting. Leonard McCartney. Leonard. Improver scripts. That's hard. Improv. Roll your most proud of. The point I like. All right. And one word, Efren Ramirez.

11:39The future. That's not cocky at all. That's all. I said I could have two words, but yeah. Yeah, no, that's fine. That's all good.