Tomas Milian’s work includes art films, spaghetti westerns
Miami Herald
By Hal Boedeker
Herald Television Critic
Though Tomas
Milian, of Coral Gables, will debut as a “Cuban Archie Bunker” on a new CBS
series Sunday, he is the most unlikely of sitcom actors.
How many TV
actors studied with Marilyn Monroe at the Actors Studio? Or starred in
spaghetti westerns? Or worked with Italian directors Luchino Visconti.
Michelangelo Antonioni and Bernardo Bertolucci.
Milian came to
the sitcom Frannie’s Turn via Havanna, the 1990 Robert Redford
flop. A casting director for the Carsey-Werner Co., producers of Roseanne
and the Cosby Show, saw Milian play the villainous chief of the secret
police. Carsey-Werner wanted to see his comedic qualities.
“I auditioned
as an Italian American,” Milian said in a phone interview, “They decided since I
Love Lucy, there hasn’t been a Cuban husband. So they decided to make him
Cuban.”
No problem
Milian 59, left Cuban in 1956 to pursue an acting career. A year later, he
joined the Actors Studio, whose students included Paul Newman, Marlon Brando
and Monroe. “She was always sitting next to me.” Milian said, “She was very
sweet, like an angel.”
Good reviews
for an Off-Broadway play took Milian to Italy, and one movie followed another.
He stayed for 31 years.
He began in
artistic films moved onto spaghetti westerns (he was often the bad guy) and
later specialized in action movies. He created Monezza, a popular thief-turned
policeman in 16 movies.
“Monezza was
supposed to be agile and extroverted,” Milian recalled, “I was getting fat,
losing my hair.” So he returned to the United States to start over. He played a
tough general who slapped his son in Miami Vice and a drug-running
millionaire on Murder, She Wrote.
In Frannie’s
Turn, he plays the opinioned Joseph Escobar, who can’t understand his wife,
Frannie (Miriam Margolyes). “He wants to be in command in the house,” he said.
“His word has to be followed.” An increasingly impatient Frannie tells him
where to go.
Milian is
troubled by jokes about Fidel Castro and revolution in Sunday’s premiere. “I
don’t want to offend people who suffered a lot, including my mother.” he said.
“I just would have gone without it myself. I have to interpret what they give
me to do. I think the man I’m playing is very lovable, with a big heart. He’s a
good person, but he won’t give his wife her rights.”
The second
episode, to be seen in the series’ regular 8 p.m. Saturday time slot next week,
features a joke about Cuba that could be “touchy politics,” Milian said. “But I
have asked for respect to the people who have suffered with the Cuban
situation… it’s not going to happen again.”
Milian has
owned his Coral Gables home since 1968, and his mother lives nearby. He and his
wife commute among the Gables, Venice, New York and now Los Angeles.
“The show is
getting better day after day,” he said. “I hope the Cubans in America are proud
that a Cuban is being recognized as a talent.”
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