Fall TV Blog

After releasing another album, Shakira is ready to give acting a shot.

According to the show’s creator, Silvio Horta, the singer is set to appear on Ugly Betty — as herself.

“We’re huge fans of Shakira,” Horta tells PEOPLE. “We had a very memorable moment in the third episode where Betty has a makeover that goes wrong and she struts down the street to ‘Hips Don’t Lie.’ We’ve mentioned her several times over the course of the series and have always wanted to work with her. She’s an enormous Latina icon, as is Betty, and we thought it was a perfect fit.”

As for her plotline: Shakira will be the key to helping a Mode photo shoot get back on track when the magazine is on location in the Bahamas in an episode titled “The Bahamas Triangle.” –Cynthia Wang

CopettiPhotofab/Startraks

It looks like the move to the Big Apple is going to shake things up at Meade Publications.

The Ugly Betty cast showed up to their season 3 premiere party Monday night at New York City’s Highbar ready to gab about what to expect this upcoming season. The biggest news? Betty will get a new love interest!

America Ferrera told PEOPLE that her character, Betty Suarez, has her eye on an East Village musician (played by Val Emmich), but that her affection is a bit unrequited. Ferrera explained: “What’s really exciting about this is that for the first time it’s not easy for Betty. Have you ever noticed that a million guys are after Betty? So that’s what’s really fun about this relationship. It’s a little bit one-sided.”
(more…)

Brazilian super model Adriana Lima will break into the fashionable world of Mode magazine when she makes her acting debut on an upcoming episode of Ugly Betty.

“Adriana has always been a huge fan of Ugly Betty and is thrilled for the opportunity to make a guest star appearance,” says Lima’s rep Liza Anderson.

On a future Betty (returning to ABC Sept. 25, 8 p.m. ET), Lima will be hired to pose on the pages of Mode’s “sizzling hot issue” and will work with Betty Suarez (America Ferrera) on a cover story about the virtues of exotic fruit, including the fictional “tico berry,” which the Vicoria’s Secret model — playing herself — will credit as a booster to her sexy appearance.

But in a twist right out of Betty’s madcap world, Lima, 27, will sport a broken finger from a real-life fall she suffered while on vacation in Croatia.

Lima starts filming next week. – Bryan Alexander

Francis Specker/Landov; BOB D’AMICO/ABC

Mark Consuelos, who has joined the ranks of such stars as Lindsay Lohan, Victoria Beckham, Naomi Campbell and Jerry O’Connell in landing a guest spot on ABC’s Ugly Betty, says his wife Kelly Ripa is “psyched” for him, but that hasn’t stopped her from engaging in some friendly husband-and-wife one-upmanship.

“They did an episode last week with her and Regis,” says Consuelos of Ripa, who will make her own Ugly Betty guest appearance on the show’s Sept. 25 premiere. “So she was like, ‘Aw, I did it first. Gotcha!’

Consuelos begins shooting his scenes Aug. 6, and is clearly looking forward to the experience.
(more…)

Ugly Betty star America Ferrera has nothing but praise for Lindsay Lohan, who’s making a five-episode guest appearance on ABC’s hit comedy.

“It was great,” Ferrera told reporters of working with Lohan during a New York press conference Sunday for Ferrera’s upcoming movie, The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants 2. “It was fun. They wrote a lot of really fun stuff for her character and we had a good time.”

Lohan, who appeared briefly in the show’s season finale in May, plays Kimberly, Betty’s high school nemesis and a fast food waitress at a restaurant called Flushing Burgers.

In addition to living in New York City and Lohan’s guest stint, Ferrera, 24, is also excited about the show’s revamped fashion courtesy of Sex and the City stylist Patricia Field.

“[Pat Field] is designing our show and Betty has very interesting costumes,” Ferrera said. “The fashion is taken to a new level of daring so that will be a lot of fun.”

Season 3 of Ugly Betty beings Sep. 25. – Paul Chi

Karen Neal/ABC

Break out the box cutters and unwrap the bubble wrap, the cast of Ugly Betty has officially moved to New York City.

“I’m totally not unpacked and still living out of a suitcase,” Ana Ortiz told PEOPLE at the Ugly Betty block party in the Jackson Heights neighborhood in Queens, New York, Thursday. “But I’m crashing at my mom’s place right now.”

For the show’s third season, ABC has relocated the entire production from Los Angeles to New York, where the story of Betty Suarez takes place. For native New Yorker Ortiz, who play’s Betty’s sister Hilda, the move to the Big Apple has brought her home — and to where she wants to start a family with musician husband Noah Lebenzon.

“We found a perfect place in Brooklyn Heights. I love the neighborhood. It’s really mellow, gorgeous and a great place to raise a family. I couldn’t resist,” Ortiz said. “I’m looking forward to being a mom.”

For Betty herself, America Ferrera, packing up and moving to New York seems like a homecoming of a different kind. “I love living in New York City,” she said. “I feel like I was here in a past life.” (more…)

If you were wildly anticipating Lindsay Lohan’s guest role on Thursday’s Betty, then you might have been left in an ugly mood. The season finale delivered only a single flashback scene with the actress. She played a mean girl who used Betty Suarez as a human shield during a schoolyard game of dodge ball. (Watch a clip.) Very Hairspray. Anyway, she’ll be back in the fall. Anticipate wildly all summer, if you want.

Betty fans had nothing to complain about, though. It was a fun, campy episode — Naomi Campbell had a cameo playing softball, you know? — but light on drama. Wilhelmina landed at the top of the Mode masthead, ousting Daniel, who learned he had fathered a son with a (recently deceased) French hand model in Paris, and he and the boy bonded. Meanwhile, Betty has to make up her mind between two opposing offers: marriage, proposed by Henry, or a trip to Rome, courtesy of Gio. Only an idiot would pick Henry — but Betty’s actual decision, like Lindsay’s real performance, will have to wait for the third season. –Tom Gliatto

Tell us: What should Betty do?

Karen Neal/ABC

Lindsay Lohan is back to her Mean Girls ways.

In a flashback on Thursday’s season finale of Ugly Betty (8 p.m. ET, on ABC), she plays Kimberly, a classmate of Betty’s, who asks her to be on her dodge ball team. Just when Betty starts to believe the coeds want her for her dodge ball skills, Kimberly launches operation “human shield.”

“Where’s the human shield?” Betty asks, oblivious, as all the girls line up behind her and the dodge balls come flying.

Tell us: What should Betty do to get back at Kimberly?

Betty Suarez has a message for Madonna.

Apparently, her nephew Justin (Mark Indelicato) is a huge fan of the pop superstar and has been playing her new album Hard Candy so much that Betty (America Ferrera) is hoping she can get an autographed copy of the CD for Justin’s birthday. Good luck, Betty!

Listen for songs from Madonna’s album on Thursday’s star-studded finale of the Ugly Betty on ABC (8 p.m. ET).

Lindsay Lohan and Naomi Campbell will be guest stars on the show.

Ugly Betty might be moving to the Big Apple come summer, and Michael Urie, who plays fabulously scheming assistant Marc St. James to Vanessa Williams’s villainous Wilhelmina Slater, is ready to pack up and go on one condition: as long as he and costar Becky Newton can find apartments in the same building. (The two currently live in the same Los Angeles apartment complex.)

“We’re going to have to be neighbors there too, that’s all there is to it,” Urie told PEOPLE at Wednesday’s Hot in Hollywood Legendary Bingo’s 10th anniversary at West Hollywood’s Hamburger Mary’s. “I’m going to do all I can [to make that happen].”

As for what nighborhood the castmates are looking into, Urie says, “I’ll probably stay in Manhattan. I did Brooklyn and Queens for eight years so I think it’s time… I’m an adult!”
(more…)