Ana Ortiz knows exactly what many viewers still see when they hear her name. For millions, she will always be Hilda Suarez, the sharp-tongued, warm-hearted sister from Ugly Betty, one of the most beloved Latina characters in modern television.
But Ortiz has spent years building a career that stretches far beyond that breakout role, from the glamorous intrigue of Devious Maids to the emotional family terrain of Love, Victor. Now she is asking audiences to meet her somewhere very different, in the quiet, controlled, emotionally withheld world of Apple TV+'s Imperfect Women.
The new eight-episode thriller, created by Annie Weisman and based on Araminta Hall's novel, follows the fallout after a crime shatters the decades-long bond among three women. It's a story about being bonded by experiencing similar traumas, guilt, retribution, love, betrayal, and the compromises that alter lives forever. The series has been a hit since its March 18, 2026, premiere, with Elisabeth Moss, Kerry Washington, and Kate Mara leading the ensemble. Ana Ortiz plays Detective Bethany Ganz, one of the figures pulling at the threads of the mystery.
For Ortiz, Bethany represented something she had not often been asked to do.
"That is such a good question. Thank you, thank you, thank you for asking it," she told this reporter when I asked whether the detective's restraint had been written into the character or whether she had brought that stillness to the role herself. "It definitely had to be a contrast, I think. And it was really, actually challenging to sort of keep her calm and cool."
That challenge, she said, was not small.
"It was the first time really since I've been acting that I had to just do less and just be, you know, contained," Ortiz explained. Bethany is not a woman who spills emotion or telegraphs what she is thinking. She watches, absorbs, and holds back. "She had to be, yes, a contrast to their sort of complete mania and craziness (of the other women.) But also, she doesn't want to give things away, right? Like she doesn't want them to know what she knows."
That helps explain why Bethany lands with such force in Imperfect Women. In a series built on volatile intimacy, damaged trust, and old emotional wounds, Ortiz plays the person who enters the room without flinching. She is the investigator, but she is also the audience's counterweight, someone standing just outside the emotional storm, studying every move.
For an actress as expressive as Ortiz, that interiority was a departure.
Her best-known roles have often been women with quick rhythms, emotional velocity, and unmistakable cultural texture. Hilda in Ugly Betty was funny, loyal, and impossible to ignore. Marisol in Devious Maids brought intelligence and steel to a series that turned a soap premise into a mainstream hit. On Hulu's Love, Victor, Ortiz delivered one of her most nuanced performances as Isabel Salazar, a mother forced to confront her own beliefs as her son came into his own. She also has credits in Whiskey Cavalier, Goosebumps: The Vanishing, The Mindy Project, How to Get Away with Murder, and black-ish, proof of how steadily and widely she has worked across genres.
Even so, Bethany may be the role that best reveals her discipline.
Ortiz laughed when I pointed out that, Latina or not on the page, Bethany still seemed to carry a trace of Latina judgment in the way she looked at the women around her. Her answer was instant and perfect: "A Latin woman is going to do what a Latin woman is going to do."
She also connected that freedom to the atmosphere on set. Ortiz described Imperfect Women as a production shaped by women at every level, from producers and writers to directors and department heads. "It was really comfortable, and I think freeing," she said. "It was just an experience that I hadn't really ever had before on a set." For an actress with a career as long as hers, that is not a throwaway compliment. It is a measure of how unusual the environment felt.
The themes of Imperfect Women also struck a personal chord. Beneath the crime plot, the series is deeply interested in female friendship, especially the kind built over years through changing lives, disappointments, and reinventions. Ortiz lit up when the conversation moved there.
"I think that especially female friendships are so complicated and so deep and so intense, much more so than any of my relationships have been with men," she said. Then she offered the kind of quote that tells you exactly who she is off-camera, too. Her best friend, her comadre, has been in her life since she was 11. That relationship, she said, is a "cactus friend," one that can survive long periods without tending and still bloom when it matters. "The older I get, the smaller my circle has gotten, but it's gotten so much stronger and tighter," she reveals while mentioning the women who remain essential in her life, including Judy Reyes, Justina Machado, and Devious Maids co-star Rebecca Wisocki.
That idea, the durability and mess of female loyalty, is why she believes the emotional logic of Imperfect Women works. "I think the relationship with these women on Imperfect Women makes perfect sense," Ortiz said. "We do fight, we do fight. We have all the complications and all the things."
And yet nostalgia is never far behind when Ortiz is in the room. When I asked about the possibility of returning to Ugly Betty, she did not hedge.
This New York City-born Boricua has also been actively revisiting her Ugly Betty legacy through Viva Betty, a podcast she co-hosts with fellow cast member Mark Indelicato, where they break down episodes of the beloved series and invite former co-stars to reflect on its impact.
The podcast has become both a nostalgic reunion and a subtle campaign for a reboot, with Ortiz revealing that nearly every major cast member, including America Ferrera and Vanessa Williams, has expressed interest in returning.
More than just a recap show, the project explores how Ugly Betty helped redefine Latino representation on mainstream television while giving fans a behind-the-scenes look at the chemistry and friendships that made the series resonate long after it ended.
"We all want to do a reboot," she said. "Across the board. We all want to come back and do a reboot, so fingers crossed." Her answer lines up with comments she has made elsewhere in recent years, publicly signaling that the appetite for a revival is real.
This reporter asked the same question to Michael Urie, who is now part of the award-winning series Shrinking. "Just tell me when and I will be there," he said.
For now, though, Ortiz has something else to show. Not the big sister, not the scene-stealer, not the woman delivering the line everyone quotes the next day. In Imperfect Women, Ana Ortiz is playing the woman who says less, reveals less, and somehow leaves just as much behind. After a career built on presence, Bethany Ganz proves she can be just as powerful in restraint.
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