From Fez to father: Wilmer Valderrama looks back on life in memoir

Wilmer Valderrama may have found fame as a flamboyant foreigner, but he’s a proud Americano.
Valderrama, who broke out as Fez in the nostalgic teen sitcom “That ’70s Show,” looks back on his incredible journey from Venezuelan immigrant to American TV powerhouse in his debut memoir “An American Story: Everyone’s Invited” (Harper Select, 245 pp., out now).
The 44-year-old actor landed the role of Fez, a foreign exchange student known for his eccentric accent, at age 18, becoming the “only Latino with a leading character on the Fox network” at the time.
“I’m proud that he was so colorless. I’m proud that this character was able to invite so many different people from so many different phases of life to laugh,” Valderrama says. “Because as a Latino and as a brown person, our dream is to be for the world and to be treated and accepted equally as a contributing member of whatever team, company, show you’re in.”
Valderrama didn’t leave his Latino roots behind with his Hollywood break. He says his Venezuelan and Colombian background helped him stand out among his acting contemporaries, as well as shaped the characters he played.
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“My heritage has been my safehouse,” Valderrama says. “I’ve never had to be anyone else. I didn’t have to look like anyone else. I didn’t have to sound like anyone else. I just found my voice thanks to my culture.”
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Valderrama, who was born in Miami, details his early experiences with immigration in “An American Story,” from moving to his family’s native Venezuela at the age of 3 to the trials and tribulations of relocating to the U.S. as a teenager with no English fluency.
As immigration reform remains a political fixture this election season, Valderrama hopes the U.S. can preserve the “longstanding tradition” of immigration and the opportunities it extends to hard-working immigrants.
The “American dream doesn’t happen by accident. It doesn’t happen because somebody gifted it to you,” Valderrama says. “The American dream happens ’cause you come here with one single mind of contributing and working. And I look at the (immigrant) community as such a silent force who has yet to be given the respect for the contribution(s) that (it’s) done for this country.”
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Valderrama, a past spokesperson for the Congressional Hispanic Caucus Institute, says he is heartened by the uptick of people of color serving in prominent leadership positions.
“What we’ve all been doing humbly for the last 30, 40 years has chipped away at the ice, but most importantly buil(t) a platform wide enough for us to be able to say, ‘Hey, put us in the game.’ We want to fix our country too,” Valderrama says.
“That’s what I hope that immigration eventually empowers, that there is enough reform that empowers new immigrant(s) to really acquire this not only as their home but as some place that they should definitely take care (of) and keep beautiful.”
Valderrama’s literary debut began as a salute to his time with the armed forces.
Inspired by a humbling exchange with a group of soldiers – and “That’s ’70s Show” diehards – at an airport, the actor partnered with the United Service Organizations to perform a tour version of his mid-aughts MTV reality-competition series “Yo Momma” for U.S. troops stationed in Germany.
Valderrama’s tour led to a yearslong relationship with the USO. In addition to performing at a slew of military bases around the world, Valderrama became a global ambassador for the military nonprofit in 2021.
Valderrama says his memoir “An American Story” began as a “tribute” to the stories of military personnel, although he later realized “how much of my story is basically being part of this world with them and being so submerged in the actual culture and community.”
“It’s taught me so much about what this country has had to endure and fight for, and they’re also such a major symbol of unity that’s allowed me to be a better organizer, somebody who can create an environment for empowerment,” Valderrama says. “With other organizations that I work with, that philosophy of unity is No. 1.
“It doesn’t matter what party or who you’re voting for. The truth is that we can all agree on the things that we really love, which is 1.) our country and 2.) the fact that we want the best for it.”
Valderrama is no stranger to making art for the little ones.
From 2006-2013, he voiced the role of handyman extraordinaire Manny Garcia in Disney Channel’s animated family comedy “Handy Manny.” The show, which featured Garcia as the “first bilingual character in Disney’s history at the preschooler level,” ran for three seasons and was nominated for a Daytime Emmy in 2009.
“It was this proud Latino business owner. The town would fall apart without him,” Valderrama recalls. “He was very, very bold with his Spanglish. And it was very unique because I saw kids from all ethnicities learning Spanish, and that was such a beautiful thing.”
Valderrama, who shares 3-year-old daughter Nakano with fiancée Amanda Pacheco, wants to continue bringing diversity to children’s programming. More recently, he starred as Agustín in the Oscar-winning animated musical “Encanto,” which he says became a favorite of Nakano’s as a baby.
“I just want to make sure that her generation has what some of the other ones had in ‘Handy Manny,’ ” Valderrama says. “And I think for me, it’s reassuring that Nakano grows up in a world where one day when she hears or reads about the times where representation was an issue, she looks around herself and she goes, ‘I don’t see what the big issue was. Look how normal this is.’ ”
Valderrama has some big zapatos, or shoes, to fill for one of his upcoming roles.
The actor is set to star in a television adaptation of action hero Zorro for Disney+. A masked vigilante who fights the oppressive forces of Spanish colonization, Zorro – created by pulp writer Johnston McCulley – has been portrayed in a number of films and TV series over the years, including the 1998 Oscar-nominated film “The Mask of Zorro” starring Antonio Banderas.
Valderrama, who also serves as an executive producer on the series, says this reimagining of the beloved Latino icon will offer a mix of the classics with modern-day storytelling.
“It’s going to be beautifully rooted in our culture but at a very special time of this land,” Valderrama says. “And everyone who ever loved this character, everybody who grew up knowing that they could also be romantic and that they could also be heroic and they could have an opinion and that they could fight against the tyranny of corruption, it’s going to have an image again.”
Valderrama is partnering with Emmy-winning “Games of Thrones” producer Bryan Cogman on the reboot, which currently does not have a release date.
“It’s hilarious, it’s fun, it’s terrifying,” Valderrama says of the show. “Every scene is like something’s happening (and) you don’t know what’s coming, so that’s the other part that I think is going to be really exciting to build.”