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"Ian Gomez just might be the coolest person on the planet. Not only did he sit down with me to talk about creating the role of a lifetime--Javier on Felicity--but he also re-created the character for all of you guys (on video!) as Javier. I&amp;#x27;m telling you, it doesn&amp;#x27;t get any cooler than that. Well, maybe if Scott Speedman had joined us. We&amp;#x27;re going to be bringing you a new series to Glamour.com where we interview your favorite TV stars and have them pick their favorite episodes from their iconic role. By the way, if there is someone you&amp;#x27;d like us to feature, tell us below in the comments section! In this case, Ian went so above and beyond (by recreating Javier on video--and picking his favorite episodes), that we&amp;#x27;re going to separate it into two pieces. Stay tuned next week for part II, where Ian picks his favorite episodes from Felicity. Ironically, when Ian and I met up, it was at a coffee shop (his suggestion!), which I playfully teased him about later. I&amp;#x27;m sure those who didn&amp;#x27;t watch Felicity were sitting there thinking, &amp;#x27;What on earth is going on with those two?!&amp;#x27; Before I present you with the video that I&amp;#x27;m pretty sure will make you shriek with excitement, I have to tell you what Ian&amp;#x27;s wife, Nia Vardalos, told me when I interviewed her last month at the Crystal + Lucy Awards in Beverly Hills. &amp;quot;His whole body used to be bruised on one side when he played Javier because I would watch episodes and then punch him! I&amp;#x27;d be like, &amp;#x27;Who is this guy?!&amp;#x27; I just loved that character so much!&amp;quot; she admitted. So, without further ado, here&amp;#x27;s the video of all videos! Well, what&amp;#x27;d you guys think? But that&amp;#x27;s not all. You won&amp;#x27;t even believe what Ian admitted to me about how he developed Javier. Now THIS is a story for the Hollywood ages. Glamour: What was the best thing about playing Javier? Ian Gomez: I think it was the best and the worst. It was such a large character. These young adults playing teens--they&amp;#x27;re all being very serious and saying, &amp;amp;#8216;Hey&amp;amp;#8217; [he mimics them in a low, soft, dreary voice], and just all this angst and emotions, all these hurt feelings. I always felt I was Count Dracula or something, like &amp;amp;#8216;Hey! I&amp;amp;#8217;d like to make you some coffee!&amp;#x27; So, yeah, that was kind of cool being the comic relief, but the challenge of it was to be this big, broad character, but be somewhat real. They had to reign me in a lot. Glamour: You&amp;#x27;ve been watching some of the old episodes leading up to this piece. What&amp;#x27;s that like going back and re-watching the show? Ian: I&amp;#x27;m amazed at how I look. It&amp;#x27;s always a shock. It&amp;#x27;s like I have 18 layers of baby fat! I only have 7 layers now. But just watching them because my memory is shot, I don&amp;#x27;t remember doing a lot of the stuff. So watching it is just like, &amp;amp;#8216;Wow!&amp;amp;#8217; It&amp;#x27;s almost like watching somebody else. But it&amp;#x27;s really cool to see how this big, broad character is reacting with these other characters and how it worked. It was simple, yet complex at the same time. Boy and girl have a thing, but the relationships are kind of complex, and there are other adult issues going on. So it has been cool to watch them again. I even asked people, as you know, on Twitter to help give me some suggestions. It has been a trip. Glamour: How did you develop Javier&amp;#x27;s accent? Was it written that way, or was it something you came up with? Ian: Well, it was slightly written that way. In the audition, the description of Javier was a non-descript, foreign person. [laughs] They were trying to be very PC and didn&amp;#x27;t want to offend anybody. So it was kind of open to interpretation, and I had been doing this character that came from Second City. The character came from... well, my mom used to do therapy for inmates at a woman&amp;#x27;s prison. Glamour: So Javier is a female criminal? [laughs] Ian: Hahaha! I got to know all these hookers who worked across the street from our house at the YMCA and a few of them were transvestites. One of them, this transvestite junkie, became friends with my mom, and she would come over all of time and say [in what became Javier&amp;#x27;s voice] &amp;#x27;Oh, Paulina bought more heroin!&amp;#x27; and they would go and flush it down the toilet. Glamour: You are not making this up. Ian: I am not making this up. Glamour: Because I wouldn&amp;#x27;t put it past you considering I know how good you are at improv! Ian: Hahaha! No, this is true. Glamour: So your mother had a friend who was a 6&amp;amp;#8217;4 transvestite who would come over to the house, and speak like Javier... Ian: Yes, and I was probably seven or eight. Glamour: And your mom allowed you to see this lady? Ian: Well, we lived in New York City in a small apartment, so there was no way to really get around it. My mom was going through a divorce at the time from my dad, and anyway, that voice just kind of stuck, and it became one of the characters I used at Second City. I called him Enrique, and in certain skits at Second City, he would just go around and critique people&amp;#x27;s clothing&amp;amp;#8212;in a nice way&amp;amp;#8212;not too abusive. Then when this audition came up, I thought, &amp;amp;#8216;Ok, I&amp;amp;#8217;ll try it,&amp;amp;#8217; but everyone was really quiet in the room, kind of staring at me, and I thought I had done something horribly wrong. Maybe as if this wasn&amp;#x27;t what they wanted, but it could possibly work. I hadn&amp;#x27;t worked single camera much, so this was my first time actually doing full scenes with people. I had no concept of working with the camera. My experience was mainly on the stage, where every take had to be perfect and people could see all of you at the same time. So on Felicity, I&amp;#x27;d be all over the place and in someone else&amp;#x27;s shot. Basically, I ruined a lot of takes! [laughs] And hopefully they&amp;#x27;re not mad at me, but it was fun. Glamour: I really think not only was Javier one of the best characters on Felicity, but in the history of television. Yes, Javier was out there, and yes, he was comic relief, but so much of it was based in truth and honesty and many times Javier was the voice of reason for us fans. Without your believability, Javier never would have been as beloved as he was. Ian: Wow, thank you for that. I think I had to make it more real because given that contrast--I&amp;#x27;m doing this huge character, but I had to keep it in the realm of what they were doing--I couldn&amp;#x27;t be &amp;quot;Wacka-wacka-wacka&amp;quot; all the time. There was one episode where Javier is auditioning for Don Quixote, and there was one where he was taking an acting class and is doing a monologue from a Marlon Brando thing. It&amp;#x27;s like me doing Javier doing Marlon Brando, and it was just a wonderful acting thing having to be a character being a character. It was so bizarre. The writers were fantastic, and they gave me so many of these opportunities to do wild stuff. Glamour: During the audition though, what was their immediate feedback? Or did they just say thanks, and then you had to wait? Ian: I found out I got it, but there was no standing ovation or applause in the audition room. They said thank you, and rarely do you know if you&amp;#x27;re going to get it or not. It went well, but I remember a bunch of people staring at me. That felt very weird, so I got out of there quickly. The first episode I was in was in the sixth episode of the first season. I think so. And then I was away for a while because I couldn&amp;#x27;t do the show because I didn&amp;#x27;t have a contract on Felicity. I had gotten another show, and they gave me a contract, so I couldn&amp;#x27;t do both shows. But there was a time I was doing three shows at once. I remember I got an ALMA award for an actor being on three shows simultaneously. I always thought it was weird and maybe unfair that I was taking a job away from two other Latinos [laughs]. Glamour: And you&amp;#x27;re part Jewish too, right? Ian: Yes, my mom&amp;#x27;s family is Russian Jewish and my dad&amp;#x27;s Puerto Rico Catholic, so it&amp;#x27;s kind of a weird mix. Glamour: Getting back to the show though, any secrets from the set? Ian: Scott Speedman would always run around the stage before scenes constantly to get ready for whatever he had to do. He&amp;#x27;d take a lap! I have a speech impediment because I slur a lot, and they even make fun of me on Cougar Town because there&amp;#x27;s certain word combinations that I just can&amp;#x27;t say. And on top of that, this accent of Javier&amp;#x27;s, so sometimes you could not understand a word I was saying. So I&amp;#x27;d do all sorts of tongue-twisters to get my mouth working a little bit. I would talk to myself in the accent and pace a bit just to get myself ready to go. Glamour: How often do people ask you to do the accent? Ian: Every once and a while someone will come up on the street and say, &amp;amp;#8216;Oh, can I get a picture!&amp;amp;#8217; Or a few years ago, people would have me call up their sister or aunt and talk to them as Javier or even leave their outgoing message as Javier. Glamour: Do you keep in touch with anyone from the show? Ian: I&amp;#x27;m trying to get a reunion! Lately, I&amp;#x27;ll hear from Greg Grunberg, and I bumped into Scott Speedman. Scott Foley was in Cougar Town for a couple episodes, and Amanda Foreman I see occasionally also. Rob Benedict as well. I think I had a slightly different situation because Greg was friends with J.J. [Abrams], but I think I was the oldest guy there, and I had a lot of free time [laughs]. I was married, so I was separate from them a little bit. Because of that, we didn&amp;#x27;t always hang out, but they liked me. Or they said they liked me. [laughs] Glamour: Who did you enjoy working with the most or sharing a scene, based on let&amp;#x27;s say a similar sense of humor? Ian: Scott Foley was always fun because he&amp;#x27;s a very funny guy. So I liked working with him a bunch. Scott Speedman too because it was such a contrast between Javier and Ben, and also us as real people, but I also liked trying to make him laugh a lot. That was fun to do! And Keri Russell, she is much younger than me, but with a lot more experience and was really quite an amazing professional&amp;amp;#8212;and still is. She was in almost every scene, and the hours are long and still doing off-camera [promotional] stuff for us. She was tireless. She was such a pro always. Working with her was a great learning experience, so those three the most. Glamour: Who is or was more fun for you to play&amp;amp;#8212;Javier or Andy from Cougar Town? Ian: I love my job at Cougar Town, and I know more now, but doing Javier and just really jumping into that character that was so different from my normal self was a lot of fun to do. I would add stuff&amp;amp;#8212;and it was written very well&amp;amp;#8212;but usually at the end of the scene, I would add something, and they kept a lot of that in, so if I had to choose one because Javier is so different from me, I&amp;#x27;d say Javier. Andy is very similar to me, and he&amp;#x27;s definitely a part of me. The part of me with very small testicles. But still, a part of me nonetheless. Glamour: I think they should do an alternate-reality episode of Cougar Town where Javier shows up and so does Monica Gellar. Ian: Yes! Absolutely! That would be funny, and I would absolutely love to do that. Or there&amp;#x27;s always those jumping-the-shark episodes where we all switch characters! That would be fun to do! I&amp;#x27;m looking forward to all the cheesy episodes that Cougar Town can think of. Part II of Ian&amp;#x27;s interview is coming next week. In the meantime, tell me what is your favorite Javier episode from Felicity! More TV &amp;amp; Film Nostalgia: *Jennifer Grey Talks All About Dirty Dancing and Her Favorite Moments *Lori Loughlin Sings Us the Full House Theme Song! *Cougar Town is coming to TBS in the Fall! Check out our behind-the-scenes set visit! Photos: Felicity/Copyright: Touchstone Television, Everett Collection P.S. Want more Obsessed? 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