Vlad Bunoan

Article (news)

Yong Chavez

ABS-CBN News North America

<div><iframe width="640" height="360" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/IP4NAMEl5i4?autoplay=1&amp;wmode=opaque&amp;rel=0" frameBorder="0" allowfullscreen="" class="fr-draggable"></iframe> </div>Beyond his laptop screen’s view, the rice cooker starts beeping in the middle of the interview, cutting through Josell Mariano’s sentence about his Filipino immigrant parents and the life they imagined for him. We laugh, and I ask, “What’s your ulam?” He says that he has vegan chicken before resuming our conversation about &quot;The Pitt,&quot; risk, identity, and the cost of choosing a different life.Mariano recently played an ICE agent in &quot;The Pitt,&quot; a role that arrives in a moment when the topic of immigration in America has become shrouded with fear, debate, and fracture. “&#x27;The Pitt&#x27; was a really, really interesting process,” he said. “I was a little hesitant at first, just because you don’t know how that’s going to be portrayed, especially in this political climate in America right now.”As a journalist, I also hesitated doing this story. I have spent over 15 years placing Filipinos in Hollywood in the spotlight, but this one carried a different kind of weight. Having seen people viciously attacked online for no reason, I thought about what might follow once this is published and how quickly an actor of color would have to confront racism and be pulled into arguments.But I noticed how Mariano did not walk away from that hesitation and instead let it become part of the work itself. He understood what the role might provoke and what it could reveal.His parents, Leoncia and Joselito, came to the United States from Cavite, Philippines, carrying with them a version of the future that was built on stability, sacrifice, and a belief in upward movement. When he visited their childhood homes, he began to understand the scale of that sacrifice in a way that no story alone could convey.“I didn’t realize how much they had to struggle until I saw it,” he said, sharing how it surprised him as a young boy to know that some everyday things he took for granted — like regular access to running water — were not something his parents grew up with.That understanding shaped the life he chose at first. He pursued stability and became a software engineer, staying in the job for eight years, and buying a house at 24. It was the kind of success his parents could recognize immediately.“So when I quit being an engineer, (my mother) was very mad,” he said, smiling at the memory. The anger came from love and fear, and an immigrant mother’s history that taught her to avoid unnecessary risk.<div><img src="https://od2-image-api.abs-cbn.com/prod/editorImage/1775803165912Courtesy HBO Max ramona-dubarry-josell-mariano-noah-wyle-katherine-lanasa_0.jpg" style="width:960px" class="fr-fic fr-dib" width="960"/>Ramona Dubarry, Josell Mariano, Noah Wyle and Katherine Lanasa in &#x27;The Pitt.&#x27; Courtesy of HBO Max </div>But he left the job anyway. “I just didn’t want to be in corporate America. I wanted to do something creative so I tried photography for a little bit. I took an acting class.” An agent spotted him in class and soon he was booking jobs as a TV/print ad model. He made one deliberate choice in those early years by sending his paychecks to his old address — his mother’s house.“I know she’s going to open them,” he said, laughing. “She’s going to check how much I make.” A year later, he came home and found his headshot framed on the wall, placed above the television. His parents were finally able to see that “you can do something that you love and still make money, still be a financial success.”On the set of &quot;The Pitt,&quot; Mariano stepped into a different kind of emotional terrain. The show compresses everything into a single space on a set at Warner Bros. It’s a hospital setting filled with movement, urgency, and overlapping lives. Everyone is wearing scrubs, including the production crew, so they blend if the camera catches their reflection.Then Mariano and another actor (Juju Alexander) walked in wearing ICE uniforms.“You could feel the intensity,” he said. “Even though we all know it’s acting, you can feel it.” He knew that the reaction was not directed at him personally but at what the uniform represents.“But as soon as I talked to the cast, to Noah Wyle, Fiona Dourif, and Shabana (Azeez), they are such fantastic people that all that weight was gone in between takes because they&#x27;re so sweet. They&#x27;re so caring. All the way from the PAs, makeup artists, to the showrunner and Noah.”What drew him deeper into the role was the conflict underneath it. In earlier versions of the script, his character, Agent Correa, held more space for empathy. A detainee’s story, a woman named Pranita (Ramona DuBarry), gave Correa a way to connect the work to his own life, to imagine his mother in that position, seeking safety and care while facing the possibility of being taken away.<div><img src="https://od2-image-api.abs-cbn.com/prod/editorImage/1775802927251combo 1 1.jpg" style="width:960px" class="fr-fic fr-dib" width="960"/>On the set of &#x27;The Pitt.&#x27; Photo courtesy of Josell Mariano</div>“That story in &#x27;The Pitt &#x27;is important to tell. A few months after we filmed, the Alex Pretti situation happened. And that was just a total coincidence…a white male nurse protecting someone who is under ICE enforcement. But that&#x27;s how real the events being portrayed in &#x27;The Pitt&#x27; are,” he said.To play the agent, he had to understand the character&#x27;s point of view. “(Correa) wanted to make sure that people were doing things the right way. He wanted to be the good person on the inside. And hearing (detainee) Pranita’s story, seeing her emotions, it made me, as my character, think of my family as immigrants, how they came to this country and the struggle that they had, and they could be in this situation that they&#x27;re in right now where they need medical care, and all they want is to feel safe, for their family to know they&#x27;re safe.”He reveals that the original script tells more of Pranita’s story. She tells Correa how she came to this country, and how she has been working in this country for 20 years.“(The other agent) Russo is away from the scene at this point. That affects my character in such a way that I want to do things to make sure she finds help. But again, all that is cut from the final script, which is unfortunate, because I thought it was really good material. But there&#x27;s so many things going on. I understand why they can&#x27;t include everything.”Mariano also had to sit with a question about his character that does not resolve easily. Why would someone shaped by an immigrant story choose to enforce policies that could harm people living a similar one?He believes that some of it “comes from a genuine place,” he said. “You want to uphold the standard. You went through the struggle, so other people should, too. But my problem with the whole situation comes in when you’re going into communities and enforcing these policies based on neighborhood or community. You&#x27;re infringing on the rights of people.”When the episode aired, he braced for backlash. He expected anger to arrive quickly and loudly, but instead, the response held a different kind of recognition.“They hated the character, but they loved the portrayal,” he said.The distinction mattered to him because it meant the story had landed where it needed to, which is in the space where discomfort can exist without shutting down the conversation. His Instagram following grew almost overnight, filled with messages that ranged from thoughtful to playful. His modeling photos, some of which had circulated before, found a new audience.“My DMs go a little crazy sometimes, but it’s all fun.” For the record, he is single.<div><img src="https://od2-image-api.abs-cbn.com/prod/editorImage/1775802867750Screenshot 2026-04-10 at 2.32.48 PM.png" style="width:960px" class="fr-fic fr-dib" width="960"/>On the set of &#x27;The Pitt.&#x27; Photo courtesy of Josell Mariano</div>But after the high of &quot;The Pitt,&quot; outside of the online attention, the reality of his drastically changed industry is hard to ignore. Acting work in Los Angeles is less predictable, and opportunities come less frequently.“It&#x27;s really hard. For a while, the industry was in a place where I did not have much free time. It was two, three auditions a day. Every week was at least one project, if not two. I had overlapping projects. But since COVID, things have changed quite a bit in the way that the projects are being approached by the studios and by how the general public consumes media.”He fills the space by returning to something familiar, something he can control. “I maintain a little bit of my software engineering background,” he said. He built ScriptReadr, an app for actors. It’s a tool designed to help them run lines for auditions without needing someone else in the room. It helped him book roles, including &quot;The Pitt&quot; and &quot;Criminal Minds,&quot; and it helped others as well. Then it disappeared from Apple’s platform without explanation, his developer account terminated, his appeals unanswered.“It feels like so many things are out of our control,” he said. ScriptReadr is available on Google Play but since iPhones are the default phone for many actors, this frustration sits alongside everything else he has learned to carry.Still, he stays in the belief that stories like his matter, even when things get tough. “It’s really finding ways to keep yourself sane. And for me, that&#x27;s being productive, going to the gym, and staying involved.”“I work a lot with friends who are creating, and I help in whatever way I can. I&#x27;ll help them produce it, or I&#x27;ll be an assistant director. I stay involved with everybody, and help everybody.”Turns out, in real life, Josell Mariano isn’t into enforcing, but wants to be a part of building something good instead.

Josell Mariano opens up about playing an ICE agent in 'The Pitt', navigating the role’s emotional weight against the backdrop of his immigrant upbringing and his own shift from engineering to acting.

Josell Mariano opens up about playing an ICE agent in ' The Pitt' , navigating the role’s emotional weight against the backdrop of his immigrant upbringing and his own shift from engineering to acting.

Here in Hollywood: Fil-Am actor Josell Mariano plays ICE agent on 'The Pitt'. The reactions surprise him

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Here in Hollywood: Fil-Am actor Josell Mariano plays ICE agent on 'The Pitt'. The reactions surprise him

Yong Chavez,

ABS-CBN News North America

Published April 10, 2026 07:45 PM PHT

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Josell Mariano

The Pitt

Here in Hollywood

ICE

Yong Chavez

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