Ruben Rabasa has been acting for more than 50 years. Then he got famous overnight for playing one character.
He was in a sketch called “Focus Group” from the show I Think You Should Leave with Tim Robinson. A marketing guy is going around the room asking people what they’d want to see in a new car. Rabasa’s character has ideas. Mainly, he wants a steering wheel that doesn’t fly off.
He thought the script was “crazy” when he first read it. But it still made him a meme.
Since then, his stock’s taken off. A Miami playwright wrote a one-man show for him and he starred alongside Andy Garcia in the remake of Father of the Bride.
He had a cameo in the latest Marvel movie, Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania, where he cuts down Paul Rudd.
Now Rabasa has half a dozen movies in development or waiting to launch. After more than 70 film and TV credits — at age 84, Rabasa has arrived.
On the March 6 episode of Sundial, Rabasa tells us about his decades-long career, his rule of threes and why he thinks his recent success is “better late than never.”
On Sundial's previous episode, we heard from the director and subject of a short documentary screening at the Miami Film Festival, Python Huntress. It follows Donna Kalil, an environmentalist who spends her nights patrolling the Everglades for the invasive species that’s decimating local wildlife.
Listen to Sundial Monday through Thursday on WLRN, 91.3 FM, live at 1 p.m., rebroadcast at 8 p.m. Missed a show? Find every episode of Sundial on your favorite podcast app, such as Apple Podcasts, Stitcher and Spotify.
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