It’s the last place you’d expect him to show up, but Jorge Garcia has been elevated from recurring character to regular for the Hawaii-based cop show
Jorge Garcia has had one of the most unusual–and unlikely–careers in Latino Hollywood. It’s not as if he hasn’t been working steadily since 2000; he even had a recurring role in Becker a decade ago. But when he hit it big in Lost, he was, quite frankly, the last one you’d expect to see again, compared to that vast array of beautiful people he worked with (and in fact, a huge number of his cast-mates, from Evangelyne Lilly to Dominic Monaghan to Michael Emerson have done very well since).
In fact, he’s been working steadily all along, including a Fox series (Alcatraz) that didn’t last long and recurring roles on great shows like Californication and Once Upon a Time. And now he’s going back to Hawaii–home of Lost for many years–to work with another alumni of the cast, Daniel Dae Kim, as a regular on this season Hawaii Five-O.
Jorge will be playing Jerry Ortega, a conspiracy theorist and former high school classmate of Kim’s Detective Lt. Chin Ho Kelly. The character was introduced last season and has re-appeared this year; in fact he’ll appear even more before the end of the season. He’s been such a hit that’s he’s now been moved into a more permanent position. “Jorge very quickly made Jerry an unlikely and valuable part of the Five-O Ohana,” exec producer Peter Lenkov told The Hollywood Reporter. “We have many opportunities planned to put Jerry’s unusual and infectious desire to put the bad guys to good use.”