America Ferrera and 'Gentefied' creators on finding joy amid a 'dark cloud looming' in season 2 (original) (raw)
Executive Producer America Ferrera, and creators Marvin Lemus and Linda Yvette Chávez, spent years getting Gentefied ready to launch on Netflix in February 2020, and despite it coming so close to the beginning of the pandemic, the payoff was glorious.
"I always had a feeling that it would transcend that core audience, that people would enjoy these relationships, this family, the comedy, the style," says Ferrera of the Los Angeles-set dramedy about a Mexican American family navigating major changes within their neighborhood. "And I, from my own experience, have received so much feedback from people who are not Latinx, who love the show, love the characters, and are excited to see more."
With season 2 of the series now streaming on Netflix, the trio, who also directed the majority of this episodes this season, tell EW how their thought process approaching heavy issues, like deportation, gentrification, and discrimination against the Latinx community, while still keeping things fun, with a hint of "romcom vibes."
Karrie Martin as Ana, JJ Soria as Erik, Joaquín Cosío as Casimiro, Carlos Santos as Chris, and Manuel Uriza as Ernesto, in 'Gentefied' Season 2. NETFLIX
ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: This show was a long time coming, with a version of it first premiering at Sundance in 2017. What was the reaction like when people finally got to see it?
AMERICA FERRERA: It had dropped at midnight, and I remember the next morning I had a meeting on a studio lot, and the security guard stopped me, and she was like "Thank you for Gentefied. I loved it." I'm like, "What do you mean you loved it? It's 10 in the morning." She's like "I've seen six of the 10 episodes. I can't wait to get home." And it was just so moving and touching. Because you're putting it out there in the world, and we collectively made this for our families. We made this for the people we love to see themselves, but it's hard to know if it's reaching them. If they're reading the articles and the reviews, and if the message is getting to them, and that they know that it's there, and that they feel like it's for them. And the fact that so quickly the feedback was coming from the very people that we most hoped would see it, and love it, and see themselves in it, was so overwhelming. We were tagged a ton in Instagram stories where people were posting videos of their grandparents sitting there watching the show. Those were the ones that made me burst out into tears every time I saw them.
And what was the reaction from the Boyle Heights community? The show itself covers this dilemma of wanting to celebrate the neighborhood, but also being cautious about the amount of attention that it gets.
MARVIN LEMUS: Yeah, the neighborhood was overwhelmingly positive. There was that layer of wanting to do right by Boyle Heights. And I feel like we accomplished that. I actually just saw, a few weeks ago, somebody from the community that we got to interview in advance, and they were able to talk us through their experiences of gentrification. And I remember when we met them, they were sussing us out. But this was the first time I had seen them since then. I saw them. I said, "Hi," because I'm just a fan of them and their work. And they were like, "Oh my God." She told me straight up, "When we saw you, you guys asked to take a picture. And I was like, 'I don't even know, should I be doing that? Should I be seen with these folks,' trying to figure you guys out. And then I watched the show and it felt like home, it felt so full of love. Thank you so much for doing that. It's clear that you guys were trying to make something that felt real." And so that was like the best compliment to get, because that's what we wanted it to be. We hoped that it would be clear that we infused every moment of this show with love, and filled a void in our own lives by creating something that we hadn't seen yet.
Marvin Lemus, America Ferrera, and Linda Yvette Chávez on the set of 'Gentefied' Season 1. NETFLIX
I've noticed a lot of first season shows that are focused on Latinx families end up tackling the subjects of undocumented status and deportation, but you all touched on that subject matter-of-factly until the very end. Was it purposeful for that not to be a major storyline while establishing the series, and did it feel, in another sense, like covering that subject in a deeper way was inevitable on a show like Gentefied ?
LEMUS: We knew before we even started the writer's room that we were ending the season with Pop (Joaquín Cosio) getting detained. We did want to let it be something that just sideswipes you at the end of the season. That it just never comes up, and we still leave it open at the end, like "Is he actually undocumented?" We wanted it to feel that way because we wanted it to feel like life. Being undocumented isn't always the forefront of everything. It's not something that you're talking about and thinking about every single day, which sometimes the media makes it feel that way. But we grew up around undocumented folks in our families, and it's just, you go on through life kind of keeping it in the back of your head. Stay safe and keep your head low. We wanted folks to fall in love with Pop, and see him as a person, before we hit you with it.
So going into the second season, we had ideas of where we're going to go with it, but then it's like, "All right, what are we doing? How do we tell this story in a way we haven't seen before? How do we keep it from turning into trauma porn? How do we hit it with nuance? How do we have the audience experience what it's like to go through this? Feel that tension that's looming overhead." And that's why the tone of the season shifted a little bit. And even the visual language of the show shifted to try to capture that feeling of "We're moving on with our day-to-day, we're finding love, we're going out on dates, we're we're doing crazy stuff, we're cracking jokes, but this dark cloud is looming overhead. At any moment, all of this can go away, and our family might be torn apart." And that was what we hadn't seen yet. That's why we start the first episode with Pop stepping out of the detainment center. Because our community is oversaturated with that [imprisoned] image. And we were like, "Let's just skip that part, and let's focus on the legal battle. Being in limbo after the fact." That's something that people don't see quite as often.
On a lighter note, why give Chris a love interest this season?
LINDA YVETTE CHÁVEZ: Because pobrecito, he deserves love too [Laughs]. Well, first thing is Carlos Santos is an incredible actor. And season 1, he was definitely alone in his identity crisis. There was a lot of comedic relief, and a lot of seeds planted around his father, and what he was going through. So coming into this season, we wanted to challenge him. And we always had talked about, even before season 1, wanting him to have a love interest that would challenge him. And a lot of that is actually inspired by Marvin's current relationship that he's been in forever. This person who comes into your life and really reintroduces you to your culture, and to who you are, and can relate to you and remind you that where you come from is valuable too. And I think that Chris is on that journey of letting go of this idea that who he is and where he comes from is not good enough because [as Mexicans], we're all born into this country being told we don't belong here. Even if we're not undocumented we're told that. And so from birth, you're constantly fighting to claim your identity as valuable. And I think Sarai (Ivana Rojas) brings that out in him. And then just romcom vibes. We love a good romcom. We love some love, and these two, oh my God, their chemistry is off the charts.
Annie Gonzalez and Joseph Soria play Erik and Lidia on the Netflix series 'Gentefied.'. NETFLIX
Erik and Lidia (Joseph Soria and Annie Gonzalez) provide the show's first big step out of Boyle Heights for an extended period of time. What did you want to explore with them? Is the Palo Alto setting meant to be juxtaposed with Los Angeles with the rest of the family?
CHÁVEZ: Yeah, we wanted it to juxtapose what the experiences are at home. For me personally, I went to Stanford and remember my first encounter going there was like, "Holy s---. This is nothing like where I grew up." It's daunting and overwhelming, and you're like, "Why do I relate more to the cleaning lady than I do to my fellow students?" It's a very weird thing that I don't think we often see on television. And Lidia has gone through that experience already, so for Erik to come into this new environment, also as a new father, there's so much change involved. And there's so much that he needs to do in this new world where he doesn't fit in. It's very much about how so many of us have to learn how to code switch in these environments where again, we have never been welcomed into. What we're trying to find is our space within it. And the two of them, already having struggles in the past in that relationship, and now they have a child in a new environment, of course it's automatically about, "How do we keep this relationship going, and healed?" So much happens in that episode. And again, for Erik in particular, it's like at the end of the day, no matter how hard he tries to fit in, he will always be seen as other in that environment.
Finally, has Ana's sense of what success would be changed? And relatedly, is Yessika (Julissa Calderon) the most difficult character to write because she's kind of an antagonist to the family by the end of season 1, but also has a point in what she said, that might change how Ana (Karrie Martin) sees herself.
LEMUS: I'll work backwards. Is Yessika the hardest? I feel like for us, she tends to be one of the easier ones to write for, because we put a lot of our hardcore opinions in her mouth. That's where we get to be like, "Yeah, this is what we're talking about," the debate that we're always having within ourselves when it comes to the issues, I think it's just the debate that we have within ourselves. To approach it without any judgment, and be able to have that conversation, and dramatize it, putting people on both sides of it. But Yessika is right by design because that's the conversation that we're trying to have. It's the struggle of being first gen. Of chasing the American dream, and being at war with "What does it look like to be upwardly mobile, and do you become a part of the problem?"
And that's the huge issue at the heart of it, especially in that relationship. Does her definition of success change? Of course. We wanted them to go through that evolution. By the end of it, Ana is coming to peace with the reality of the situation of what it's gonna look like if she's going to work within the system. That's something that we, as POC artists, go through. That struggle of "Well, if I want to pay this rent, I'm going to have to take some jobs that I might not be crazy about. How do I straddle that line, and continue to do something that I can stand behind?" That's the ultimate debate, and it never gets a clear answer. It's always shades of gray. These two are the youngest characters of the cousins, and it's easy when you're young and starting out to be so clean cut about this answer. And then the growth is [realizing] it's not that easy. We gotta be able to hold space for all of it.
The Morales family expands on Season 2 of Netflix's 'Gentefied.'. NETFLIX
Gentefied season 2 is now streaming on Netflix.
This interview has been edited and condensed.
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