- I wanna Shonda this up, man.
I wanna have many shows with Latinos.
- (laughs) Absolutely. - I do, that's real.
You heard it here first, Pero Like.
(upbeat music)
(speaking in foreign language)
- What's good?
I'm Julissa, of course,
and this is Gloria Calderon Kellet,
who is an executive producer, showrunner,
writer, and director.
That's a lot.
- Her doctor does not want to have an incest.
- What?
We already booked a room.
And I found a great band!
Okay, it's your brother with an iPad and a playlist,
but it's a very good playlist.
- So for people that don't know who Gloria is,
let's talk about it.
Who are you?
- I'm trying to figure that out everyday day.
Who am I?
So my parents are Cuban from Cuba,
came over in 1962 during Operation Pedro Pan,
and my parents were sent with a bunch of other Cuban kids
to Portland, Oregon.
So I was born in Portland, Oregon.
- I was gonna say, a (speaking in foreign language)?
Cubano in Portland?
- Si, oh yeah, girl there's a lot.
There's a lot of Cubans in Portland.
- Very interesting.
I'm from Miami so it's full Cuban.
- It's real Cuban there, yeah.
- How has your upbringing,
growing up like that, shaped your work?
- Oh my gosh.
I think everything, my parents and their struggle
and their sacrifice has shaped every aspect of my life.
Everything I do here is by virtue of the fact
that they came here and sacrificed for me.
And that walks with me everyday.
There is nothing that I,
nothing that I do that does not have
their fingerprints all over it.
And I think that is something that
immigrant kids feel in a different way than other people
who are third, fourth, fifth generation and removed from it.
We are so close to the pain.
We're so close to the struggle of what it took to come here.
And so, how, I mean, I have to be successful.
Like, it was not even a...
I have to.
I have to because I know what they did for me.
(laughs)
- That was deep, that was beautiful.
- It's true.
- How did you break into the entertainment
from being a yogurt shop girl--
- Yes.
- To now getting where you are now?
- I started as an actor. - Whoa.
- And I was auditioning, this was 12 years ago, you guys.
This was not even that long ago,
and every audition was gang banger's girlfriend
and gang banger's sister.
This was not so long ago.
And I thought, there's no like lawyer or social worker,
intern or teacher.
Nothing.
Nothing that I auditioned for.
And I thought certainly there must be other people
who feel the way I feel.
I'm gonna start writing my own material,
and that is what set me free.
Writing is what set me free.
And so, I started writing my own work.
And I started putting up plays in Hollywood with no money.
I had no money, I put it up in Santa Monica.
On Santa Monica Boulevard, The Hudson Theater.
I booked that space on Wednesday nights.
That was the hustle.
That's where the hustle really started for me.
And so people...
That's how I got my agent and my manager and everything.
- How did the show come about--
- Yeah.
- One Day at a Time, and did you face any obstacles
while trying to get the show made?
You're Latina in Hollywood.
That's already, the odds are against you, right?
- Yeah, yeah.
The first thing is, so I spent 12 years writing.
Right, so I was on different stuff.
So I was on Quintuplets,
then I was on How I Met Your Mother for three years,
then I was on Rules of Engagement for three years,
then I went to Devious Maids.
I wanted to try one hour, so I did one hour soap.
Then I did Mixology.
I wanted to do half-hour single camera.
Then I did iZombie which was one hour procedural.
So at the end of that, I'd done every type of writing
but, yeah, I just wanted to do multi-cam
and I thought it was also time to write my family
because people had been asking for years
but they were also like, "Be careful.
"Because the moment you write your family,
"that's out there and you've done it,
"and you can't do it again."
So really shortly after,
I kind of got very clear in my intention,
I got the phone call to meet with Norman Lear.
And so I talked to him, and I felt so comfortable that he
at one point he was like,
"Well I wanna do One Day at a Time as a Latino version."
And I don't know what it was,
something in me was so comfortable,
I was like "I don't know if you should, Norman."
And he was like, "What?"
Because people wanna do, people try to do this.
People try to do this.
- No, that's true.
- And then people get in there, and it just gets messed with
and then Latinos are hard.
- It gets watered down. - It's a hard...
Yeah, it's hard when you're so starved as community,
when something is out there
you want it to represent everything that's you, right?
And so he was like, "Well what would you do?"
And I told him what I would do.
And he was like "Let's do that."
- Can you give us the secret or no?
- Oh no, I just said, like, I would wanna do,
I would wanna write my family
and I would write it how, you know.
And he was like, "If you were divorced,
"what would that look like?"
And I said that my parents...
My parents are at my house everyday, anyway.
So I was like, if I got divorced they'd live with me.
Forget it.
And he said, "What's your mom like?"
And I said, "Well picture Rita Moreno."
Because that's really, they're like twins.
- So that's your mom?
- Yeah, well it's my mom and my abuela.
It's sort of a mix between my mom and my abuela.
And of course, and Rita, you know.
They'd be, they're kind of in a blender
and they all make this kind of wonderful
larger than life creation.
- So speaking of Rita, what is it like
working with the Rita Moreno?
- You know it's crazy.
- That's insane.
- I mean, listen, that was really the first time many of us
saw ourselves represented was Rita.
And I mean that was The Electric Company,
West Side Story obviously.
You know, like, all my life I'd been saying
my mom reminded me of Rita Moreno.
So to be able to say, "Oh the woman playing my mom
"is Rita Moreno," is insane to me.
- I know, you know, I'm an actress, obviously,
and I'm all of these things, I'm into entertainment,
and I'm an Afro-Latina.
People are now being like "Oh, all Latinas don't look like
"Sofia Vergara or Jlo."
Do you feel like you write
for the Afro-Latina that looks like me?
- I wanna write more Afro-Latina stories.
I also wanna write stories that are not just Caribbean,
because so far, the new show, I was just...
I wanted just a Latina lead
and I was like, whoever she may be
I will make her the ethnicity she really is, right?
So for a long time there was this Mex...
You know, there were a lot of really great Mexican girls,
and I was like, "Okay, this is cool."
So I get to write Mexicanas,
which I haven't gotten to do yet.
And we, at the end of the day,
we went with the most wonderful
Ana Villafane, who I love so much, and is Cuban.
But I want to write parts for Mexicanas and Afro-Latinas,
and for all, there's so many.
There's a lot of stories to be told.
And I think it's imperative that those stories are told.
- Have you had a Mama, I made it moment yet?
- Oh my Lord, there's been so many.
- Yeah?
What's your one that you can recall the best?
- I mean, I think the first night of One Day at a Time
when my parents walked down to the set,
there's photos of my grandparents everywhere on that set.
There's a huge black and white one in the back
in Lydia's room, that's my dad's mom and dad.
- That's awesome.
- Yeah, and my parents and my other...
You know, Lydia and Manuel,
and all of their pictures from Cuba are all over that set.
And so to be able to show them, like,
hey you came here knowing, you know,
they said, I think their first words were
"Mary is a girl.
"Tom is a boy"
That's what they knew when they got off the plane.
- Jeez.
- And now their daughter writes a TV show about them.
I mean. - They did good.
- They're great.
They're great ones though,
I got very blessed with my parents.
- Do you have anything else that you wanna share?
- So I would say when there's work by Latinos that you like,
watch it and share it and-- - Support it, yeah.
- And support it, you know.
And talk about what you like about it.
And I think I would like to hear what is working for you.
What would you like to see more of?
If you could say, ya know, I wish you guys did more of X.
That's helpful.
Saying like, "I don't like this."
Okay, well.
- Yeah, we can't do anything about that.
- Alright, sorry you don't like that.
But if you say, "You know what would mean a lot to me
"is if I saw Afro-Latinas on your show.
"That would be amazing to me."
Right?
I can do something with that.
That I go, "Oh sure, I can hear that, okay."
So I love to hear from our fans,
and the more you tweet about us the more that Netflix
and the powers that be that are paying the bills
say people are interested in this and talking about this.
Do it for all of your shows.
You know.
Let's celebrate those parts when they are out there,
and talk about them because that is impactful.
That is where you guys have power.
- Bueno Gloria, we have two pastolitos.
- I know, oh yeah.
I gotta have a little bit okay?
- We should definitely try it.
(speaking in foreign language)
- Oh my God.
I mean you guys, it's so good.
- [Julissa] Latina's out.
- [Gloria] That's so good.
- [Julissa] Thank you guys so much.
- [Gloria] Thanks, Pero Like!
- [Julissa] M-hm!