6 Things We Learned About ‘One Day at A Time’ at the ATX Television Festival
Fans of the Netflix comedy One Day at a Time were in for a treat earlier this month.
On June 9, 2018, the ATX Television Festival hosted a One Day at a Time panel with Gloria Calderon Kellett, Justina Machado, Rita Moreno, Isabella Gomez, and Pamela Fryman to discuss the most recent season, the creation of the reboot, and more. Here are six things we learned about the show!
1. The idea for the Season 2 finale
The monologue-heavy hour honors an episode of Maude that Norman Lear had done 40 years ago.
“It was her talking to a therapist, and we don’t even see the therapist. And it is 22 minutes of Bea Arthur, I think 25 minutes at the time, of her just doing this epic monologue in this therapist’s office,” Kellet said.
Kellet said that episode of Maude along with her own history of writing monologue shows “was sort of the genesis […] I walked in the first day and said, ‘Mike [Royce], I think Rita should have a stroke.’ Well, not Rita.”
It turns out, the One Day at a Time Season 2 finale was emotional for everyone.
2. Behind the scenes of the Season 2 finale
Moreno was actually in that hospital bed while everyone delivered their monologues. In fact, she was even there during rehearsals!
“No one thought she was real,” Machado stated with a laugh.
She recalled being partially affected by Penelope’s line of, “Mami, please wake up and argue with me.”
Moreno recalled being worried that she might ruin a take:
“I feel this tear coming from my right eye, and I started to fight with that tear. I literally was saying, ‘Don’t you do it! Don’t you dare run out of my eye. Don’t you dare run down my cheek.'”
Marcel Ruiz also spent some extra time preparing in a really endearing way. Fryman stated that “Marcel did his mother’s nails at home to prep” for his scene.
Moreno continued, “I remember Marcel saying, ‘This is hard,'” to which Moreno responded, “I told you to practice at home.”
3. Rehearsal
Moreno revealed that Machado “has a prodigious memory.”
She commented on something that’s begun to happen during rehearsals.
“But now the thing that began to happen is I began to get distracted during scenes, and I’d be standing there [laughs], and I have the script in my hand, but I’m looking at all the actors thinking, ‘Wow, they are so fabulous.’ And I’m looking at Marcel who is the most gorgeous kid and saying, ‘Look how he’s grown,’ and finally, I look, I haven’t looked at my script once, and I look up, and everyone is looking at me. ‘Oh, is it me?'”
Gomez jumped in stating, “Meanwhile while she’s admiring, Justine and I are looking at each other like, ‘Just give her a second. She’s got this.'”
Machado said that regardless of Moreno’s performance during rehearsal, she always nails it during filming. “It doesn’t matter if she forgets that line a hundred times, she’s going to say that line once, and it’s going to be the greatest line ever! And you’re like, ‘Really, Rita?!'”
4. Pitching Process
Kellett recalled when she got a call one day and found out that Norman Lear wanted to have lunch with her. She said, “Norman is so disarming, and he makes you feel so safe very quickly.”
Lear told her his plans to revive One Day at a Time, and Kellet was skeptical.
“I was so comfortable that I was frank in saying, ‘I don’t know that you should do this.’ And he said, ‘well, why?’ And I said ‘Because Norman, Latinos, we’re hard, man, because we want to be represented.'”
Then Kellett explained to him how she would do the show.
“He loved that idea. He loved that there would be like a matriarchy and these powerful women. He was so interested and then at the end of the meeting he said, ‘well let’s do that.'”
5. The Power of Norman Lear
When casting the show, Kellett said that she told Lear that she would love to get Moreno on the show, to which Kellett recalled Lear saying, much to her own shock, “Oh! I love Rita! I’m seeing Rita. I’ll talk to Rita!”
Lear is also responsible for getting Gloria Stefan to sing the title sequence. “Norman Lear. That was all Norman, thank god!” Kellett said with a laugh.
6. Writer’s Room
The One Day at a Time writers room is very diverse. Moreno even describes it as “a UN.”
Kellett stated the room is “half Latino. We have Cuban, Puerto Rican, El Salvadorian, Argentina, and then we got white guys too.”
“I really value our white male writers as well because that’s who I’m trying to reach, right?” Kellet said. “So for me, having the conversations and seeing what, getting to have the conversations and the fights with them, we put that right into the show because we have Schneider.”
Kellet also stated that the writers room was, “half female, which is very important. We also have three queer writers as well.”
—
You can catch the first two seasons of One Day at a Time on Netflix.
Check out all of our coverage of the ATX Television Festival right here. There is still more to come!
Follow us on Twitter @telltaleTV_
Want more from Tell-Tale TV? Subscribe to our newsletter here!
Allison Nichols
Allison is in a love affair with television that doesn't seem to be letting up anytime soon. Slightly damaged fictional characters are her weakness. She loves to spend her free time curled up with a cat and a show to binge-watch. Allison is a Tomatometer-approved critic (Rotten Tomatoes).