“There’s no singular Latina narrative,” says Tanya Saracho, showrunner of Vida, the audacious new series on Starz. From sketchy maids to hot sadist matriarchs, the roles of Latinas in American television have long been kept in a repetitive wash cycle — and until Gloria Calderón Kellett’s heartrending family sitcom One Day At a Time, they were rarely, if ever, written by Latinas themselves.
Premiering May 6, Vida is part of an exciting a new era of television, in which Latinx people are increasingly trusted to take control of their own narratives. Vida portrays Latinas who both fight the power and wield the power; Latinas with room to be complicated or basic as hell; Latinas who get to explore gender and sexuality on their own terms — and yes, eat ass.
them. spoke with Saracho — who has previously written for How to Get Away With Murder and Girls — and Ser Anzoategui, the nonbinary Chicanx actor, playwright, and activist who plays Eddy on Vida. The two generously shared their grassroots approach to putting together one of the timeliest, most multi-dimensional representations of Latinas on television today.
Ser, you're both an actor and a playwright. How did you get involved?
Anzoategui: Well, I know Tanya Saracho as a brilliant playwright. All the playwrights in the Latinx community know each other. We all communicate and get to know each other's work. And because of my work in bringing awareness about displacement due to gentrification, I liked that Vida focused on displacement. I was acting in a play last year at the beginning of the year called Collective Rage – that's how Tanya finally got to see my work as an actor, although we knew each other as playwrights.
Saracho: I couldn't take my eyes off Ser when they were on stage. So I rushed them afterwards, like, "I don't know if you remember me. I think we've met before, but hi. You're Eddy." And they were like, "What? What are you talking about?" I was like, "Nothing. Wait until I get a green light, but you're Eddy. Okay bye."
I was so excited that I found an actor that presented in the same way that Eddy presents. I didn't want just someone who's just acting butch. So that was really important.
Queer representation on TV often refers to women who are super femme, or gay cis men with a straight best friend thrown in to make the show relatable.
Anzoategui: Eddy’s super masculine, whereas in real life, I’m more fluid in my expression, as a nonbinary person. But Tanya's queer too. Even though she's femme presenting, she included hella queer and transgender activists, some who are my friends in real life. I appreciate Tanya so much because she's on the pulse of what’s going on, and not just in the communities that Vida represents. Tanya included Yosimar Reyes, undocuqueer activist and poet. She put Julio Salgado’s posters of activists in the background. Posters that just happen to be hanging on my wall too. It’s such a beautiful thing to actually see different representations of our community — all the different gender identities mixed in. Some of them have PhDs or go to school, they work in the community, or they work in non-profit. It’s so freaking real.
How did the Eastside community react to you making this show in their neighborhood?
Saracho: Some people in the writers’ room were from the Eastside, Boyle Heights actually, born and raised. So we had all those conversations about colorism in Latinidad, about classism, about how we feel about immigration status, all of it. We also had a community liaison – Gloria Gutierrez. She attended her first community meetings with her mother as a child, and now she is this amazing activist. She schooled us in a great way. She would bring in street vendors, mariachis. And we got to talk to so many people in the community, my whole writer's room. We found out something like less than 30% of people own their own home in Boyle Heights. It's easier to displace people who rent.
Which then exacerbates the conflict between characters Emma and Lyn, who inherit this building, this generational wealth, and the other Chicanas in the neighborhood.
Saracho: The sisters are property owners. They're privileged. The way they come back [to their old neighborhood] all bougie and stuck up? This neighborhood is not gonna let them do that. They're gonna bring them down a couple pegs, and they should. Because the show is about finding your authentic self. It’s about finding a way back home. I think it's a journey that won't be done in one season either. I just held onto and anchored myself in the sisters and in the truth of them that they were experiencing a schism and that they were distanced and that their mother had died. I feel like just concentrating on that let me draw the world around them.
Vida crammed together so many difficult and oft overlooked topics in television — and in three hours alone! But for those of us who are both queer and Latinx, a lot of the issues portrayed, like colorism, spirituality and class, are not so foreign. What were some of the challenges of producing a queer Latinx show for an American, potentially non-Latinx audience?
Saracho: You know what I think it is? We haven't counted. It's not even that it's too hard, we just don't exist in a way. Right now, out of 520 television shows, four are of a Latina gaze: It's Jane the Virgin and One Day at a Time on one end of the spectrum, and La Reina Del Sur and Narcos on the other. Now there's a fifth show called Vida. That's it. That's what we get. We get the good wholesomeness, or we get the cartel. We have in the past gotten Devious Maids, too — but those are the narratives we’re allowed. I hope that the landscape changes so that we get all of our narratives, because there's no singular Latina narrative.
Which is why you were so intentional about filling your writers room with Latinx people. For example you represented a broad spectrum of narratives, especially the varied experiences between second generation immigrants in the United States.
Saracho: We don't have many second and third generation narratives on TV — when you think about Vida, it's an American show. It's a show about Americans. Who are the grandchildren of immigrants, which is most of America. Some people may think, "Oh, this must be an immigrant show." No, this is a show about American girls.
What were some aesthetic decisions you made in production that helped the show stay true to your vision?
Saracho: Our cinematographer is Carmen Cabana, an Afro-Colombian woman, and she had never led a camera department before. She'd done second unit on Narcos, but I thought, "People are taking a chance on me — let's take a chance on you." And it paid off, because she shot us right. She made sure that our skin tones had just the right amount of colonization, because it's real. We have it. But also, we don't wash out all the undertones. That's the thing about Latinidad. We got all the crazy undertones — sometimes they just blue us out or wash us off. I made sure that that didn't happen. And that couldn't have happened, I think, if we didn't have someone with that cultural shorthand.
Anzoategui: It's such a powerful show. I think it's gonna wake up people inside. Like a relief, like a breath of fresh air for people to be like, "Wow, okay. I didn't expect this."
Saracho: This cast and crew is really, really special. I hope they remain special. It's our first time out, all of us. So we've sort of formed a family. I like us.
This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.
Vida premieres May 6 on Starz.
Suzy Exposito is a writer, illustrator, and double Virgo living in Brooklyn. She is the assistant music editor at Rolling Stone, and has also contributed to Pitchfork, Rookie Mag, and Bitch.
Get the best of what's queer. Sign up for our weekly newsletter here.
