ClexaCon 2019: Isabella Gomez, Sheridan Pierce talk One Day at a Time’s inspiration and impact

Isabella Gomez and Sheridan Pierce of One Day at a Time chat with us about the show’s cancellation, and the love they’ve received from fans so far.

It was recently announced that One Day at a Time had been cancelled after it’s third season. This came as a shock to everyone, including the cast and crew behind this modern-day remake of the Norman Lear comedy. But the fight to #SaveODAAT didn’t end with the cancellation. It fact, it only just began.

Isabella Gomez and Sheridan Pierce attended ClexaCon in Las Vegas to not only discuss the importance of having a lesbian and non-binary relationship shown on television, but to address the rumors that One Day at a Time could find a home on another network.

And so far, the news still remains that they’re working on it.

So, Isabella this is your second Clexacon, Sheridan this is your first. How are you both enjoying it here?

Sheridan Pierce: I did not know that it would be so amazing!  I saw pictures and videos from last year but just interacting with all of the fans has been the best part of the experience. Everyone’s been so kind and nice and I just want to hug everyone!

Isabella Gomez: It’s lovely. It’s the best here. I feel like this year is a little less hectic for some reason, maybe because they rearranged the spaces so it doesn’t feel like we’re all on top of each other. So that’s nice. But it’s lovely and everybody is so nice. The panel was phenomenal. And especially with the recent cancellation, it’s nice to be surrounded by a bunch of love and getting to talk about these characters again and not just be in the “wahhh” of it all. So that’s fun!

Isabella, I wanted to ask you about the colorism scenes early on in the second season and what inspired you guys to bring that up in the show.

IG: Totally! So the reason that came up is Gloria [Calderon Kellett] has a brother who is color caramelo, he’s nice and tan. And she’s blanquita. And that’s how Marcel and I are in the show, so she was like, this is perfect, we get to talk about it! There’s so much discrimination within our own community based on color, and obviously in the world. Usually if there is a Latinx character, we are white passing, because then they can call it representation without actually going all the way into it. So we wanted to talk about that and we wanted to talk about the effects of it and how we can all be Latinx but because of my skin color, I’ll have many more opportunities than my Afro-Latinx brothers and sisters. It was important talk about it. That’s kind of what our show is, and it made sense within the family to talk about it.

The first interaction between Carmen and Syd finally meeting, what do you imagine that went like?

IG: I feel like it could go one of two ways. They could either really not like each other. There’s jealousy, there’s tension, everybody wants to be with Elena. And I mean, I love that! Girls fighting over me! But, I think that Syd and Carmen are weird enough that they could maybe be best friends. Like, [Elena] becomes the jealous one. Like “Excuse me, that’s my sydnificant other! That’s my best friend! I’m the linking factor here. Pay attention to me!”

SP: So basically, it just all links back to you wanting attention. (everyone laughs)

IG: Yes! Me! It’s not about their reaction, it’s about MY reaction.

SP: I feel like they’re both so quirky in different ways. I think it could work where they could be great friends because you have Carmen with black lipstick, very deadpan, and then there’s Syd who just kinda goofy. I would love to see that.

IG: We just have that one scene where it’s Carmen not saying anything and Syd ranting and ranting and ranting and Syd would say “Right?” and Carmen would be like [imitating Carmen, deadpan] “Right.” I love that! I just wrote a scene!

Sheridan, during the panel, you mentioned an interaction you had on Twitter with a non-binary person and then we were cut off by Rita Moreno calling in (which was totally fine!). Could you finish that story?

SP: Yes! I can! What if Rita just called? (everyone laughs) I’ll never tell the story! She doesn’t want people to know about my Twitter interactions.

So a non-binary fan of the show on Twitter had tweeted me basically thanking me for my portrayal of Syd and just saying how much it meant to them that there was a non-binary person who is happy on a show. That really touched me, because this is a serious thing. It’s not like there’s so many shows that have this representation. There really aren’t. So I think the fact that Syd is comfortable with themselves means a lot to a lot of people.

And to be able to show someone who is non-binary but still happy and goofy and a three-dimensional character, that’s important. So that tweet meant a lot to me and it’s something I definitely think about a lot while playing Syd.

Alex and Elena have a really great relationship between the two of them and their relationship is able to showcase a lot of social issues. Do you have a favorite scene between the two of them?

IG: I really love the #MeToo scene. I think it’s so important. I have so many issues with the way that men are raised, especially in the Latinx culture where they’re raised to be a macho man and they don’t get to have feelings and  they need to have sex with as many women as possible or they’re not a man. All of that in their head makes for so much toxic masculinity and for them to not be able to see the world as it is. They see women as objects instead of humans. So that was such a cool scene to do because for one, I have a lot of feelings and I love getting to yell at [Alex]. That’s my favorite. And two, it’s so important to show these conversations on TV to show little boys that this behavior is not okay. It doesn’t matter if you think it’s funny and if it’s funny to you, it’s not funny to her.

So it was so cool and it started such a huge conversation. People really love that episode. It’s so hard to explain how impactful these little things are. When I was younger, boys would ask me to kiss my girlfriends for their enjoyment and I never understood why it made me so uncomfortable. So to have that and then show how much it affected this partnership, and their mental health, and their ability to just go outside on a date, it was so crucial to show how much it can affect someone. And to show it from the perspective of a young man learning for the sake of being a better brother, a better son, and a better man.

Isabella, once people were able to see the storyline where Elena comes out, what feedback from families and children who are dealing with it themselves have you received?

IG: Everybody’s so excited! Everybody’s so excited because it’s a full layered story. It’s not just a very special coming out episode. It’s not just the one time we talked about it. It was a whole process — all of season one basically was dedicated to this coming out process and from then on it became a whole thing so people are so excited that it’s layered. They’re also so excited that it wasn’t sexualized. Elena still gets to be a kid. I saw that people were really excited about her coming out not because she found somebody who she liked but just because she was like, “I don’t need to have somebody to realize that this is who I am.” So it’s been lovely.

People are so happy and it’s funny because with a character like that you would expect a little bit of backlash so we were all prepped like, okay here we go! But not at all. I think in the past three years I’ve seen maybe 10 negative comments. I’m not on Facebook and I don’t look at that stuff but on Twitter and Instagram I’ve seen maybe 10 negative comments about Elena’s sexuality in three years, which I think is insane. It also speaks a lot to the writing and where they humanize this person and didn’t make it like “Oh, this is the lesbian.” They made it “This is Elena, who we love and adore and she’s all of these things and by the way — she likes girls.” So I think it really humanized her and normalized it and that’s why people reacted so positively to it.

As a contrast to that, Sheridan, you had to come in as an established, non-binary, gay character. Was that different as an experience to have to just jump right into that?

SP: I actually felt like it was nice to just have this established character who didn’t have to explain that they were non-binary. It was pretty much just accepted from the beginning and I thought that was really cool because it was just like, “Hey, here’s Sid! This is who they are” and everyone gets on board with it right off the bat. You do sort of have that introduction with the preferred pronoun scene, which is good to have because Penelope and Lydia are kind of confused on what’s happening. But everyone accepts it and adopts the pronouns right away so I thought it was great how it was done. I think for me as an actor it was nice to have a character who knew who they were right away.

I was wondering for both of you, I know when I’m watching the episodes most of the time I’m laughing and then all of a sudden I’m crying. Is there a specific episode where you thought “Ohh, this is going to be a doozy” as far as crying.

IG: Um, yes. For this season, obviously, the scene in the chapel where Elena has her speech that she would have actually liked to have given. And originally it was a lot longer and I was like, that’s going to hit me right in the soul. But I think the one where we were all most like that is when we did the table read for “Not Yet.” It was a disaster. Originally, the monologues were so long. Each one was like three pages long and it was so heartbreaking. You know when you watch sad movies because you want to have that cry and it’s fun, this wasn’t the fun crying. It was actually soul crushing to the point where the executives got up halfway through and left. They were like “This is so fucked up.” They left, they didn’t want to see it. Some of our writers walked away, people were walking away from the table read because they were like, this is a lot. And all of us are sitting at this table sobbing. I went through a whole box of tissues. We couldn’t get through our monologues because we were crying so hard.

The show has covered really tough topics from addiction to PTSD, coming out to not being accepted by family members. In season 4, which we all know will happen, what are some tough topics you would like to address and cover in an episode that you haven’t had the opportunity to yet.

IG: I think it’d be tough but I think sexual assault is so prominent right now. We’ve had touches of it with Penelope’s sexual harassment and all of that story but I do think it would be interesting to see them deal with it. Especially because this family is so open to therapy and so open to taking steps to further your mental health and your mental stability. As women, we all have stories and it’s stuff that we, until now, have had to deal with silently.

SP: That would be really interesting. I think maybe in terms of Syd, I know that I’ve seen a lot of comments within the non-binary community about presenting — if you present more feminine or if you present more masculine. And I know I’ve seen comments about how Syd presents more feminine. I think that as a discussion is very interesting and would be an interesting topic to cover. That’s something that maybe people outside of the non-binary community can be confused about as well and I think that it could be a topic that would be good to bring up with Syd.

IG: Especially because it would help so much for the pronouns to make more sense. I know I also make mistakes and call Syd “she” and “her,” which is awful. We’ve made it a game in the cast where the writers would accidentally call Syd “she” or “her” and we’d all call them out. But I think it is because you do present more female and I would love to learn more about it and other people would too. It would help make it clear and understand the process of that.

A big part of the show is about different cultures. And the show is available in various countries. Have you noticed differences in how fans from different countries react to the show, your characters, the relationships?

IG: I feel like people generally love us. (everyone laughs)

SP: And that’s all we have to say about that!

IG: Take that Netflix! (everyone laughs) The Brazilians love us! It’s awesome!

Sheridan, did you know what kind of impact you were going to have coming into the show? Were you prepared at all for what it was going to be like playing a queer character with how passionate the queer community is?

SP: Well I definitely knew that non-binary representation on TV was practically nothing, so I did know that going into it. I was kind of nervous because I just knew that first of all this character is dating Elena and everyone loves Elena. So when I was actually shooting, I was trying not to think about anything like. You can get too in your head about it. Would people like me? But similar to Isabella’s situation, I haven’t really seen a lot of hate.

Everyone’s been really amazing. But I will say that I couldn’t really have imagined the level of support that people gave, especially from the non-binary community. They’ve been really fantastic!