[lounge music] ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ [Narrator] "On Story" is brought to you in part by the Alice Kleberg Reynolds Foundation, a Texas family providing innovative funding since 1979.

"On Story" is also brought to you in part by the Bogle Family Vineyards, six generation farmers and third generation winemakers based in Clarksburg, California.

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[waves] [kids screaming] [wind] [witch cackling] [sirens wail] [gunshots] [dripping] [suspenseful music] [telegraph beeping, typing] [piano gliss] From Austin Film Festival, this is "On Story," a look inside the creative process from today's leading writers, creators and filmmakers.

"On Vida: A Conversation with Tanya Saracho.

- You know, that in a half-hour, you have to like sort of hold onto character more than plot, a half-hour drama.

But those characters were really clear early on and as long as I stayed in track and true to them, everything just kind of, the world built around them, their reactions, the whole thing.

It was really important, especially at that moment that Latina characters, we don't get to see ourselves on TV that much.

So, this was like an opportunity to be like, "What's the real here?"

[paper crumples] [typing] [carriage returns, ding] [Narrator] This week on "On Story," creator and showrunner, Tanya Saracho delves into her creative process behind "Vida," the family-comedy drama series, which follows two sisters who return home to Los Angeles after the death of their mother.

Saracho discusses interweaving issues of gentrification, sexuality and fraught family dynamics into compelling television.

[typewriter dings] - This panel is, of course, to discuss "Vida," but with that goal in mind, I'd be remiss if I didn't touch on the beginning of your career and how you started off as a playwright.

So, I was hoping that you could kind of walk us through how your journey as a playwright brought you to the world of television writing.

- My journey in theater started in Texas, 'cause I grew up in McAllen, Texas, doing plays at McHi, McAllen High School.

And that led to, basically, a career in theater, but in Chicago where I started an all-Latina theater company and would write about South Texas a lot in Chicago.

Those plays started doing well and somehow, an agent, right, I didn't know how, when I got this email about like, "An agent wants to have lunch with you," "Lunch?"

In the theater, they take you to coffee or tea.

They don't take you to lunch.

So, it was like, it was very, "Oh, fancy, a lunch."

And I was like, "Somebody from UTA wants to take me to lunch to talk to me about writing for television?"

And like two weeks in, someone's like, "Are you trying to say U.T.A.?"

And I'm like, "It doesn't have periods, it's UTA."

He's still my agent.

And he was like, "You could write for television."

'Cause he said, "Just come and take generals."

And I kept talking about my dad's mistress, my dad's mistress, which is like, "Why are you putting your business out there?"

And the UTA called me and was like, "Keep talking about your dad's mistress.

Everyone really likes those stories."

The play that he was sending out as a sample was called "Mala Hierba."

And it was a little bit based on my dad's mistress.

But I wasn't putting it together, but he was for me.

And then, year two of me being there, we sold it to HBO, we tried to make it into a TV show.

Nothing happened, but it was my first piece of development.

But it was like old-school writers' room, TV writers' room with hierarchy and stuff.

And I was the diversity hire.

And the first hour, we were getting our offices, which is like, "Oh my God, we all get offices as writers?"

Playwrights, I used to go to a cafe like to write wherever, the library or whatever.

And the guy, another writer on the show turns to me as we were getting our offices and he goes, "You do know you're the diversity hire, right?"

And I'm like, "What's that?"

[speaking in Spanish] So, I called my UTA and I was like, "What?"

And he was like, "Oh, that just means you don't cost the show anything."

"So, I have no value?"

"No, you don't cost the show, the studio pays for you.

You're fine, it's great."

It wasn't.

It was like a great initiative in different places, but the enforcement in the rooms is problematic sometimes.

'Cause you do get sometimes just dismissed as like, "Oh, she's a freebie."

[typewriter ding] I got "Vida" the third year I was writing for television.

That's unheard of.

And I didn't pitch it.

I would never have known how to pitch anything.

When I sold the thing to HBO, it was my play, so, I didn't have to pitch it.

They were like, "Just adapt this."

I had left "How to Get Away with Murder" and in good terms.

But I quit like a few days before, 'cause I was like, understand murder or care about murder.

[laughing] And I've just been like throwing passes at the wall the whole season, 'cause I don't know murder.

And you really have to like get in the mind, like true crime and all that.

I don't watch that.

Then, a week later, my meeting at Starz was with this and I talk about her a lot, this woman named Marta Fernandez.

[Marcelena] Uh-huh.

- That's key in this story, the last name.

Because she, eventually, I mean, she's the one who said, "We're looking for someone to write a show about gentrification.

Have you heard of that?"

And I was like, and we talked about the term gentrification, well, now we know what it is.

'Cause it's also been gentrified and stuff.

- Yeah.

- "And Chipsters, Chicano hipsters," I knew that.

"In east LA, female-centric, can you do something like that?"

I'm like "Parameters like that?

Yeah."

And then, put some queerness, we added this like, and then, it was amazing.

- I'm sorry, but you're gonna have to stop being such an unbelievable [bleep] about mommy.

- Okay, listen to this.

Vidalia has left us the building.

Well, we have to split it three ways.

- Three ways?

- Mm-hmm.

- With the wife?

- Yep.

- I mean, I guess that makes sense.

- Over my dead body.

I'll take that [bleep] to all the courts before we let that happen.

- Emma, you're sounding really homophobic right now.

- Please understand that I give zero [bleep] that was Vidalia batting for the [bleep].

It's not even about that, it's about-- what a hypocrite.

- I don't understand.

Why a hypocrite?

- This is something I was saying to you about the moment that's so different.

The president of Starz was like old-school executive, who was creative and a visionary.

So, even he was letting Marta just say yes to me for everything, like, so like there was, it was really lovely.

It could never happen again, especially when I requested to have an all-Latina writers' room, which hadn't happened up until then.

It was a really beautiful moment that makes me a little nostalgic.

- How involved was Starz, like were they very accepting of what you wanted to do?

Were they very hands-off and saying like "Whatever you wanna do," or was there any pushback for things of that nature?

- I'm not gonna say they were hands-off, because they were very, especially Marta.

And it is a premium cable network, smaller than a lot of places.

There was no studio, it was Starz.

So, I had to answer and talk to and ask and beg things from, not really beg things, from Marta.

And this is what's so important.

When you have a champion inside the castle and they're fighting those fights, like, I don't have to fight the fight with the president.

I have to fight, just "Marta, this is important," whatever it is.

And hardly ever got told no.

And because it was Starz, the sex stuff, it was, in fact, it was one time, they were like, I suggested like a sexual act and they were like, "No, just enact it, it's fine."

And I was like, "You sure?"

And it was like, it was Marty's first time doing something and I'm like, "What's that, she's like my little sister, I don't wanna see it."

And she was like, "No, it is like also coming of age for our womanhood."

I mean, they were right, but there were conversations.

And it wasn't that they were hands-on, it was just that they were there fully to support the vision.

That administration at Starz really cared about the vision of the artist.

[typewriter dings] - Let's talk about the pilot.

So, when I was rewatching the pilot, one thing that stood out to me from the very beginning and even on this rewatch, is that right off the bat, and I mean honestly, right, when your two main characters first reconnect, you established this vast personality difference between these two sisters.

How did you approach the conception of both of these two women individually and then, their dynamic as sisters?

- I'll say that now I know that in a half-hour, you have to like sort of hold onto character more than plot.

Those characters were really clear early on.

And as long as I stayed in track and true to them, everything just kind of, the world built around them, their reactions, the whole thing.

So, I don't know, the girls were the easiest part, just following them.

Also, it was really important, especially at that moment that Latina characters have not, we don't get to see ourselves on TV that much.

But also, as ugly women and I'm not talking about ugly, those actors are absolutely gorgeous, but they're like fast, like they're, [laughing] the first season, Lyn is hmm, like she's not great, by design.

- Yeah.

- Because we don't get to do those complicated anti-heroic characters.

And cable called for it.

But, so, and we haven't had a lot of Latina cable shows and especially female-centric.

So, this was like an opportunity to be like, "What?

What's the real here?"

- How did you approach that first season when you, after you've done the pilot and you've got your room underway, what kind of conversations were you having with your writer's room?

- It kind of was, the beginnings, middle and ends were, we came up with them before I got a green light.

[Marcelena] Yeah.

- So, when we got into the room, it was just like about filling out the meat, flushing it out.

There's an ending at the fourth episode of the first season where Lyn goes back home after being at a party on a bus with a domestic worker and they're just quietly going home.

[upbeat music] [Spanish song playing in the background] ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ [Tanya] I knew that ending a year before.

And so, there was a lot of pieces like that that I had.

So, when we got into the room, that first season was fast and furious and really easy for all of us.

Season two was really hard, but season two was my favorite season.

And it was the introduction of Nico, one of my favorite characters.

- I love you hermano.

It's an honor to witness your love.

It gives a cynical mortal like me hope!

[Nico giggles] Because when you meet the right person, you realize you don't have to change who you are.

No.

Because they inspire you to be a better version of yourself.

[Tanya] I relied on the writers a lot more.

It was lovely, 'cause we had become a family by then and we were writing about a family, a broken family.

[typewriter dings] - You know, it's set in East LA and you mentioned growing up in Texas and you lived in Chicago too.

What challenges did you face?

'Cause I can only imagine myself being Tejana, trying to write about East LA as a transplant, living there, like what challenges did you face trying to write about this community, that there's similarities, but there's also quite a bit of difference?

- Our slang is very different in South Texas and Texas.

So, and we really wanted that to be authentic, like that was super important.

So, you should feel how you would feel if you're walking around Boyle Heights.

If you're missing out on some stuff, you're missing out on some stuff.

And also, just the vernacular was important.

The way they use the Spanglish is different than Puerto Ricans in New York use the Spanglish and Cubans in Miami use the Spanglish and Colombians in Chicago uses Spanglish.

So, that was very workshopped, even though I know I have people, "That's not how," but it's like Spanglish is regional too.

So, it's like, yeah.

- When I was thinking about the show and kind of mulling it over in my head, I found myself drawn to your goal of you've been quoted as saying providing representation for Latina people and addressing stereotypes within your work.

And it felt like a way into tackling those issues was with the character of Mari and how she tries to take down the gentrification in her neighborhood.

- This is your girl [bleep], bringing you the real multilayer tragedy of gentrification, mi gente.

This house?

I knew the familia that lived there.

I went to school with two of the boys.

Pero now, because their landlord was money-hungry for them Trump dollars, they've been displaced to the four winds, [speaking Spanish], but two a one bedroom for the five of them.

But you know what the real tragedia is?

That's the real tragedia that you got neighborhood people and no shade, okay?

Because I know everybody's gotta eat and pay that rent.

- She's like the chorus and the consciousness in lots of ways of the neighborhood.

Also, it was reflecting life.

We were getting protested, the show.

Look, we come in there with our Hollywood trucks, take over blocks.

And Boyle Heights has been represented in horrible ways.

I mean, it's usually like shootouts and [speaking Spanish] and things and all respect to Cholos, it's not that, but there was not a gun.

You didn't see a single gun.

But they haven't been represented very well, that neighborhood.

And also, we come in and just sort of like hollywoodized it.

So, I understand the protest.

- How did you take in a character in their internal struggle and externalize it?

- What we knew we didn't wanna do, was the, "Oh, my mother doesn't accept me."

It was more complicated than that.

Your mom is gay.

But she couldn't tell you either.

So, whatever you discerned from her behavior, it was totally right.

It was right, it was in her head.

'Cause it's complicated.

They are still a bridge generation that came out.

I think this new generation doesn't really come out.

So, it's like millennials still came out.

And that was important to do that like the coming out, never coming out, also never getting to, 'cause your mom died and having all that resentment.

And we just wanted to make it messy and real.

'Cause not everyone's, like parent relationships are, "Oh, they don't accept me."

"They accepted me right away."

It is a mess.

And when you don't have the parent there to like be reclamar like we say, like, "Why did you behave that way?"

Like, you have to fill a lot of blanks, wrong sometimes.

So, we just, those were just really like savory conversations in the room based on a lot of people's experience.

- I knew it.

- Okay.

- I totally knew it.

- Then, why didn't you say anything?

- Why didn't you say anything?

- When did we ever say anything?

- God, that's so true.

That's sad, we should say stuff.

For a while, I was a little fluid myself.

I mean, who isn't, right?

[Lyn giggles] I guess it runs in the family.

- Don't.

- I'm just saying, I support any way you wanna identify.

- I don't identify as anything, I'm just me.

- No, I hear you.

I'm just saying, your sister supports you.

- I don't remember exactly, but I just know that anytime we would come back to that subject, it was like, "How can we make it the messiest?"

And then, in the end, the most fulfilling, 'cause like when she, in front of her father, she was like, she basically defends, "I am her daughter," [Tanya groans] like you earn that whole thing.

It was such a dream, season two when we got together with and to season three, there's this collective of Latina singer songwriters.

And they wrote the music for us.

Instead of a composer, first season, we had the only Latina composer in the Academy.

And then, season two, we had these like girls that were the same age as the girls on the show, writing the music for, it was such an amazing like expansion of representation.

Do you know what I mean?

So, and because they were, it's like they were writing for "Vida" and sort of dictating aesthetic, but it was like they were getting the aesthetic from "Vida" 'cause they were seeing edited scenes.

It was really beautiful.

[Spanish song playing] ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ [typewriter dings] - You are talking about addressing stereotypes.

And one thing that stood out to me, and I was curious because you mentioned Starz with all of the sex scenes and the sexuality in general, that is something in those moments, they're really lived in and they're really explicit.

And one of them that came to my mind, because I had this experience firsthand, was the spiciness of Latina women or how they're hypersexual and all of these sorts of things.

So, I was just curious, because it felt like such a creative choice to really live in those sexual moments with those characters.

But it is something that I was like, "Oh, but this also feels like turning a stereotype on its head a little bit."

- I really wanted to portray sexually empowered girls that were flawed and that can look a lot of ways.

But the sex scenes were shot for you, didn't turn the camera away.

And the reality, it was important.

So, I really hate those like push against the wall and then, they tear the blouse off.

I'm like, "How are you gonna go home without a blouse that doesn't work?"

Like that doesn't really happen.

And that was important, like the messiness of "I know what I like sexually, I'm empowered, I'm body-positive and it's still a mess."

My favorite sex scene, because of how we made it, it was, the director was queer, the first AD, second AD were queer, the DP was queer, the actresses were queer.

And it was so, like it was so protective and supportive and safe.

How we made it was as important as what we made.

- Talk to us about how Mishel Prada and Melissa Barrera came to be Lyn and Emma.

- Melissa, who's from Monterey and had just moved with like a visitor's visa, I think.

I met her two weeks after she had moved.

And we were casting for the pilot and we were like, oh, I had a fantastic Latina casting director too, that she's like the "Stranger Things" casting director, "Florida Project," like she's very, she finds people in the communities when you need them.

It's not just like the stars or whatever.

There were no stars for this anyway, like there were no, it was gonna always be this kind of cast.

And I think she didn't tell us that, like she didn't have papers to work, like a visa.

And we had to hold the thing for I don't know how long to wait for Melissa, 'cause we wanted her.

So, she was fantastic and we had to hold the whole thing and to wait for her visa.

So, and we had cast someone else as Emma for the pilot that's we shot somebody else.

And then, when that didn't work out and we had to find someone, we had a little over a week maybe before we started shooting the show.

And we were like, "Remember that girl that came that we all said, 'Oh'," she came for another role for Cruz, which was a character in season one.

And remember, we all said, "They look like sisters, they felt like sisters.

Let's pull back those tapes."

And we were like, "I think it's her."

[upbeat music] - Oh, like Frida and Diego, or, oh, we can have loteria-themed everything, like on the tables, on the glassware and everywhere.

Oh and we can have like ironic loteria nights.

- I mean, isn't that a little obvious?

Maybe, it doesn't have to have a theme.

- Oh, no, we absolutely, we need to have a theme.

We need to.

I mean, it doesn't have to be loteria, it can be anything, but it has to be something.

[Spanish song playing in the background] - Look at that.

[Spanish song playing in the background] - And they're like really good friends now, like the show worked to bring them together.

But in a way, you didn't want them so together at season one, 'cause they come together.

[typewriter dings] - Why do you think you can make it today and why was this such at the time of the moment?

- It's too niche.

[Marcelena] Mm-hmm.

- And it's like identity-based.

It's not a thriller, it's not genre.

And now, that's because of the contraction, because all these companies are coming together, becoming these like big organisms, there's gonna be like four of them left and they have these mandates, so, it's, something's happening.

Fear, I think, is happening in these conference rooms where they have these, where they decide on these mandates.

It's a weird moment, yeah for stories like this, niche stories.

- I was wondering what this experience taught you and how have you taken that into your current and the future projects that you're working on?

- It exposed me to this family and a lot of them are still my family, especially the writers.

Some of my best friends are now, they're still the writers.

And that community continues even though there's no "Vida."

It formed this meta-community around it and that has continued.

Taught me so many things.

I mean, the fact that "Vida" doesn't exist, I mean, exists on Hulu right now, but like, the fact that it doesn't, it's not current in times that we need it, that we need those stories.

[typewriter dings] [Narrator] You've been watching "On Vida: A Conversation With Tanya Saracho" on "On Story."

"On Story" is part of a growing number of programs in Austin Film Festival's On Story Project that also includes the "On Story" radio program, podcast, book series, and the On Story archive accessible through the Wittliff Collections at Texas State University.

To find out more about "On Story" and Austin Film Festival, visit onstory.tv or austinfilmfestival.com.

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