6/25/2023 0 Comments One day at a timelaneShe brings out the crazy in me and the dramatic and the theatrical. I’m not playing one of those stereotypical Indian maidens, what I used to called the “dusky maiden” roles that I played in so many films and TV in the past. Well, this time I’m playing a legitimate character. How different did it feel doing it this time? GE: You’ve talked in the past about how you had to do a lot of accents in the past in a way that felt degrading. Things like, “Oh, I found it on the YouTube”. I said, “You’re not going to believe this but I play the castanets, I still do.” Her mother almost peed in her pants! I play her mom, and I’m playing my mom because the accent is definitely my mother’s. So when Gloria had this part, she had a particular episode in mind about how Lydia came to this country, and there’s a little bit where I’m supposed to dance. Gloria’s mother was a dancer and to my absolute astonishment, she played castanets. Well, Gloria Calderon, a Cuban woman, and Mike Royce are the two head writers. Was that always on the page? Or did you bring that to the table? Jen Chaney: How much of the backstory about Lydia came to be once you were attached to the project? She’s a dancer, for instance, and clearly that is tailor-made for you. You don’t expect a lot of what you hear in this show, do you? “They took my well!” I mean that is political and it’s passionate and it’s emotional, and those things come seemingly out of the ether. MZS: When you’re sitting on the couch with your granddaughter and you tell the story about how you left Cuba in 1958 - “not speaking English, no money, without your family” - and she says, “How many times are you gonna go to this well,” and you say… I always sort of try to digest what they’re saying. And some of these pauses before you reply to people … MZS: It’s really great just to see you give this performance that is such a performance. You bet your ass I’m going to be interested. I ran into him at a political fundraising dinner and we sat at the same table and he said, “I want you in this show I’m going to do, I’m coming back to television.” You know those are the two magic words: Norman Lear, he’s going to do television again. GE: Can you tell us about how you got this role? It sounds like they had you in mind from the beginning.Īpparently, when Norman got the idea of doing the show, the first thing he said was “the first person I want is Rita Moreno.” Which is interesting because I believe that in the original show, the grandmother did not have a great deal to do. Who would have thunk? Every actor in the world would kill to have this part. I can’t imagine why they gave me this role. She’s vain, she’s theatrical, she’s dramatic, she’s big. GE: Do you think she knows that she’s funny? Well, because she’s so unreasonable! I love playing people who don’t have a sense of humor for instance, there’s nothing funnier to me than a person with no sense of humor. GE: Your character is so genuinely funny … And I’m doing my mom’s accent so it’s really all of the family. Matt Zoller Seitz: You don’t seem that spunky to me, you seem fierce to me. Is there a grandmother that isn’t spunky on television? Is there such a creature? Gazelle Emami: On One Day at a Time, you play Lydia, the spunky grandmother. Listen to the conversation, and read an edited transcript below. She recently joined the Vulture TV Podcast in studio to discuss why she asked for her character to be sexual, doing her first-ever scene sans makeup, and how Marlon Brando was an “absolute lunatic” about keeping their eight-year-long affair private. The star of West Side Story, Singin’ in the Rain, and countless other films and TV shows, is one of the few talents to have an EGOT, and we wouldn’t be surprised if she took another Emmy home this year for her scene-stealing work on One Day. On Netflix’s One Day at a Time, an excellent reboot of the Norman Lear original, Rita Moreno stars as 70-year-old Lydia, the grandmother in a multigenerational Cuban-American family living in Echo Park, Los Angeles.
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