Tanya Saracho joins Bill Hader ('Barry'), David Mandel ('Veep'), Ali Rushfield ('Shrill'), Alan Yang ('Forever') and Jerrod Carmichael ('Ramy') for the Comedy Showrunner Roundtable.
00:00What are the pieces of you, of your history, that you're sort of mining for laughs or for not?
00:11I mean, for more serious.
00:12One of my oldest friends, Raul Castillo, he's an actor, we worked on Looking together,
00:17and I put him on the season.
00:19And he wanted a tattoo of Adelita, which is his mother's name, on the thing.
00:23And then when it was time to write his mother, it has to be named Adelita.
00:27So it was this meta thing. I've known this guy since we were 14.
00:30We went to high school, college together. He's on my show now.
00:33And I'm casting his mother, too.
00:35And I was trying to get as close as I could without, you know?
00:40But yeah, so it's very meta.
00:42Did you read his mom for it? No? Not a possibility?
00:44No.
00:45Her quote was too high.
00:50What did the network versions of your show look like?
00:53The sex would be just, I don't know if the sex would be there,
00:56especially the way we do it, you know?
00:58It would be that and more, like, Latinx.
01:02I feel like sometimes mainstream Latinx shows have to be the most Latinx, you know?
01:08Oh, interesting.
01:09And it steeps itself in drama, but it's not dramedy.
01:12You know, I don't know what it is. It's comedy, I guess.
01:15But it probably would be funnier with more, like, jokes about our identity,
01:21it feels like, you know? But, like, we don't do any of that.
01:25The insert punchline here.
01:26Yeah, insert punchline about identity, because the show is very much steeped in identity.
01:30Because right now that's sort of what we've been allowed, you know?
01:33And when it comes to comedy about Latinx, like, we've been allowed identity-themed stuff, you know?
01:39I can't wait to get past that, you know?
01:41But we don't have enough shows, Latinx-themed shows on television, you know, for that yet.
01:45Severe under-representation, for sure.
01:47Yeah, yeah.
01:55When was the last time you guys were completely wrong about viewers' response to a scene, a character, something in your show?
02:02Unexpected. It wasn't so, it's lighter than this, but it, um, I didn't know that,
02:07so we made a character have a taco, like, just eat a taco.
02:11Like a white girl, on purpose.
02:13What does that mean?
02:14Like a sandwich.
02:15Ah, okay.
02:16And, oh my god, Twitter, it was like, this show does not, how, I would never eat a taco.
02:21It was like, it became this thing.
02:23Well, this show, they don't even know how to eat tacos in this show.
02:25It's not a legit Latinx show.
02:27And it was like a choice, because this girl's coming back, she, like, got bougie in Chicago,
02:31and she's like, she's just, like, putting anything in a taco, and she races it to her.
02:35And it cost, and it was like, now we have to deal with it in season two, why she eats tacos like that.
02:40But, like, it was so unexpected, we couldn't shake it.
02:42Like, the stigma of, like, the show does not know.
02:45How dare you?
02:46How dare you?
02:47You eat a taco like a sandwich, you know?
02:48I feel like I'm never gonna eat a taco in public.
02:51You come to it.
02:52You come to it.
02:53I've never eaten one.
02:54You come to it.
02:55You can't, it's not a sandwich.
02:56I've never had a taco, so I don't know.
02:58Never.
02:59See, we're learning here, guys.
03:01What do we have for lunch?
03:02We can do a tart.
03:03To tart.
03:09So, what was the last time, as you guys were writing, that you or your collaborators were a little nervous?
03:15Just for the things you're gonna tackle.
03:17When the stars pitched me the show, they just said we want a show about gentrification, not gentrification, but gentrification of a Latinx space by another upwardly mobile Latinx.
03:26East LA, millennial, female.
03:28And then, after that, that was it.
03:29Run and go.
03:30Go.
03:31It looks like the trending page on Twitter.
03:33Yeah.
03:34Yeah, exactly.
03:35It was like, do this.
03:36Because every word is interesting.
03:39I put the queerness in there to have a, you know, a bit of me.
03:43I put brujas, because I practice brujeria.
03:47I practice witchcraft.
03:48Like, I was like, how am I gonna get in here, you know?
03:51The queerness, then, we wanted to do it right.
03:53And there was this one scene, first season, that a non-binary person and a femme top are having sex.
03:59That already is, we haven't seen that, right?
04:01The responsibility was felt so hardcore, you know?
04:04Because, like, it was like, we've never seen that.
04:06And also, we've never seen brown queers do that.
04:08It was workshopped to death.
04:10Like, you see writers hanging on to the doorframe, being like, see?
04:14She could get eaten this way.
04:16And then, like, everybody was just like, no, no.
04:20Like, whatever.
04:21It was, and then who we cast was so important.
04:23The person needs to be gender non-conforming to, like, all of it was so.
04:28But then it turned out fine.
04:29But then it turned out fine.
04:30But then it turned out fine.
04:35So this was so terrible.
04:36That was really interesting.
04:37It was kind of strange.
04:38The person on earth is a fan of the idea, not only.
04:40That was silly.
04:41And then the human being said.
04:42But then it turned out fine.
04:43It turned out fine.
04:44And he said, yeah, it turned out, this is so.
04:45It turned out fine.
04:46It turned out fine.
04:47And it turned out fine.
04:48And you know, it turned out fine.
04:50I was.
04:51This was the place that could be the only thing.
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