While at the press day for the new Starz show “Vida,” I got to talk with two of its stars, Chelsea Rendon and Carlos Miranda. Rendon plays Marisol, a young woman who is passionate about her politics and determined to fight against any and every injustice thrown into her path. Miranda stars as Johnny, a well-meaning guy who is busy running his dad’s auto shop and is on the verge of getting married to his pregnant girlfriend. However, when Johnny’s ex-girlfriend, Lyn (Melissa Barrera), arrives back in town, his plans for being a good husband and dad are challenged to a large degree. Both characters reside in East Los Angeles and in a community filled with pride and passion, and while they are certain of the paths in life they are meant to take, everything gets turned upside down for them.
Rendon began acting at the tender age of six years old, and she has won numerous awards for her role as Cristina on “No Turning Back.” She was featured on the shows “The Bridge,” “Major Crimes” and “Code Black,” and she also has a recurring role on “The Fosters.”
Miranda was born in raised in San Francisco, California, and he has appeared in such movies as “Warrior,” Sofia Coppola’s “The Bling Ring” and “Grandma” which starred Lily Tomlin. On television, his credits include “Chicago PD,” “How to Get Away with Murder” and on the TNT revival series “Dallas.”
Please check out the interview below and be sure to watch “Vida” when it debuts on the Starz network on May 6th.
She has served as a writer on “How to Get Away with Murder” and on the HBO TV series “Girls” and “Looking.” And now, playwright Tanya Saracho presents us with her very own television series, “Vida.” Set in East Los Angeles, it follows a pair of estranged sisters who reunite for their mother’s funeral. Their hometown is a vibrant area and features a strong Latinx community with residents who find an empowerment in this place they cannot easily find anywhere else. As “Vida” goes on, we discover just how much history this part of Los Angeles contains and of the changes others threaten to make which can erase a past which needs to be preserved.
In addition to her work on television, Saracho has had her plays produced at New York City’s Primary Stages and 2nd Stage, Steppenwolf Theater, The Denver Theatre Center, and the Oregon Shakespeare Festival. She was named one of nine national Latino Luminarios by Café Magazine and was given the first Revolucionario Award in Theater by the National Museum of Mexican Art. In addition, she is the founder of the Alliance of Latino Theatre Artists (ALTA).
I got to speak with Saracho while she was in Los Angeles to promote “Vida.” She talked of how she went about creating such complex characters, how she likes to give her cast only so much information before they receive the next episode’s script, and of how excited she is about filming the show in East Los Angeles. I often say there is always something new to discover about Los Angeles no matter how long you have lived there, and Saracho agreed as she is still learning of how far back the history of this particular community extends.
Please check out the interview below and be sure to watch “Vida” when it premieres on Starz May 6th.
Melissa Barrera and Mishel Prada play long-estranged sisters, Lyn and Emma, who reunite for their mother’s funeral on the new Starz television series, “Vida.” These two could not be more different than the other, and both are forced to deal with the building their mother, Vidalia, owned and the bar she ran. What they thought would be a short trip turns into a homecoming where they reassess where their lives are at and come to terms with their mother’s sexuality after meeting her wife and now widow, Eddy (Ser Anzoátegui). From there, we come to learn more about Lyn and Emma with each successive episode as both Barrera and Prada create complex characters who are not all they appear to be on the surface.
Barrera plays Lyn, a care-free party girl who has taken her good lucks and used them to her advantage to get a wealthy boyfriend and live a fabulous life in San Francisco. Barrera previously appeared in the third season of Netflix’s “Club de Cuervos,” and she has acted on popular telenovelas back in Mexico including “Siempre Tuya Acapulco” and “Tanto Amor.” Having trained in musical theater at New York University, she has starred in the musicals “Spring Awakening” and “Young Frankenstein.”
Prada portrays Emma, a smart and very driven woman who has created a strong career for herself in Chicago. She starred as Gabi in the AMC short form series “Fear the Walking Dead: Passage” and is one of the founding members of Damarosa, a female art collective which celebrates the significant role of women have played in art, literature, and politics.
It was a real treat to speak with Barrera and Prada while they were in Los Angeles for the “Vida” press day held at the Four Seasons Hotel. Both described how wonderfully flawed and complex their characters are on the show, how rare it is to find roles like these, and of the joy they had in filming these episodes on the streets of East LA.
Please check out the interview below and be sure to watch “Vida” when it debuts on the Starz network on May 6.
Grauman’s Chinese in Hollywood had a special screening of “Twilight Zone: The Movie” in honor of its 30th anniversary, and the screening was put together by Mad Monster. Before fans got to watch the movie in its pristine digital presentation, there was a Q&A with one of the movie’s stars, Jeremy Licht. Perhaps best known for his work as a child actor on television shows like “The Hogan Family,” Licht was very happy to share his memories of making this film.
Licht appears in the movie’s third segment, “It’s a Good Life,” in which he plays Anthony, a young boy who is suddenly befriended by schoolteacher Helen Foley (Kathleen Quinlan). But when Anthony takes Helen home to meet his “family,” she ends up meeting a group of people who live in sheer horror of Anthony as he lives to terrify them if he suspects they disapprove of him.
The movie is the theatrical version of Rod Serling’s classic television series “The Twilight Zone,” and it is essentially an anthology of four different films by four directors. Licht described the audition process for it as being “really interesting” and that he was not hired until after the filmmakers started shooting the first couple of segments.
“I auditioned a couple of times and knew it was starting to get close, and it was really exciting,” Licht said of the process. “On the second audition that I had, Joe Dante was in there (who directed “It’s a Good Life”). It wasn’t often that I got star struck, but I was kind of in awe of him because of what he had done. He had made ‘Piranha’ which I’m sure you all know more than I do.”
Of course, it’s impossible not to talk about “Twilight Zone: The Movie” without mentioning the tragic accident which still casts a heavy shadow over it. During the filming of the first segment, “Time Out” directed by John Landis, a helicopter crashed and killed actor Vic Morrow and two child actors, Myca Dinh Le and Renee Shin-Yi Chen. Licht got the news about the accident a week after his second audition.
“I figured that was it. That was the end of it and they were going to shelve the film,” Licht said. “About six months later, I ended up getting a call from my agent that they were actually back in production and that they had wrapped up that segment (“Time Out”), and to come back and for a third audition. I went back in, and at this point I knew it (the material) back and forth, and I walked in and there was Steven Spielberg. He had just come off of ‘E.T.’ and it was really an amazing audition. By the time I had gotten home from that audition there was an offer. It was extremely exciting time for me and for my family and we accepted the offer, and we wound up on the Warner Brothers soundstage in Burbank within a week and we spent three months in principal photography.”
“It’s a Good Life” was a remake of the classic “Twilight Zone” episode of the same name, but Licht said he never watched it until after filming was complete. It also turns out Bill Mumy, who played Anthony in the original episode, makes a cameo appearance as a restaurant patron who intervenes when his friend starts pushing Licht’s character around.
But unlike the original television episode, Dante ended up taking “It’s a Good Life” in a different direction as it was more cartoony. Licht went on to describe Dante as a very “hands-on” director as well as a “big kid,” and that this movie was “his playground.”
“Working with a director like him truly was a treat,” Licht said of Dante. “He was really into letting the actors find what they were looking for. Obviously it was over the top; he was looking for that. He was looking for that cartoonish, extremely uncomfortable feel which I think we certainly accomplished.”
In terms of what was the most rewarding thing about doing “Twilight Zone: The Movie,” Licht replied it was being part of a film which has a huge following. The television series was always unpredictable in how you never knew what direction it would take from episode to episode, and it made fans wonder what the movie was going to be like. Having acted mostly on television and in several “movies of the week,” Licht also came to discover how fortunate he was to play Anthony in this film.
“It’s very rare as a kid, let alone at 13, to be asked to lead or be one of the principals in a film or play a character where nothing is what you think it is,” Licht said. “It’s rare to have that kind of a script, to have something like that come to you, let alone be asked by Joe Dante or Steven Spielberg to be in it. I was pretty honored and pretty humbled, and I am to this day really.”
As for the question Licht gets asked the most about “Twilight Zone: The Movie,” he said it was if the cast really had to eat those peanut butter covered hamburgers.
“I read the script and I thought, ‘Wow, that is really vile! I can’t imagine doing that,’” Licht said of this unusual meal. “The day that we shot it, they actually brought in McDonald’s hamburgers and basically we tried it. First of all, if you’re peanut butter person, it’s really not bad. The problem is, good luck saying your lines with a mouthful of peanut butter!”
Licht retired from acting in the 1990’s although he did appear in a short film in 2009 called “The Closer.” These days, he has his own financial planning company called JL Capital Management which has turned out to be very successful. For a former child actor, he has done very well for himself, and he has not allowed himself to be swallowed whole by the kind of vices which have destroyed so many lives. When asked why some child actors easily transition to an adult career while others don’t, Licht sounded very level-headed in his explanation.
“When I was doing it, there were paparazzi but nothing like things are now where every moment is recorded and every stumble that you take is magnified,” Licht said. “I’ve seen it all. I’ve had friends that have had very successful careers, and sadly I’ve had friends that have fallen. I grew up with good people around me and I still do surround myself with good people. My folks are important and my family is really important. I got into the business very young, but not necessarily at the urging of my family. I wasn’t supporting my family. It (acting) was a hobby that sort of took off. My parents said to me the whole time, ‘If you stop liking this or you become unpleasant to be around, you’re out. You’re gone because this is not what that’s for.’”
“I think a degree of it is luck, I think a degree of it is also upbringing and family, but I think a lot of it is luck,” Licht continued. “It’s like any of your lives growing up, but under a big microscope. I’m sure that we’ve all had times in our life, if you can imagine if cameras were on you, when you stumble the hardest, and how can you recover from that? You can recover privately, but when everybody’s watching you and judging you it’s a tough deal.”
We keep hearing stories day after day of child actors going bad, but we never hear enough about the ones who don’t. Licht is one of those former child actors who has done very well for themselves, and it would be great to hear more about people like him instead of getting all these random updates on others who don’t have the same support.
The Ultimate Rabbit 