‘Vida’ EP Tanya Saracho On Depicting “The Brown Queer Perspective” At Starz
New show Vidaintends to plant inclusivity firmly on the map at Starz. Its EP Tanya Saracho said at T..
New show Vidaintends to plant inclusivity firmly on the map at Starz. Its EP Tanya Saracho said at TCA on Friday: “I always was missing that female brown queer perspective, and I think in Vida we have that. A lot of things I wanted to touch on and deal with, I get to do here.”
The show follows Mexican-American sisters Emma (Mishel Prada) and Lyn (Melissa Barrera) as they return home to their old neighborhood in East LA to face unexpected family revelations.
“I do think front and center is this brown queer femaleness to it,” Saracho went on. “It’s built by a queer, and in the writers’ room it’s made up half of queer women in there.”
Saracho said she was thoroughly supported by Starz. “I hardly every got told ‘no’. When I said I wanted an all Latinx writers’ room, it was, ‘done!'” she said, of her drive to include non gender-conforming people of color. “Most of our department heads are female, all our directors are either women of color or Latinx. The way that this was built, it was the right way. When you get a bunch of Latinxs together we get to handle our stories. A cultural shorthand happens.”
Barrera said the show was very much “a show about a Latinx family,” and her co-star Prada added that the show dealt with the experience of first and second-generation Americans and the importance of neighborhood preservation in the face of gentrification.
“We really are exploring what it’s like to be in that in-between place,” she said. “You don’t feel completely here or that, so where is that? It’s your neighborhood–that’s where you’re from.”
For Ser Anzoategui, who plays Eddy, the experience on the show was an entirely inclusive one.
“I felt really embraced and included from the beginning,” Anzoategui said. “If I had any sort of comment about anything queer, it was all ears and so respectful. I’ve never felt so respected before.”
