One Day At A Time Showrunners On Series Resurrection & Continuing To Tell Important Story In Election Year

Throughout the last three months, One Day At a Time developers, executive producers and showrunners Gloria Calderon Kellett and Mike Royce kept the Save the Show campaign going after the comedys cancellation by Netflix with hopeful messages on social media.

Today they have good news for ODAAT fans — the series has found a new home on CBS Corp.-owned basic cable network Pop for a 13-episode fourth season to debut in 2020. While the primary piece of the deal between Sony Pictures TV and CBS Corp. is the shows premiere on Pop, it also allows for repeats to air on CBS later in the year.

Going from a premium SVOD platform like Netflix to a basic cable network is not easy as there is a major difference in the series budgets. With negotiations, the gap in the production part of the budget was made “not significant,” according to Sony TV President Jeff Frost, but there still will be reduction.

“Its a lower budget, we all made sacrifices, we all came up with compromises in order to keep the show going but nothing to prevent us from making the show that we wanted to make,” Calderon Kellett said. “Thats one of the things about Pop that made it really exciting for us -they made very clear that they wanted to keep making the show we want to make; thats all you want to hear as a creator.”

In Season 4, ODAAT will continue the storylines of the characters, with Elena in her senior year and talking about college, Alex getting older, Penelope becoming a nurse practitioner, Lydia left in Cuba, Schneider as newly sober and in a new relationship and Victor being newly married and how that impacts the family.

“And it is 2020, so we will be discussing Im sure some version of politics as it affects this family,” Calderon Kellett said.

How does she feel being able to continue the show with a new season airing during an election year? “Exhilarated!,” Calderon Kellett exclaimed.

Moving from Netflix to Pop can also help the show be more timely and topical, Royce said.

“Its very interesting because instead of binged at once, we are going to come out once a week and will be able to be a little closer to when things will be happening,” he said. “Will still of course will be producing it well ahead of the events that are happening but that will be a new experience to have the timing of it.”

While Sony TV had the cast of the series under contract until October, the ODAAT writers were free to take other jobs. Some of them did, and thats a good thing, Calderon Kellett said. The cast, led by Justina Machado and Rita Moreno, also includes Todd Grinnell, Isabella Gomez, Marcel Ruiz and Stephen Tobolowsky.

“One of the wonderful things that we meant to do with the show is to give young writers of color and LGBTQ writers an opportunity, so the fact that many of them have moved on to other shows is actually a victory because its doing the work we have been doing since Season 1,” she said. “While we are sad to see some of them go to other jobs, it gives us an opportunity to find new writers. So we have some clutch players that are back and then we have some new writers that we are reading right now and going to be meeting that we are really, really excited about.”

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