Season 4 Premieres on CBS October 12th 9:30-10:00 PM, ET/PT
Gloria Calderón Kellett and Norman Lear are about to launch the fourth season of Calderón Kellet’s Latino version of One Day at a Time, a mere 45 years after Lear’s original series become a mainstay on the network from 1975 to 1984. Calderón Kellett developed ODAAT, the series with co-creator Mike Royce, which ran three seasons on Netflix, then it was cancelled. After a social media outrage and a call for the return of the much loved show, it was picked up by POP TV but cut short because of the Covid. Then the news came that the series was picked up by CBS, making a full circle back to the television network where it began. Home again. Originally scheduled to premiere on October 5th, it was pushed back to October 12th at the last minute.
With the trajectory of ODAAT Calderón Kellett and Royce are the TV show creators that could…three times! The season four they shot for POP TV is what will be airing on CBS. Calderón Kellett took to social media to once again elicit the help of ODAAT fans. This season is crucial for the beloved sitcom if they are to get a season 5 on CBS.
If Calderón Kellet has shown anything, it’s that she is resilient and a survivor. And so she recounts her journey to being one of the most sought after show runners on television. Calderón Kellet recalls, “My parents are Cuban. I was raised in Oregon and San Diego, so I guess we are West Coast Cubans. Yeah, they do exist. I was a singer, dancer and actor at a very young age. In the first grade I was performing at malls and retirement communities. The writing came a little bit later. It really emanated from a deep frustration I felt after coming to Hollywood and going out on auditions. I was stunned by the limited roles that they had for Latinos. ‘Where’s a Latino teacher, a lawyer or a doctor?’ The roles were always gangbangers or girlfriends of gangbangers. This was only fifteen years ago. That really frustrated me, so I figured that the people holding the power are holding the pen. So, I gotta hold the pen.”
Calderón Kellet was doing standup comedy at the time and noticed there were very few Latinas doing standup. “It was very male dominated,” she says. “I was consistently told that women had no place in comedy. So, I put together a one woman show of 15 short monologues for women of various, diverse backgrounds. It was a very simply staged production, just an actor on a small blank stage and a single light. The first night I gave tickets out to all the local charities that I supported and to the businesses around the theater. We were sold out and the rest of the run we had a line going around the block. People seemed to want to see a woman being funny. This is how I got my agent and my manager. I put up another show called Baggage the next year. Then I wrote a book, Accessories – 30 Monologues for Women, a compilation of the monologues I did in those two shows. And that is really what started my career. That is the thing that caught fire for me and allowed people to see what I could do and make them want to hire me.”
The once aspiring young singer, dancer and comic moved forward as a writer, actress, story editor and co-producer on the CBS series, How I Met Your Mother. Then she moved on to writer and supervising producer on Rules of Engagement, Lifetime’s Devious Maids, ABC’s Mixology and the ABC series, United We Fall. In her current series, she has modeled the lead role of Penelope (played by Justina Machado) on herself.
“It’s true,” she admits. “Our lead character is a veteran and a nurse. I am not a veteran and I am not in health care. But the way she thinks and feels about the world is me. She is balancing between her mother (played by Rita Moreno), who is much more conservative and her daughter (played by Isabella Gomez) who is very liberal. Penelope is really trying to keep her balance between these very powerful women. She serves as our moderate.”
Calderón Kellett is not finding a huge difference between creating a series for streaming television and having it air on network television. “It really isn’t different at all,” she exclaims. “What is so beautiful about this show is, we were always making a Norman Lear sitcom. On Netflix, the episodes got to be a little bit longer, which was lovely, but this was always in the tone and style of what Norman has been doing for 45 years. It is really glorious to now be on a network which is what this format was designed for. It is having a discourse with your audience and saying, ‘Welcome to this Latino couch.’ The sitcom is a proscenium, a theater, a play. And the couch is the center of every great American sitcom because that’s where the conversations are happening. To be able to do that in the Norman Lear style on CBS so many years later is just a gift. And I am so proud to have it seen through the Latino lens.”
When asked about the makeup of the writers room and how many are on staff, Kellett explains, “Every year it varies a little bit. I believe this year there were 12 of us. It’s normally between nine and twelve. It is a glorious room to be in.”
There are a lot of Latinos in there. We are heavily Latino and we also are heavily queer because one of our main characters is from the LGBTQIA community. It’s a lot. And we also have various ages amongst the writers which is also very important to us because the show spans so many ages. That is what happens when you put a Latina in charge. We’re very intentional in making change.”
As far as filming in front of a live audience, Kellett goes on to say, “Lear’s series featured live audiences. And, yes, we did most of ours live.” But then, the whispers about COVID started, so our sixth episode did not have an audience. The six episodes are what CBS has signed on for this season. We did a seventh animated episode, the ‘Election Episode,’ which we are praying CBS will let us air just before the Presidential election. We wrote this entire fourth season for Netflix but only got to shoot half of it. The hope is that CBS will love it and we can fold the remaining shows we have written for season four into season five. That is our deep wish and desire. However, the great hope is that our community will come out and really show up big on October 5 to 19. That will be a clear statement to the network that the public wants to have the show on the air and we’ll be able to provide the series for many years to come.”
Aside from One Day At a Time, when asked about any other projects she’s working on, Calderón Kellett laughs. “I have many projects I am working on. I don’t know how many I am allowed to talk about yet. My new deal is with Amazon. They have already greenlit several pilots for me. Then I have a movie with Natasha Rothwell, an incredible African American actress and writer. She and I have a movie called We Were There Too, being produced by Greg Berlanti’s company for HBO Max.”
Wondering if Calderón Kellett ever missed her old days as a performer, she tells us, “I do but of all the things that I do, the writing, directing and producing have had the most impact. So, right now, that is where my focus is. I certainly love acting, being able to pop over and do somebody else’s show or do one of my own. But my priority is still the pen. Once I get another show on, I am sure I will make an appearance in it. There are a lot of very talented Latina actresses out there but not a lot of Latina writers and directors who are given the opportunity to create. So, I f eel that is where I need to put my focus at this moment.”