by Julio Martinez
The Garcias the 10-part family comedy series is set to premiere April 14, on HBO Max. The Garcias re-visits the Garcia family which was first introduced in the 2000 Nickelodeon series The Brothers Garcia, a teen sitcom that focused on just the three Garcia brothers.
Co-creator Jeff Valdez recalls, “When The Brothers Garcia ended its fourth season in 2004, live-action shows at Nickelodeon generally stopped production once you completed 50 or more episodes. That was the business model at the time. We all went off to parts unknown. Nothing similar to the original Brothers Garcia series ever happened again.”
However, the Garcia family was not forgotten as the series played . Mother Sonia (Ada Maris), her husband Ray (Carlos Lacamara), and their children, Larry (Alvin Alverez), George (Bobby Gonzalez), Carlos (Jeffery Licon) and Lorena (Vaneza Pitynski), stayed very much in the thoughts of Valdez. He explains, “The original series was being pirated on YouTube. People still talked about the show.”
Ten years ago, Valdez started reaching out to Nickelodeon to get the rights back. He recalled, “I got close but nothing really happened.” Then three years ago, Valdez was in New York visiting his friend, Bob Backish, who was running Viacom (owner of Nickelodeon). “I told him, ‘This is crazy. You are not doing anything. The show is just sitting on a shelf. Can we get the rights back,’” Backish agreed. Meanwhile, Valdez’s partner at New Cadance Productions company, Sol Trujillo, had gotten an overall deal with Warner Media and part of the deal was to do a series.
“I told them, this is the series I want to lead with,” said Valdez. “So, long-story-short, we got the series green-lit. We started pre-production in early 2020. There were some hold-ups along the way. Finally, I was able to call everybody and tell them, ‘I got the green light. Pack your bags. We’re shooting in Mexico. Let’s go’.”
Reviving the world of the Garcia family has long been a mission for Valdez. The original series revolved around four children, three boys and a girl a Mexican American family living in San Antonio, Texas. The new series finds the Garcia children grown up and gathering with their parents for a summer vacation in a luxury home by the beach in Mexico.
Production began in Puerto Aventuras, Mexico in June 2020. The HBO Max original series picks up 15 years later, with the family spending three months in the resort of Rivera Maya. Joining the cast are the grandchildren, played by Oliver Alexander, Nitzia Chama, Paul Rodriguez, Jr., Maeve Garay, Elsha Kim, Ayva Severy and Trinity Jo-Li.
All the regulars from the original series were ecstatic to be recreating their original roles. “This is so unique because of the kind of roles we are usually cast to play. I just got through two seasons playing a matriarch for a drug cartel, Maris says. “Still, after all these years, that has been the majority of the work available to us.” Carlos Lacamara chimed in, “This show breaks so many barriers. It is nice to have a real Latino family represented on television.”
The production cast and crew is 90%-plus Latino and now the original Garcia siblings have families of their own even more diverse families of their own, this is an authentic reflection of the diversity among families worldwide. The series is being produced by New Cadence Productions.
Gonzalez recalled that when he read the pilot script for The Brothers Garcia, he could see a bit of himself in the character. During the four years the series was in production the cast bonded as a family on screen as in real life. “Coming back to it as an adult, I thought, ‘Oh, I get to be me again’. Adding, “I am really excited for my character to have his family back, as well as having a wife and a daughter and to explore those relationships.”
The Garcia family finds their time in Mexico filled with adventure with the younger members discovering a bit of about their culture as well trying their hand at different tasks at the resort. George (Gonzalez) tries extra spicy Chapulines (grasshoppers), while sister Lorena re-discovers her love of working in the hair salon. For Valdez, scripting the series was a task he had longed for. He confirms, “As I was writing the first episode of The Garcias, it immediately became obvious I was literally writing for people as I knew them. Ada, Carlos, Bobby, Jeffrey, Alvin and Vanessa, are those characters.
“I think that simply having Latinos represented on television is not enough,” says, Gonzalez. “What’s important is the type of representation we are getting. That is something we don’t get enough of. We exist in this country. We are normal, not some sort of outlier thing. We are here.”
The Garcias premieres o April 14 on HBO Max