By Bel Hernandez
“I’ve never been so busy,” writer/producer Luisa Leschin exclaimed. “In one week I met with Mario Lopez in the morning and Eva Longoria in the evening and both projects are moving forward”. She is also pitching a half hour comedy with “a star” and working on another half hour single camera TV show called Sunny Days with Steven Canals (Pose) on board as executive producer. “He is so busy, and so big and he just loves this [project]. He has an overall deal at 20th and he’s taken us under his wing…how fabulous is that?,” she revealed on an interview on the IGTV Show TheTRENDTalk , via Zoom, explaining that she has never been busier in spite of sheltering in during the Pandemic.
Two weeks after the interview, Leschin received the good news about one of the projects she spoke about the interview. The “star” that had come to her to help her develop a half hour sitcom was none-other than actress Sherri Shepherd, who plays the Principal in Netflix’s sticome Mr. Iglesias, the show where Leschin currently serves as co-executive producer.
The pilot, Just Sherri, will be based on Shepherd’s life and family with Shepherd in the title role. The show centers around families having to live together, especially during these times, and the emotional baggage you can’t escape because it’s sitting in your living room.
Leschin can now add another credit to her long career as a TV writer, a career that originally began as an actress. However, she found that the roles she was auditioning for all required she have a thick Spanish accent, and most all were small roles as maids, illegal immigrants and mothers, girlfriends and wifes of gang bangers.
She realized early on, after she co-founded a sketch group called Latin Anonymous with fellow actors Cris Franco, Armando Molina and Diane Rodriguez, that if she was ever going to play other than stereotypical roles she would have to write them herself.
Leschin applied, and was accepted to Walt Disney Television Writing Program. Soon afterward she started her career as a writer on SI Tv’s (now Fuse TV) The Brothers Garcia . From there she has worked herself from staff writer to executive producer with a career that spans over 20 year as a television writer. She currently serves as co-executive producer for Netflix’s hit show Mr. Iglesias with past writing credits which include From Dusk Til Dawn: The Series, Everybody Hates Chris, East Los High, George Lopez and many others.
From 2016 to 2018 she was the co-executive producer for Amazon’s TV show Just Add Magic and in 2019 she was awarded the Norman Lear Writer’s Award for her writing career at the 34th annual Imagen Awards.
One of the other projects Leschin mentioned working on, is an animated project about dinosaurs. For this project she teamed up her husband, who is also a writer and her son Dario who is the artist. She was excited to announce that right before her interview on TheTRENDTalk, a “major producer” had come on board to champion the project.
Soon we will find out the fate of the other project Leschin has in development, but for now she continues her work as co-executive producer on Mr. Iglesias, which just a month ago was renewed for a 2nd season.
Luisa Leschin is repped by William Morris Endeavor and is managed by Inclusion.