Celebrating Extraordinary Latinas During International Women’s Month
By Julio Martinez
Writer/actress/creator Elaine Del Valle is riding the crest of a fast-surging wave. She recently attached Andrea Navedo (Jane The Virgin) and Arika Lisanne Mittman as her star and showrunner, respectively, and then sold her pilot The System to CBS.
Del Valle has been in the entertainment business for some time. She started off as an actress, then realized that if she was going to see non-stereotypical Latina roles, she was going to have to write them herself. “I had been an actress for about a decade when I wrote my show as a result of feeling misunderstood and unseen by casting directors, because they couldn’t understand that somebody who looked like me could have my background, and so I wrote Brownsville, Bred.”
Brownsville Bred (2011), is her autobiographical, one-woman stage play, developed while studying with noted New York acting coach, Wynn Handman. It depicted her true Nuyorican (New York/Puerto Rican) coming-of-age years in Brownsville Brooklyn, New York, which quickly garnered acclaim. She subsequently adapted her stage play into a novel, Brownsville Bred: Dreaming Out Loud, which was named, “Most Inspirational Young Adult” book by the International Latino Book Awards.
In 2013, with a desire to make her work more accessible, Del Valle began to write for the screen. She co-wrote, produced, and directed a comedy web series, Reasons Why I’m Single (Amazon Prime). Elaine has since, as the owner and operator of Del Valle Productions & Casting, cast over 50 short films, and produced her own short films. In 2015 Elaine became the first person to license an interstitial series, her co-production of Gran’pa Knows Best, to the HBO Latino Network.
With other notable achievements along the way, Del Valle’s biggest accomplishment to date is the development deal with CBS Television for her pilot titled The System, which she will also co-executive produce. She is excited but keeping it all in perspective. “It’s not my first time at this rodeo,” she affirms. “The process came by way of relationships developed throughout the years and establishing mutual respect. It takes continuous work, continuous growth, and that’s how it happened for me.”
Del Valle describes the arduous work involved from first putting words on paper to getting the deal with CBS. Beginning in 2018 when she was selected as one of nine directors to participate in the Sundance Short Narrative Film Lab after the film she directed, 3.769 was shown at Sundance. “I started taking their classes, including a course on feature film writing.”
Then she found the class on television episodic writing and she decided to look into that because at that time Del Valle was determined to turn her Brownsville Bred into a series. “But the minute I started learning what a network series really needed in order to have infinite longevity, I realized that perhaps Brownsville Bred was not the best story I could tell. And so I turned my time at the Sundance episodic lab into developing The System.”
Del Valle’s idea for the series evolved, eventually focusing on a competent yet jaded female social worker, navigating the same broken New York City system she had grown up in, while dealing with family issues of her own. The character advocates to resolve issues for every family she encounters while struggling to fix her own. When Del Valle finally felt she was ready to pitch the series, she turned to a longtime friend.
“I reached out to my dear friend Andrea Navedo whom everyone knows from Jane the Virgin. She had played Jane’s mom for five seasons. We have been friends for many years, auditioned together all the time. I brought the project to her and told her, ‘I really think that you’re right for it’.”
A year later, about the time Jane the Virgin was ending Navedo reached out to ask about the project. She had called right at the moment when Del Valle was going to sign an option deal for The System with another production company. She had been procrastinating because she really wasn’t happy with the terms of the agreement.
So when Navedo called, “I made some tweaks and sent it over to her,” Del Valle recalled. “The next day, Andrea told me that she read it, her team read it, her entire management team read it. They loved it. And they were on board with her being a producer on it. And so with that, we just decided to proceed to the next steps.”
As it turned out, everyone was in agreement that the very next step was to get the project in front of Jennie Snyder Urman, Jane the Virgin’s creator and showrunner. Andrea texted Urman, “Hey, can we have a conversation? I have this project” Urman loved it and immediately showed it to CBS Studios where she has a first-look deal.
“They loved it,” exclaimed Del Valle. “And then the next thing I knew, I found myself in an If-Come deal with CBS.” This kind of deal simply means the series creator has an agreement but is not formally signed with the studio. Basically, nobody gets paid until the project is sold. If there is no sale, the rights revert back to Del Valle, the writer.
Del Valle, Navedo and Urman moved forward as if mounting a military campaign. Del Valle recalled, “Jennie Urman told us we needed a showrunner and within an hour said, ‘I know the right showrunner for you, Arika Lisanne Mittman (Executive Producer of Paradise Lost and Timeless). The four of us first met on Zoom.” The next step was to pitch to CBS. Urman and Mittman shared some of their pitches with Del Valle, “I know writers don’t usually share their pitch ideas, but Jennie and Arika were so generous,” Del Valle recounted gratefully.
It took about a month for Del Valle to fine-tune her pitch, each time going back and forth with Urman and Mittman sending her feedback while also getting notes from the network executives. Del Valle described the process. “I had been refining and practicing that pitch for a month before I did it,” she recalled. “The whole pitch took place on a Zoom call that included the network executives and producers who spoke about their involvement and how they came to the project, then the showrunner spoke, and then it was my turn.” She had three minutes to talk about herself and 20 minutes to pitch the show.
“As soon as I was done, they asked some questions, I answered; the team answered questions, and then the network just said, ‘We want it.’ The whole thing took maybe 30 to 35 minutes.” Afterward, Urman called Del Valle to let her know just how well she had done, words that will stay with her forever. “You did something called ‘you sold it in the room’ and that doesn’t happen often,” Urman said. “You have a lot to be proud of.” Indeed she did.
Del Valle is currently waiting for the CBS corporate decision for the exact date to begin filming the pilot for The System. “So right now, that’s where I’m at,” she declares. “The CBS Network people gave me notes. I made the changes. I’ve been told that the head of CBS, Tom Sherman, loves the pilot and that we should celebrate that right now,” said Del Valle, but then continued cautiously. “But no, this is a very odd time because some pilots from last year have yet to be made.”
In the meantime, Del Valle is busy bringing her original one-woman book, Brownsville Bred to the screen, with the support of Warner Media 150 and The Sundance Institute. This is her first time directing a feature, “I start filming this summer in June, starring 10-year-old Latinx star Isabella Velasquez…and of course, I am looking forward to getting my pilot start date from CBS Studios.”