When the original One Day at a Time premiered in 1975, executive producer Norman Lear made television history by launching a female-driven sitcom about a divorced single mom. The show aired for ten years and lived on in syndication. Queer television writer Michelle Badillo grew up on reruns, watching it in her Forest Hills, Queens apartment with her own divorced mom. Now living in Los Angeles, Badillo, 24, is the youngest writer on the newly revamped One Day at a Time, premiering this weekend on Netflix.
"It freaks my mom out that she loved the show so much as a kid, grew up to live that exact life, and now I'm writing on this show," Badillo says.
Like Badillo, the characters on the new show are Latina. The remake centers around a Cuban mom and her kids living in an apartment in Echo Park, the traditionally Latino Los Angeles neighborhood that has recently been gentrified by coffee shops and vegan restaurants. Legendary EGOT Rita Moreno joins the cast as the grandmother Lydia, a Cuban immigrant who has lived the Latina American dream. This week, we sat down with Badillo to talk Latinos on TV, queer culture in mainstream Hollywood, and that time Mischa Barton played a lesbian on The O.C.
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