Sony Pictures Television, Netflix, Pop
Gloria Calderón Kellett is a leading voice in Latinx storytelling on television. Her influence most crystalized as executive producer/co-showrunner, director and actress on Netflix/Pop’s One Day at a Time (2017-2020), the critically acclaimed reboot of the Norman Lear sitcom (1975-1984) reimagined from the perspective of a Cuban family.
Calderón Kellett is a first-generation Cuban American who grew up in a culturally rich, Cuban community in Portland, Oregon. Growing up, she’d return home from school to watch The Dick Van Dyke Show and The Mary Tyler Moore Show while her grandmother sewed draperies or cooked dinner for the close-knit family.
Those afternoons inspired dreams of Hollywood which took shape early on as a playwright and then as an actress reading for stereotypical Latina roles as a gangbanger's girlfriend or a gangbanger's sister before deciding that if she really wanted to make an impact in the industry and tell her stories, she would have to learn how to write for TV. She combed through scripts upon scripts and broke down stories at the Museum of Television and Radio, now the Paley Center. Pouring over articles and interviews of writers and directors talking about the craft of television and movie making.
Prompted by the advice Cameron Crow, who she worked with as a Post-Assistant on Vanilla Sky, she began writing spec scripts. Her TV writing career officially began as a staff writer on the CBS comedy series How I Met Your Mother, rising to co-producer and earning an ALMA Award for one of her scripts in 2008. She then worked as a writer-producer on such series’ as CBS/Sony TV’s Rules of Engagement, Lifetime’s Devious Maids, CW’s iZombie and ABC’s Mixology.
In 2015, Norman Lear sought out a team to take on a Latina version of his hit series One Day at a Time. Sony, who owns the property brought on veteran writer-producer Mike Royce, along with Calderón Kellett to become co-showrunners. The show premiered on Netflix in 2017 with 13-episodes, receiving universal praise for its representation of the Latinx experience through the nuanced portrayal of a Cuban family. The Alvarez family was headed by the matriarch, Penelope, an Army Veteran who managed her PTSD, her career as a nurse, and raising her two teenagers, Elena and Alex, with the help of her mother, Abuelita Lydia. The family supported, fought, and loved one another under the roof of their two-bedroom apartment in Los Angeles. At a time of growing political misrepresentation of the Latinx community, broadcasting the Alvarez story into people’s homes had never been more important. The award-winning show also tackled timely topics such as racism, sexism, LGBTQ+ issues and deportation, as well as mental health issues like addiction, PTSD, anxiety and alcoholism. It ran on Netflix for three seasons before Pop TV picked it up for its fourth and final season.
Despite its success, Calderón Kellett feels far from reaching her artistic peak as a showrunner and wants to do more to advance Latinx representation in entertainment. In 2019, she signed a three-year mega-deal with Amazon, the first-ever female Latinx writer/creator to reach eight figures. Under the deal, Calderón Kellett would create and develop TV series’ and films through her production company, GloNation, to run exclusively on Amazon Prime. The first of the series, set to launch Fall 2021, is With Love, a one-hour romantic dramedy, created and written by Calderón Kellett. Her debut series will be followed by Verona, a Shakespeare-themed high school drama. Based on the success of the animated finale of One Day at a Time, The Politics Episode, Calderón Kellett is creating two animated series. The first, Glowing Up, will be an animated musical series based on the graphic novel, Mismatched, a modern-day adaptation of Jane Austen’s Emma. Next is Dating the Lopez Ladies, an animated comedy series following Ilana Lopez whose life as a comic strip artist, Sharp Curves, overshadows her life in the real world until she decides to do something about it.
Gloria Calderón Kellett continues to focus her work in shaping the stories that are being told on screen and improve the understanding of Latinos and diverse communities at large. She believes representation and good TV starts with inclusive Writers Rooms. From when she started with the Writers Room filled with white men over fifty, to one occupied by one other woman (who she was told she could not sit next to), to frequently being the only person of color, the One Day at a Time Writers Room included Mexican, El Salvadorian, Cuban and Puerto Rican writers, ages 22-94. She started out writing in Hollywood in an effort to make an impact, to tell great stories, now she wants more, she’s she’s ready to change the entire system.
Her Advice to Writers:
Gloria believes you have to make your own magic. No two paths are alike, only highlighted to inspire.
Find your focus. With Medium, she shared, “Everyone has something unique to them, their point of view. And writing from that point of view consistently and confidently will make you a better writer over time. The old adage is true: “Write what you know.” And don’t just write what you know, write who you know. Write about your dad, you mom, your sister, your favorite teacher, your best friend, your neighbor, your ex. Write and write and write and write. And don’t give up. Then once you write it, get it out there. Make your own magic.”
She shared with Creative Screenwriting, “One script does not make you a writer. I must have 100 scripts on my computer. They’re not all finished and most of them are probably terrible, but I write and write and write.”