‘One Day At A Time’ Showrunners Gloria Calderon Kellett and Mike Royce Talk Season 3 And Why There Was No ‘Brooklyn Nine-Nine’ Shoutout

Right now, there’s a push to get people to watch One Day At A Time on Netflix. Why? Because the streamer has told the current version’s showrunners, Mike Royce and Gloria Calderon Kellett, that the numbers are on the low side and a fourth season is not guaranteed.

It’s a depressing thought that we might not have a fourth season of the reboot of the Norman Lear ’70s hit, with this version about a Cuban-American family in Los Angeles. Single mother and war veteran Penelope Alvarez (Justina Machado) has to bring up her now-publicly-out daughter Elena (Isabella Gomez), who is now dating her first love, Syd (Sheridan Pierce), while making sure her younger son Alex (Marcel Ruiz) doesn’t pick up a bad pot habit. Meanwhile, Penelope’s mother Lydia (Rita Moreno) continues to hang out with her platonic boyfriend Dr. Leslie Berkowitz (Stephen Tobolowsky); both Dr. B and building owner Schneider (Todd Grinnell) continue to get closer to the Alvarezes.

Decider spoke with Kellett and Royce —whose close partnership has been well-documented through Instagram Stories on their respective feeds— about Season 3, which episodes they found most difficult to pull off, and how they connected from the first time they met, right as Lear was starting to develop the reboot.

DECIDER: I notice you guys are pushing the whole “Watch it within the first two weeks” thing. How is that push going?

GLORIA CALDERON KELLETT: We don’t know from the numbers side, but they are certainly watching, according to the Interwebs.

MIKE ROYCE: The people are definitely responding by saying they’re watching and they’re … so yeah, we’re getting a lot of that, but social media can never quite … we don’t know the specific numbers, but it definitely caught some people off guard. It’s just common sense, but of course you don’t think about it, that Netflix has to make a decision, so of course they have to make a decision based on the first couple weeks of numbers. That’s just the way, obviously, it has to work, but it doesn’t compute when you’re just thinking about watching a show, and, “Oh, I’ll watch a few episodes and I’ll save them,” and stuff. Which is how a human being should view television, but unfortunately we had to try to hurry them along so that Netflix knows how many people like the show.

Both of you are so used to producing network or cable shows, that even three years in, this has got to be a bit of an unusual thing that you have to get used to. Is it?

CALDERON KELLETT: Oh, yeah.

ROYCE: With Netflix, it’s great, all great, and then there’s this uncertainty period that’s not the funnest, but whatever.

What was your goal for Season 3? Was it to kind of get more of the cast involved with deeper storylines?

CALDERON KELLETT: I think we always write ourselves into a corner on purpose because of the nature of Netflix. We never know if we’re going to get more episodes, so we always go, “Well, let’s just build to a thing and then we’ll see.” and I remember after Season 1, we looked at each other like, “Oh my gosh, how are we going to write something better than the Quinceanera episode?” and then at the end of Season 2, we were like, “Oh, God, how are we going to write something better than ‘Not Yet’?” So Season 3 really, I think, became about… It’s not about competing with ourselves, it’s about we now have a lived-in family. We have actors and writers who have lived with these characters, so what is the natural progression of what we’ve already set up? It did seem like we can focus on the family that they’ve made that are not just the four of them.

ROYCE: Yeah. We talked about Schneider ever since the beginning. When’s the right time to explore him a little bit, and obviously the family comes first, and we wanted to get to know Schneider a little more and so this seemed like the right time to start exploring a little bit of his demons, and his background.

Was there an arc that you wanted to try to put together for Season 3, and how well do you think it came together while keeping the sitcom format with the individual episodes?

ROYCE: I think the catalyst for this season was we had, what I remember is… because we talk about a lot of stuff happening at the end, and it was a matter of, ‘How do we make sure we’re getting there through all the other episodes’, right? I mean correct me if I’m wrong, Gloria, but with [Penelope] becoming a Nurse Practitioner, we wanted to do something with [her ex-husband] Victor in terms of a reconciliation or a step forward. We weren’t quite sure…we wanted to make sure it was earned. And then Lydia we wanted to… We had that idea that somehow she would possibly get to Cuba.

And as we went along, our challenge is always the standalone, because every episode has to be a standalone episode because we have an audience there and we’re telling a story, and we want each episode to feel like a great sitcom episode of television, but then contains with it things that build upon themselves towards the end. I think it’s a bigger challenge than your normal serialized format, because when you are doing a traditional sitcom like we’re doing, you really have to tell a complete story, and not have one thing flow into the other like a big movie, you know?

Gloria, you worked on How I Met Your Mother which did a lot of that, is that kind of the format that your used to? Or is it something that you both had to adjust to for this show because it’s more of a traditional studio audience sitcom?

CALDERON KELLETT: It really is a little bit of both. Certainly having that background helped me to know that like Mike said, we wanted everything to be able to stand on it’s own, but then it can also be seen as a larger piece of a puzzle.

Was there ever a temptation, because you’re on Netflix, to put push the envelope on content or language or something, or was it something you guys agreed together at the beginning to make it like a network or basic cable sitcom?

CALDERON KELLETT: Yeah. We really always came to it from the place of this family. We wanted to tell stories…we don’t start the Season saying, “What’s going to be that edgy thing to talk about?” it’s really, “What is a Cuban American family in Los Angeles talking about right now?” And it’s unfortunately a lot of stuff that hasn’t been solved yet… like racism and sexism that’s still a problem.

ROYCE: That’s why we need a Season 4. To kind of solve it. [Laughs]

CALDERON KELLETT: We wanted families to be able to watch it. We do want… we love that when kids are watching with their parents, and this is a… sort of way to start conversations in the household.

Two episodes that stood out in my mind is when Elena and Syd plan on sleeping together at a hotel (“First Time”), and then the one where Penelope faces her anxiety attacks (“Anxiety”). Are you thinking that the beats bring out the message, or the message brings out the beats? Because there’s a lot of seriousness in both episodes, and obviously a lot of funny lines, but what generates what?

CALDERON KELLETT: I don’t know if I think about it in those terms. I think it’s always, “What’s the story?” What’s the beginning, middle, and end of the story. They’re breaks from form, so the “First Time” episode we told the story and then we went back in time to see the day before, and you had that information going in, so it was very play like in that way. And then the “Anxiety” episode, that one we talked about much more because we wanted to try to convey the feeling of an anxiety attack, which is a big swing. Actually the black and white [that represented the anxiety attacks] didn’t come into play until editing, and it really became such an effective tool.

ROYCE: It can start from anywhere and then it becomes, “How do we tell the story?” So those, like Gloria said, those are two good examples of [how] people start talking about anxiety attacks [in previous seasons], many people were relating to it, so we wanted to do something about it. The challenge there became, “How do we both tell a story, but also really illustrate what’s going on inside everyone’s mind?” And the different triggers. So it became a narrative thing we needed to figure out as well as this larger illustration of a feeling, I guess, or however you want to put it. One shoe that had never dropped was Penelope telling her kids about her own anxiety and depression, that was big.

And then for the other one [“The First Time”]… That was a really interesting thing, because we did want to have Syd and Elena take their relationship to the next level somehow. We talked, a lot of different people relating their own experiences, but the tricky part was once you know that’s happened, that’s all that you really want the rest of the episode to be about. We wanted to both get Penelope and her perspective as well as Elena’s perspective, and sort of honor them both, because the show is about a parent as well as the kids and the parent is the main character even though the story isn’t literally about her, it’s about Elena. So, somebody came up with a brilliant format.

We’re getting more of Marcel Ruiz as Alex this season. Was that just a natural outcropping of the stories or did Marcel show you something that said, “Hey, lets see if we can give him some more stuff?”

CALDERON KELLETT: Oh, I mean, he showed us stuff Season 1. It was never about his performance. He is incredible. He’s such an incredible performer, in fact if anything, we’d always feel bad because we set up things that we needed to spend time on to do them right. This whole cast is really quite extraordinary. We felt the same way with Stephen [Tobolowsky], we felt the same way with Todd [Grinnell]. It’s just that a lot of the stories are going to be [given] to the women, because of the nature of the three points of view. There very clear three points of view, and so a lot of times the show is filtered through those three points of view. The traditional point of view, the moderate, and the liberal. The other characters sometimes get lost in the shuffle. So this year it was just beautiful to be able to have the breath with which to give characters like Marcel and Stephen, and Todd more, because their incredible.

ROYCE: And…teenagers grow up. Yeah, there’s things that are happening to Alex now that just wouldn’t have been happening Season 1. As much as they are with lets say people who have teenagers in real life.

About the perspectives of Lydia, Penelope, and Elena. Was it always that perspective that you wanted to put out there, or did…how did the three of their perspectives change over the last 3 years of creating these characters, and what have Justina, Rita, and Isabella brought to them? Obviously, every writer writes to what the actor brings to it.

CALDERON KELLETT: I can’t help but think of the show always in a personal sense. I think, Mike, I don’t know with you if it’s always super personal for you? But I always think how do I, Gloria, feel about something, and then I think “How would, if I were Penelope, how would that be slightly different?” because we’re very similar. She’s only one, two dials away from me because of her military background which I do not have, and I’m still married and she is not. The way she walks through the world is very much the way I walk through the world, and the way Lydia walks through the world is very much the way my parents walked through the world. A lot of times it’s naturally there, and I think “What do I think, and what do my parents think?” And then other people will fill in, “Oh my God, I think that too, and my parents also think that! Or my parents still think that!” And the writers will fill that in.

The performers are excellent in terms of anything we give them they elevate. They can do anything. We never think in terms of limitations of what the actors can or cannot do, because really there’s nothing we’ve given them that they haven’t been able to handle really beautifully. I would say what we do know is what they do great, like Justina can turn on a dime and cry, and then make you laugh a second later. Boy, people can’t do that and she can. Also, she crushes a monologue and I love a monologue. So, we will throw monologues at her because she gives them layers and intricacies and beautiful detail.

That’s kind of the way that the partnership with them works, is that Rita is always going to be great to have a funny off topic, because it’s within her character to think that way. Those are the sorts of things that we think of, but it’s always very personal.

With Isabella’s character Elena learning to throttle back on some of her ideas about how others should deal with gender identity and some of her other views that a little bit, is it because she’s gotten a little bit more experience, and has become a little bit more forgiving and accepting?

CALDERON KELLETT: Yeah she’s learning. I think the kids are growing, they’re all growing up. She’s learning, being in a relationship, that’s one of the things in that Valentine’s Day episode that we all really loved is that she’s realizing, “Oh, maybe I’m not a great girlfriend.” It was kind of a great…I don’t remember what writer had thought that up in the room, it was not me. But we love that, that she’s learning, “Oh, I have to think in terms of what my partner wants.” We thought that was a great reveal.

ROYCE: Elena is somebody who also we try to take great care with. She of course goes a little extreme sometimes, but at the same time anything that she’s believing is something worth talking about. As she grows up and we get to Season 4, she will… These issues she’s concerned about are not frivolous things. She’s concerned about things that are obviously happening to her, because of her identity as well as just things in the world, and a lot of times we try to make her a jumping off point for us because it might sounds like an extreme view, but it’s also one worth exploring.

Do you wish more sitcoms were like yours, that pause, and have dramatic moments, and play out more like a play rather than a series of one liners, like some multi camera sitcoms have turned into lately?

ROYCE: I would hesitate to ever accuse a show of being a series of one liners. I think every show is doing what…trying to do what they do best, and I’ve loved shows like Seinfeld where there was literally no hugging. That’s not necessarily the show that I would do, but it’s obviously a great show, and every show has its mission is what I would say. Every show shouldn’t be like ours and I like doing what we’re doing because that’s what I like doing, but it’s a different… different people have different takes and I think we are very fortunate, because on Netflix we are able to do the show we want to do. That’s not always the case for some people.

Lets talk a little bit about Schneider’s arc, because he’s got a pretty significant arc. Is this the first time that we hear his first name?

CALDERON KELLETT: That’s correct.

Is it a tribute to Pat Harrington?

CALDERON KELLETT: It is!

When you guys imagined Schneider as a character, was it always going to be someone like Todd, a younger guy who can bring a goofy charm to the character that was different than what Pat Harrington brought to it? What has Todd done with the character to make it his own?

CALDERON KELLETT: The Schneider character was the hardest to cast, because we were going for… We know that we could never touch what Pat had done, so we wanted it to be very different, but that took different… we saw women, we saw 30 year olds, we saw Wallace Shawn… [Laughs] for that role. I think Mike and I were initially like “Oh maybe this is like the ‘Ugly American'”.

Todd and I had worked together for a decade and I’d seen how brilliantly he’s able to do comedy and drama… He had told the story in the audition about like, “Oh, I know who this guy is. He’s like the guys I grew up with is Boston. He’s constantly writing his own autobiography.” and we thought, “Oh my God, that’s… yes!” He kind of unlocked it for us in a way.

What did you guys want to do with Schneider?

ROYCE: Yeah. It evolved for us, even once we found Todd, with him being sort of the gentrifier who doesn’t understand that he’s a gentrifier. It was a little bit played for a laugh at first and then we got a little more serious this year about it. It’s always the family first, and then how he fits into it. As we saw them become this really sort of attractive unit to want to be a part of, we leaned more into Schneider and his having the opposite situation with his own family, and wanting to be a part of this family.

It seemed like a natural thing to make to cast Alan Ruck as his dad.

CALDERON KELLETT: I think Alan brought some tenderness to it, because it’s very easy, I think, especially if your coming in for one episode, and it’s a character that has already been setup as being an awful human, to just make that stereotypical monster bad guy. The truth is, as is the case with Victor, as is the case with any… Berkowitz’s daughters… is that there’s layers to who these people are. There’s not just this one dimensional thing. We know what this man is to Schneider, we know what that relationship is from his point of view, and how hurtful the relationship with his father has been, but that doesn’t mean that he’s just this yelling, brutish guy. He’s not somebody I’m a fan of or want to hang out with, but we can see he’s affable and charming, and all of these things that probably made him a great business man, but just not a great Dad. It makes him more interesting and more layered that way. If he’s not just a pure villain.

Like some of the other guest stars, when…it feels like you’ve had a few more guest stars this year. That first episode was…with Gloria Estefan, had you been trying to figure out where to put Gloria? I never skip over the intro, even if I watch five episodes in a night, because I love her version of the theme song.

CALDERON KELLETT: We do too!

What was it about playing Lydia’s sister that you thought was a good role for her?

CALDERON KELLETT: We had tried for many years. She’s an international superstar so she’s kind of busy. Then last year we had written something for her, and her mother had passed away. This year we were like “You know what again, we have a built in character we have spoken about many times Mirtha, Olivia’s sister” and so we thought “Oh my gosh!” it’s right in front of us, this is the role she was always meant to play. So that is how that came about.

Did you guys purposefully put Stephanie Beatriz and Melissa Fumero in the same episode?

ROYCE: It just sort of all came together, right? We had these parts going to a funeral, I remember very clearly in the writer’s room, I think I walked in and Gloria, you were like “We’re working on the funeral!” And everyone was talking about how great a situation it would be, and that lent itself to the guest stars in a super natural way.

Any temptation to go meta with that? Any temptation to have the two of them pass each other at the funeral and then look and then shake their heads like they look familiar? No Brooklyn Nine-Nine shout-out?

ROYCE: Oh, I see…

CALDERON KELLETT: You know what, there was wasn’t, weirdly! You’d think there would’ve been but we weren’t… We were all just so tickled. There was so much in that episode we had to cut, because that could’ve been an hour and a half, that could’ve been a movie, that funeral. I think that we were so full of funny great things that we already had to kind of slice through. We had to cut so much from that episode, because it was just.. Also the laugh spread made it so that we had to cut even more… You’d think that we would’ve thought of that, but no.

ROYCE: One thing that we all bonded over was that was the week that we also all didn’t get nominated for Emmys.

What is the episode from Season 3 that you guys are the most proud that it came off and was executed the way you wanted it to be?

CALDERON KELLETT: Oh my gosh, there are so many! Can we say a few? For me, Gloria, I loved “The First Time,” because even as a cis straight woman I never saw a conversation between a mother and daughter about sex, and I certainly never saw two young people talking about whether or not they were ready to consent, and “we can do it” or “we can never do it.” That was just something that teenage me never saw. So I loved that existing for future generations of “Oh, if we feel uncomfortable having this conversation, maybe we shouldn’t be doing it.” And I think that would’ve saved many of my girlfriend’s psyche. I think that’s one I’m so very proud of, and the “Anxiety” one.

Anytime we’re doing stuff that is resonating with the community in such a way. People feel so seen by that episode, and feel like people understand anxiety and depression a little bit more because of it. For us as storytellers, it’s fun to break from form and try to get across “What’s the best way to tell this story?” Maybe it’s not the traditional way we do it, maybe we’re going to pay with this one, and then it’s successful. it’s not always successful in the past.

So that one, and then, I love episode 12 [“Drinking and Driving”]. I love… I think Todd in that laundry room, I directed that episode, and it was such a privilege to see him go there and between rehearsal and performance, and find such a perfect balance in that scene with Alex, I thought that was really stellar work.

ROYCE: Yeah, no. I would agree with all and those, and…wait, I was just thinking of something, why did it fly out of my head? Oh!

CALDERON KELLETT: The #MeToo one, we wrote that one!

ROYCE: Yeah, that one I’m proud of because that took a lot of discussions about what we were gonna say and the different points of view we wanted to make sure, like Gloria said earlier, it still needs to be about this Cuban American family living their lives and what are they encountering, but it was obviously… What became very apparent was, it was… It touched every woman in the room’s life in some way. The organicness of it came pretty quickly, but yes I’m glad we had that discussion. Very, very glad. I think we honored the characters with this storyline. That they were able to give sincere and authentic points of view and not just what could easily turn into a lecture of some sort.

The funeral one, what I really like about that one… It sort of has a special place in my heart because, I hope this doesn’t come out in a way that sounds strange, but sometimes a show gets dinged for… I think sometimes people look at the show as it “Oh, it’s a Latina, Latino sitcom” and that’s true, I’m not shying away from that in any way, but it puts it in a box. Like “Oh, that’s for just Latino people.” And I feel like “The Funeral” was this very culturally specific, assuming not due to me…an episode that was farcical and classically sit…like a classic sitcom episode with lots of callbacks and physical comedy, and family dysfunction.

Gloria, does every Tia in your family have a nickname?

CALDERON KELLETT: Oh that’s so true! Yeah, I have an actual Tia Mimi. We have Tia Bitchy, she doesn’t know she’s Tia Bitchy, but…that’s all real! The Tia with the eye patch is from Debbie Wolfe, the writer from that episode. I do not have a Tia with an eye patch, she does. This is the thing, we were talking about it in the room and then it just took off of all the funny things that happened.

How has your working relationship evolved since Season 1? What part of running Once Day At A Time do you do Mike, as supposed to you, Gloria? How has it changed?

CALDERON KELLETT: I feel like one of the things that people talk about a lot is the Penelope/Schneider relationship, and how these are two people that love each other but are not having sex with each other. So much of that comes from Mike and I. We adore each other, it’s gross, we like each other so much. Wait because it… It feeds into the show, you know? You can see when we disagree or when we both really care very much about something, we’re so often on the same page and even when we’re not it’s worth discussing why we’re not, because that might be interesting on the show in some way. Certainly our comfort with one another and our honesty with one another just makes it..just always seems to make the show better.

ROYCE: I always joke we’re co-showrunners, co-executive producers, and codependent because it’s very hard… I mean I’m doing a pilot right now for CBS and it’s just me, and I find myself literally having a thought process and almost saying out loud “Well that’s fine but let me check with Gloria.” it’s quite a luxury to work with someone who you see eye to eye with so much, and who just brings this enormous talent to everything that I can just coast along sometimes. We just really have a great time talking everything out. We have great time splitting up tasks, if that’s what situation calls for. it’s interesting because we do split up tasks because that’s just the way life works sometimes, but we really do a lot of stuff together.

Had you two worked together before this show?

CALDERON KELLETT: No.

ROYCE: Never met.

Do you guys remember what your first thought about being co-showrunners was?

CALDERON KELLETT: I was nervous about it because I had heard about this type of pairing before where they get the woman, or the person of color, and in my case both, and they pair you with somebody so that the optics look good. “See? We have the Latina and this woman.” But really they have no interest in your participation. I’ve had many friends go through that, and so there were warning signs going off in my head. However I had heard from so many people who reached out to me and said, “Oh my god you’re so lucky, Mike Royce is such a great guy…” people were emailing me saying “Oh he’s great!” And I was reaching out to people and everything I was hearing was so good.

The first time we had met was in Norman [Lear’s] office and afterwards he and I went to get coffee and almost the first words out of his mouth were “Hey, we’re partners. Just so you know we’re partners and I’m gonna turn you into a showrunner and then you’re going to be able to do this job for the rest of your life.” And then the follow through being that times a thousand in terms of support and lifting me up, and being the ultimate ally. I’m fortunate. I can’t believe my luck, that Mike was chosen to be on this project with me and I’m forever indebted to him, okay? [Laughs]

ROYCE: I also was nervous, because my first meeting with Norman and Brent [Miller] it was just the three of us, and they were still reading Latina/Latino writers, and I was like “it’s not just going to be… I don’t know this world. I know sitcoms and I want to contribute but this has to be a partnership with somebody who… This show will only live and die on coming from an authentic voice.” Then I have had also very good, well I did a show called Enlisted with Kevin Biegel, and we had a good partnership, and so for me my brain doesn’t work in a way that I would just come in and take over. I’ve had good experiences sharing the experiences with people, and here it just couldn’t work any other way.

We went to have coffee right after the meeting with Norman and it was just like we see eye to eye and we were vibing creatively so quickly that it was just right.

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He loves when I direct. And yes, I use a bullhorn. @mikeroyce @odaatnetflix 🤣🤣

A post shared by Gloria Calderon Kellett (@gloriakellett) on Feb 12, 2019 at 10:09am PST

Where do we see that partnership on the screen?

CALDERON KELLETT: I think all over, all over the place.

ROYCE: Yeah. I mean even in the basic configuration of the characters, we always say it’s a little bit of a marriage of like Gloria’s family and then I have teenagers so my teenagers would’ve made their way into the Alvarez family. Even from the very creation of everything it was a combination. A lot of it is we see thing… I mean we push each other for sure, but the things that make me cry make her cry. The things that make me laugh, make her laugh. There’s exceptions, but it’s pretty close.

CALDERON KELLET: It’s true.

You have a legacy of a long-running show that Norman developed 45 years ago to live up to in Season 1, but in Season 3 it’s standing on it’s own now. Do you guys feel that way? What moment did you feel that the comparisons to the old show stopped, and do you still feel a need to reference back a bit to the old show and uphold the legacy?

CALDERON KELLETT: Well it’s always going to be part of the fabric of the show, the original series. We want to honor them in little ways, if it seems natural. We’ve also had Glenn Scarpelli this season in a cameo role who was in the original series, and of course Mackenzie [Phillips] is a regular character on our show. So we have little ways that sort of pay homage to what came before and really Norman in general. Our BA episode but also our Season 2 Finale monologue was inspired from an episode of Maude, where Bea Arthur had a monologue to her therapist. So there’s so much that we try to honor in the show that Norman had made available to us. I think we’ll continue to do that

I think even from the beginning, ever since Season 1 people would say “Oh, there wasn’t a character named Schneider” that this show bares little resemblance to the original. it’s just really made…it’s cut from the same cloth. That’s how it more feels.

ROYCE: Yeah, I’ve started to look at our show a little bit… It’s like on a spectrum from the old one to All In The Family, we’re sort of in the middle. Like the old One Day At A Time did not really deal with politics that much. It dealt with teen stuff, and certainly some important issues in that world, but All In The Family was very political and very of the moment in terms of what’s on the front page of the newspaper kind of stuff. We’re sort of in between a little bit and I feel good about where we occupy our own place in Norman’s legacy.

By the way, where was Glenn?

CALDERON KELLETT: He was in the ‘First Time’ episode. He was the hotel attendant that gave the girls the room.

Holy crap, I didn’t recognize him at all. Any thoughts about bringing in Valerie Bertinelli if you get picked up?

CALDERON KELLETT: Oh, for sure! We’ve been trying. Valarie has a cooking show, and it always conflicts with our shooting dates, but we’ve been trying to work with Valerie. So, that’s certainly something we’d still love to make happen.

Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, VanityFair.com, Playboy.com, Fast Company’s Co.Create and elsewhere.

Stream One Day At A Time on Netflix