On My Block star Jessica Marie Garcia is big on connection — whether she’s meeting someone IRL, delivering a performance through their TV screen, or meeting via the small computer portal known as Zoom.
“Especially when I meet someone for the first time, I try to make them laugh,” she tells Teen Vogue, the ephemera of her home just out of view on the screen. “I like making people feel comfortable.” The teenage version of Jessica — who was “struggling” and “would say the joke before she was it,” the actor notes now — didn’t often know how to cope when other people were uncomfortable. She’s grown into herself since then. Now she leans into that ability to both make someone laugh, and connect with people from the start.
It’s that energy that translated into On My Block’s Jasmine Flores, the boisterous teen whose willingness to put herself out there has moved her from a peripheral character to one of the show’s biggest, hardest-beating hearts. Over the course of four seasons (the last of which is out now on Netflix — some spoilers ahead!), Jasmine has befriended the show’s “core four” leads, proving to each of them that they need her as much as she needs them. You can rely on her for laugh-out-loud reactions and quieter moments of reflection. She and her friends are enmeshed with and changed by the legacy and lore of the Santos gang, but they’re also dealing with the drama and heartbreak of being a teenager and growing up.
Jessica wasn’t initially supposed to audition for Jasmine. She had moved from her hometown of Orlando, Florida, to Los Angeles to pursue her dream of acting a few years prior, and was fresh off a notable run on the Disney Channel hit Liv and Maddie. It was through a friend’s recommendation that she tried out for the part. “I was like, ‘All right, I’ll read the pilot,’ and I read it, and I was like, ‘Oh my god, if I don’t play this girl…!” she says, adding that though she recognized how lively Jasmine was, even on the page, she also “saw the pain right away, because I was the class clown, too. [...] If you build up these walls around you, then people can’t hurt you. And that’s very much what she did.”
It was a diagnosis that the show’s creators agreed with, and as the show progresses, the viewer learns more about what exists behind Jasmine's outgoing facade. That includes caring for her father, a disabled veteran who served in Afghanistan, and bigger dreams to get out of the fictional Freeridge, California, and attend the University of California at Berkeley. And while she is accepted to the prestigious school after season four’s two-year time jump, family obligation makes it impossible for her to attend — resulting in a bittersweet ending for her by the time the show closes.
While Jessica concedes that the show’s close “wasn’t a happy ending for everyone, necessarily — not 100 percent,” she’s grateful that the show’s creators and writers allowed her to explore the pain and drama that exists within so much of comedy. “That scene with my father in season two changed everybody’s idea of who Jasmine was,” she says. “And I’m so thankful that they allowed me to show that and they didn’t make her this caricature for four seasons, because I don’t think people would have related to her or cared about her as much as they do.”
Even her peers have connected with her portrayal of Jasmine. Julissa Calderon, who plays Yessika Castillo on Netflix’s Gentefied and co-hosts the network’s social-first talk show “Go Off” with Jessica, calls Jasmine “a nutcase, but she’s so much fun. And we all have a friend like that.” One who is “over the top and ridiculous, but we love them because everything comes from a genuine place and good energy.” It’s energy that Jessica matches. “Jess is one of those people that are very authentic to who they are; she is very much a strong personality and it’s like, what she sees, she goes and gets,” Julissa adds.
Jessica also has proof of that connection in her growing platform, which has a reach she considers both a blessing and a responsibility to use for good. But she also sees it through tributes, like the veladora of Santa Jasmine that a fan made on Etsy and which Jessica now proudly owns. It features the same nameplate hoop earrings that Jessica kept after the show wrapped, a hallmark of Jasmine’s costumes and a reminder that Jasmine knew who she was at all times — even when she and Ruby, played by Jason Genao, dive headfirst into a relationship that blurs their edges and agency the more serious it grows, resulting in what Jason calls “some of the greatest comedy the show would receive.”
#Jasby, as fans call them, have “a give-and-take, a friendship — [they’re] each other’s comedic match and dramatic match,” Jason tells Teen Vogue, adding that much of that push and pull came from the way the actors grew together and became a family. “Jessica is so great at making any moment funny. In watching her work, you feel like you want to come to any scene prepared to enhance.” It’s in part because of her suggestions, as well as their respect for each other’s process, that they were able to bring a more grounded, yet no less chaotic, relationship to the show, a stark contrast to the constant heat and heartbreak of Monse and Cesar, played by Sierra Capri and Diego Tinoco. For the record, Jessica is the first to call that pairing “toxic.”
“I was like, Sierra, if this were real life, I’d tell you to get rid of that boy so quickly,” she says with a laugh — though she also adds that she gets why fans are rooting for the couple. And while things are far from smooth sailing for #Monsar in season 4, either, both Jessica and Sierra are grateful that the female friendships in the show have been allowed to grow with minimal drama. (Even the rivalry with Cesar’s new girlfriend, Vero, is quashed by the end of Freeridge High’s dreamy prom.) “We were so thankful for that,” Jessica notes, “because Sierra and I are so close and we were like, ‘We’re the girls on the show, we want to show that girl power.’ We want to show two girls being friends and not fighting or [being] catty with each other.”
Sierra agrees. “Me and Jess, that’s my sister in real life, so it wasn’t too hard to pull from any particular place because we’re so close on- and off-screen,” she tells Teen Vogue about growing Monse and Jasmine’s friendship through each episode. “It honestly never feels like work when we’re together.” In season four, Monse and Jasmine bond as they each define and reconnect with themselves in the wake of their breakups with Cesar and Ruby, respectively. That growth, Sierra notes, is key to understanding who Jasmine is as a character.
“What I take away from her character — which is the same as I would probably say for Monse — is that it’s okay to put yourself first and to make sure that you’re taken care of, because you can’t take care of anyone else before you take care of yourself,” she says. “So I’m really happy that [Jasmine] isn’t afraid to stand alone and isn’t afraid to... be by herself and figure out things for herself first, before she can figure things out with Ruby or whoever it is.” (Jason, for his part, believes it’s “vital” to think that Jasmine and Ruby are endgame, and Jessica “wouldn't be surprised if they ended up getting married down the road.”)
Through it all, Jessica and her costars were committed to telling stories that their viewers could relate to, especially given that she attributes much of On My Block’s success to the verbal recommendation of people telling their tías, tíos, cousins, and friends to tune in. “I give all my love to our creators and our writers because they are so open to our feedback,” she says. “Like there were certain jokes that I was like, ‘I don’t know about this, I don’t know if this is going to land well,’ and they’re so open to being like, ‘Oh, then don’t, absolutely not. If that’s how you’re feeling about it, what would you do instead?’” While filming during COVID meant the cast couldn’t bond with their crew or improv together as much as they would have wanted to, they’re still close (and even supported Brett Gray, who plays Jamal, at a recent performance at a Los Angeles Rams game). Collectively, they worked to build out the nuances of Freeridge, and to vet the difference between things inherent to Latinx communities in Los Angeles versus communities in New York City or where Jessica grew up in Orlando, for example.
“We’re not a monolith,” she stresses. “There’s just so little of us [on screen] that it’s hard to try and represent everyone. So hopefully our show skyrockets other shows to tell those stories that have not been represented for so long” — especially given that a recent study by the USC Annenberg Inclusion Initiative documented how rarely films feature Hispanic and/or Latinx characters, and how rarely Latinx people of all identities are given opportunities behind-the-scenes, too.
To combat that, Jessica is quick to champion and boost other series showcasing other historically-excluded voices and points of view, across and within the intersection of identities. “The camaraderie is awesome,” Julissa echoes. “We’re not against each other. If Gentefied wins, then Jess wins. If On My Block wins, I win. We keep winning because we’re creating these opportunities. The more we support each other, the more that amplifies these shows and films. It allows the masses to see it, and then it allows more opportunities to be created.”
And in true Jessica Marie Garcia fashion, the actor isn’t going to sit around and wait for the opportunities to come to her. She’s interested in writing, producing, and directing, as well as trying drama and classics like MacBeth and Taming of the Shrew on for size. “I know such incredible writers that are working their way up and I can’t wait to work with them, and hopefully use my platform to give other people opportunities,” she says. She still remembers writing parts for herself into the screenplays of her favorite movies as a teenager, and waiting tables during her multi-season arc as a guest star on Liv and Maddie in equal measure.
“I am the same girl that came from Orlando that just happened to be lucky enough to be here,” she says. “I just don’t like that mentality of thinking that I’m better than anyone.” Above all, she’s grateful for the opportunity to play Jasmine, a character who taught her how to be herself and not apologize for that.
“If I had an On My Block when I was a kid, there would have been no stopping me. I would have probably moved to LA sooner,” she says. And just as Jessica has grown to know who she is and love herself as fiercely as she can, she hopes that characters like Jasmine, and whoever else she brings to the screen and roots on as a viewer and a fan, will resonate with other young people with outsized hearts and dreams of their own. “I think 13-, 14-year-old me would be very excited to know that she got here.”
Photographer: Tracy Nguyen
Digitech: Taylor Galloway
Photo Assistant: Justin Sariñana
Prop/Set: Kevin Manning
Stylist: Ansley Morgan
Hair Stylist: Heather Weppler for Exclusive Artists using Kevin Murphy
Makeup Artist: Nicole Walmsley
Manicurist: Merrick Fisher
Producer: Michelle Ritorto
PA: David Kinchen
Art Director: Emily Zirimis
Fashion Director: Tahirah Hairston
Visual Editor: Louisiana Gelpi
Senior Entertainment Editor: P. Claire Dodson
CCO: Liberty Bernal
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