More good “One Day at a Time” news to celebrate: Justina Machado is set to make her directorial debut on the recently resuscitated sitcom. Deadline confirms that she’ll direct an ep of the show’s upcoming fourth season, which she’ll also star in and produce.
Pop ordered a 13-episode fourth season of the critical darling after Netflix cancelled it.
Created and showrun by Gloria Calderón Kellett and Mike Royce, “One Day a a Time” is a contemporary update of Norman Lear’s ’70s comedy. Machado plays Penelope Alvarez, a Cuban-American single mom and veteran living with her two teenage kids and mother. The series has featured storylines about immigration, coming out, queer dating, PTSD, and more. Rita Moreno, Isabella Gomez, Marcel Ruiz, Stephen Tobolowsky, and Todd Grinnell also star.
Besides “One Day at a Time,” Machado is best known for her roles in “Jane the Virgin,” “Queen of the South,” “Six Feet Under,” and “ER.”
“The writer has a responsibility to know what he or she is writing about,” Machado has said of representation. “Otherwise, it’s just fluff, unless they’re writing about themselves and what they know. But if they’re going to tell my story, they’d better talk to me. And they’d better be part of my world and try to understand and go at it from that point of view. And don’t argue with me about what we’re like. You know how many times I’ve come across that? We’re on a show, and I have people that are not Latino arguing with me about what we’re like. That’s crazy.”
Regarding the switch to Pop, Kellett told Deadline, “It’s a lower budget, we all made sacrifices, we all came up with compromises in order to keep the show going but nothing to prevent us from making the show that we wanted to make. That’s one of the things about Pop that made it really exciting for us — they made very clear that they wanted to keep making the show we want to make; that’s all you want to hear as a creator.” She teased some Season 4 storylines in the interview, including Penelope becoming a nurse practitioner. “And it is 2020, so we will be discussing I’m sure some version of politics as it affects this family,” she hinted.
Season 4 of “One Day at a Time” will debut in 2020. The series has been nominated for two Emmys, a Television Critics Association Award, and a GLAAD Media Award.
