'Cristela' and 'Black-Ish' Explore Family and Identity at Paleyfest
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'Cristela' and 'Black-ish' Explore Family and Identity at PaleyFest 09.12.2014 This fall, ABC will explore the idea of the American Dream. What does it mean today, and how does one achieve it? To one woman, that's creating a better life for herself than her parents had. To one dedicated dad, it's working hard to create a life for his family that's better than how he grew up. Same idea, two very different executions. On Friday, Oct. 10, ABC will debut its last new series of fall: Cristela. As the show's star starts and stops her way through her now sixth year of law school and lands herself a prestigious (but unpaid) internship, she also has to navigate family life while living with her loving (but overbearing) mother, her devoted sister and her wise-cracking brother-in-law. Entertainment Weekly's Keith Staskiewicz noted that the pilot felt "like a big group hug" in a world of cynical humor, and he's not far off. Cristela Alonzo, the show's co-creator, co-executive producer and star, used her own life as inspiration for the multicam sitcom, and her colleagues agree that her positivity is one of the show's best parts. "When you hear her whole story, she has every right to be bitter and angry and cynical," said Executive Producer Becky Clements. "But she just has so much beauty and energy." While the show does mirror Alonzo's real life, it's not entirely autobiographical. Instead of wanting to become a lawyer, she wanted to become a standup comedian (and ended up doing just that). But Alonzo thought that story wouldn't be as easy to tell on TV, as the path to standup isn't as clear-cut as the path to law. "I picked law because my mom really loved Mexican novelas, and in those, everyone is a lawyer," she said. As the show's version of Cristela attempts a career at law in her real-life home state of Texas, she moves in with her sister's family to help take care of the kids, take care of her mother and save up for her future. She fights back against her mother's own dreams for her (she tells Cristela she is "wasting the best years of her life" in law school) her sister's view of what a woman should be doing with her life and her brother-in-law's constantly wanting to kick her out of his house. Add this to a new internship where her co-worker is a coddled family boy and her boss is comfortable telling racist jokes to her face. Kevin Hench, co-creator and executive producer, says that the family aspect of the show is incredibly strong, as viewers get to see each problem that arises through three generations of one family, each point of view very different from the last. "It has that authenticity that you feel like you're watching a real family," said Hench. And that realness, according to Alonzo, spreads throughout every aspect of production, down to the fuzzy blanket with a tiger on the couch. "In Texas, everyone has that blanket!" Striving for authenticity also meant that the team had to fight back against falling into typical sitcom tropes such as a difficult dating life or a hanger-on ex-boyfriend. Inspired by shows such as The Mary Tyler Moore Show and Roseanne, Alonzo said her real story is just something people can relate to. "I never wanted to tell the story of 'Oh, pretty girl can't find a date?' Aww," she said. "It's about doing something that's universal and honest. There's too much math involved in TV, trying to aim shows at Latinos. One of my favorite movies is Die Hard. It's not because they have a piñata. I like Die Hard because it's a great movie. That's how you get anybody to watch - you have to tell a good story that people can connect with." Alonzo added that she's proud of being part of ABC, which is one of the more successful broadcasters in terms of diversity. "ABC's lineup does such a great job of portraying what the country truly looks like, and I think it's so weird that's it's even a big deal - that they're being edgy by being real and accurate." Playing on that common thread of three generations dealing with issues of identity along with everyday family problems, Black-ish is joining a solid Wednesday night comedy block on the network starting Sept. 24, presenting the problem of raising children that don't define themselves the same way their parents did. Black-ish's star Anthony Anderson partly served as the inspiration for his character, Andre, who can't deal with his children wanting to grow up and have bar mitzvahs and play field hockey. When he is promoted at his advertising firm, he is over the moon - until he finds out that he has been promoted to a new "urban division," taking the wind out of his sails and forcing him to question just how "urban" he and his family really are. When his promotion is announced, we hear his inner thoughts: "Wait, did they just put me in charge of black stuff?" The story is partly taken from other families too, however. Creator and Executive Producer, Kenya Barris, like the family in the show, has a biracial wife who is a doctor and kids that are growing up in a situation incredibly different from his own childhood. Pieces from the pilot are taken directly from some of their lives (Anderson's son really did want a bar mitzvah). "This is sort of a gumbo of everyone's situation," said Barris. "We wanted to tell the truest version of our collective story." When asked for a dictionary definition of "black-ish," Barris explained: "We're living in a society right now where there's a lot of homogeny - we're kind of Latino-ish, white-esque, black-ish. It deals with Andre's way of seeing his children, where they're not quite his definition of what black was when he was growing up - they're black-ish. And everyone else has taken a bit of culture and added that to who they are, and now they're black-ish." And Laurence Fishburne, who plays Pops - a sarcastic but supportive father who shows up in 10-second increments to bestow comments and wisdom - says that the message is an important one. "We're talking about things that were uncomfortable to talk about 30 years ago, using humor. It's really about being honest, holding up the mirror. If it's funny, you don't have to try to make it funny. If it's true, its funny." "There's something sort of important about what we're doing and we want to live up to that," added Barris. Black-ish Executive Producer Larry Wilmore -- who will host his own show on Comedy Central, The Minority Report, in January -- co-created The Bernie Mac Show, to which the panel points as a big inspiration for Black-ish, as well as some other famous families. "We're getting a lot of comparisons to The Cosby Show, and we love that comparison," said Barris. Wilmore says the message is similar to the Cosbys or the Jeffersons, because fundamentally, it's a question of family: "When you give your kids a lot, what's lost in that?" PaleyFest also screened ABC's My Fair Lady-inspired Selfie, Manhattan Love Story, the story partly told through their inner thoughts, and Forever, a crime procedural with a lead that cannot die..