When Rita Moreno and Gloria Estefan are in the same room, chances are good that sparks will fly. That’s definitely the case on Netflix’s One Day at a Time reboot, which used its Season 3 premiere to introduce Estefan as Mirtha, estranged sister of Lydia (Moreno). The half-hour sitcom also tapped Melissa Fumero and Stephanie Beatriz, Brooklyn Nine-Nine stars with followings of their own—though both admitted to being starstruck by Estefan and Moreno. Show-runner Gloria Calderón Kellett put it best: “The whole week on set was pretty miraculous. We all felt very aware that we were doing something special together, and it really elevated the [shoot] for everybody involved.”
Season 3 opens with a tragedy: Tía Ofelia is dead. It takes the Alvarez family a minute to figure out who Tía Ofelia is, so her death mostly means that they’ll have to spend her funeral navigating a series of ancient family feuds—like Lydia and Mirtha’s years-long battle over a priceless lost mantilla. Fumero plays Estrellita, daughter to Mirtha and cousin to Penelope (Justina Machado)—her onetime best friend, in fact, until their mothers’ fight led to a catastrophic rift. Meanwhile, Beatriz plays Tía Pilar, the only gay relative who Penelope’s daughter Elena (Isabella Gomez) has, a potential role model the teenager is desperate to connect with.
Both Beatriz and Fumero welcomed the chance to perform in a multi-cam sitcom before a live audience, the closest TV gets to approximating theater. “And then the cherry on top of everything was Rita Moreno, Gloria friggin’ Estefan, and finding out that Gloria was going to be playing my mom,” Fumero said in a recent interview. “I had to do a lot of mental preparation before showing up—just being like, ‘Be cool, be normal. Just be professional, do your work, and don’t be a total spaz.’”
“I watched Rita like a hawk that whole week,” Beatriz said in a separate interview, “and what I love about her is that she starts out so kind of slow and soft. She wears all this beautiful cashmere to rehearsals, and is always wearing a hat [because] it’s very cold on those stages.”
“She’s got this very gentle voice and she’s gently sort of finding her way on day one,” Beatriz added. “And then it’s a little more on day two, and then by day three, she’s starting to let stuff rip and getting free with her material and figuring out her timing and it is . . . I couldn’t take my eyes off her.”
Both actresses also recalled how welcoming Moreno was on set; each separately recounted a moment on the first day of filming when Moreno pulled them into her dressing room. Beatriz’s palms began sweating immediately. “Stephanie, try to remember every second of this because this woman is being so generous with you,” she thought to herself. “She’s inviting you into her personal space and welcoming you to the work on this show.”
“That’s a true gift,” Beatriz said. “That’s what makes somebody a star. And that’s what she is.”
“She has all of this memorabilia from her career in there,” Fumero said. “And she was like, ‘I love to nest—so I always make my dressing room very homey, because I want to be relaxed in here and be reminded of good times in my life and my career.’” Fumero looked at old photographs and chatted with Moreno before the actress took a quick nap. “She has that energy of like larger-than-life, but at the same time is so sweet and open and grounded,” Fumero said.
Moreno has been a regular on One Day at a Time since the reboot launched—but Estefan’s guest appearance was years in the making. Though the singer performs the show’s theme song, “she’s an international superstar—so she’s a little bit busy,” Calderón Kellett said. Scheduling finally worked out this season, allowing Estefan to appear alongside Moreno, Beatriz, Fumero, and fellow guest star Liz Torres, of stage and Gilmore Girls fame—a distinguished menagerie of Latinx talent.
Acting alongside Estefan was especially huge for Fumero, who remembers her mother sitting her down as a child and making her listen to “Mi Tierra”—an emotional song, set to the rhythm of old Cuban dance music, about the pain of missing a homeland to which one cannot return. “This song reminds me of home. This song reminds me of what it was like. This song reminds me of everything I love about Cuba,” her mother told her tearfully. “And Emilio Estefan, by the way, is the only celebrity I have ever asked for an autograph,” Fumero added.
Calderón Kellett was especially delighted to see how Moreno and Estefan lit each other up: “They were so funny together,” she said. “They were constantly doing bits. They have a dynamic like siblings, and they jumped into these particular women with such joy. I think because in real life they’re both such sweet women, they really loved the idea of being a little bit wicked.”
“It was a crack-up—the whole thing,” Calderón Kellett added. “They were making each other laugh. Making us laugh. Rita very rarely breaks. She was laughing a lot because she was being so funny, so it was all just a real pleasure for that audience.”
