Calderón Kellett, who created the reboot of Norman Lear’s sitcom classic “One Day at a Time,” which Machado led for four seasons (first on Netflix, then on Pop), thought it was a role — pun fully intended — that Machado could really “sink her teeth into.”
Machado listened to a few episodes and felt she could relate to Dolores, a brash New Yorker who ended up behind bars after her longtime boyfriend — the neighborhood dope dealer — went MIA, leaving her to be carted away from their Washington Heights apartment in handcuffs. “I liked the rawness of her,” Machado said in a recent Zoom interview. “I grew up in the inner city of Chicago, so I feel like I know a lot of this. It’s nothing I’ve ever played before, and it wasn’t a stereotype — it was actually a really exciting, eccentric, out-there story.”
The series, which premieres Friday on Prime Video, is the latest iteration of a story by Aaron Mark, a self-described “Texas Jew” who wrote “Empanada Loca,” the critically acclaimed play on which the Gimlet Media podcast was based. Both the play and podcast featured Tony-nominated actress Daphne Rubin-Vega in the title role, but when Blumhouse Television acquired Gimlet’s hit for a series, Rubin-Vega turned her focus to writing and producing (she’s an executive producer on the show).
In a recent Zoom interview, Mark recalled Machado’s name being floated as an actress who could bring Dolores to life on-screen. But Mark, who had followed Machado’s career since her breakout on HBO’s “Six Feet Under,” considered it a long shot. And so he was taken aback during a Zoom meeting when Machado declared, “I am Dolores Roach. This is my part. What do I got to do to get this?”
“I was like, ‘What do you have to do?’ Are you available? It was like, ‘We should be so lucky,’” recalled Mark, who is the creator and showrunner of the Prime Video series. “And she did some work on a couple of the scenes and just blew everybody out of the water.”
Dolores is in many ways the perfect role for Machado, who at 50 is a veteran of theater and screen. The role gives her a freedom that’s rare for actors and rarer still for actors of color. “She’s a villain. She’s a psycho. She’s a great person,” said Machado’s longtime friend and collaborator Judy Reyes. “You get a chance to actually sympathize, which is completely unique for Latino talent.”
“She brings such humanity to the role,” added Calderón Kellett, who later came on to “Dolores Roach” as an executive producer. “This is really a woman surviving. And it felt like something that could parallel her own life as a survivor in this industry.”
It’s tempting to see Machado’s marquee roles — on “Six Feet Under, “One Day at a Time” and fan-favorite shows including “Jane the Virgin” and “Queen of the South” — as signs of progress for Latinos and women of color in Hollywood. But has that much really changed?
“Not really,” Machado said. “We’re underrepresented.”
Machado ticks off a list of “superstars” whose work centers Latinos and their experiences — Eva Longoria, Calderón Kellett, America Ferrera — and up-and-coming talents including Linda Yvette Chávez, who wrote Longoria’s feature directorial debut, “Flamin’ Hot,” and “Vida” creator Tanya Saracho. She knows there are others. “But where are our projects?” she asked.
What has changed, Machado said, is that Latinos “are now understanding how powerful we are together and uplifting each other as artists.”
Machado knows firsthand how halting progress can be. Her breakout role as Vanessa Diaz, opposite Freddy Rodriguez’s mortician, Federico “Rico” Diaz, on “Six Feet Under” was quietly revolutionary in its portrayal of a Latino couple, who were married, raising children and navigating all of the ups and downs that come with that.
“I hear it all the time now — and it’s unfortunate — that it was so rare to see somebody like Freddy and I together in a show where they let us authentically be ourselves,” Machado said.
Machado has known Rodriguez since they were teenagers growing up in Chicago, lending a chemistry to the Diazes that she thinks helped take their recurring roles to the next level. “The brilliance of that show was they realized when something worked. When I first started the first season, I think I did four episodes. I was recurring — big deal. Then it just kept growing.”
Creator Alan Ball and executive producer Alan Poul, she said, were open to discuss anything she or Rodriguez found stereotypical. When they realized both actors were Puerto Rican — their characters had been written as Mexican — they tweaked the script. “They always, always listened,” Machado said. “They were incredible.”
What was most refreshing was that “they didn’t make a big deal about us being Puerto Rican,” Machado said. “It was only like one episode where we talked about alcapurrias and pasteles.”
Machado was a series regular when “Six Feet Under” ended after five seasons, and it wasn’t until much later that she realized just how groundbreaking the show was. “It made it difficult to take anything else after that wasn’t that caliber,” she said. “Is it going to be as good as ‘Six Feet Under’? And really, nothing was until I did ‘One Day at a Time.’”
The reimagined sitcom, on which Machado played Penelope Alvarez — a first-generation Cuban American raising kids in Los Angeles — was a pivotal moment in her career: It marked the first time she was leading a series, listed as No. 1 on a call sheet that also included Rita Moreno, who played Penelope’s mother.
In the Lear tradition, “One Day at a Time” dealt with weighty topics including mental health and the struggle Penelope’s daughter Elena faces in telling her Cuban American family that she is a lesbian.
Machado still hears from people who related to Penelope’s story or found comfort in how the Alvarez family supported Elena after her coming out. At a Pride event recently, one fan approached Machado to tell her she was “the best mom.”
Reyes (of “Scrubs” and “Claws” fame) remembers the first time she ever saw Machado — 20-something years ago in a LAByrinth Theater Company production of “God, The Crack House and The Devil.” Watching Machado, who played a teenager struggling with crack addiction, Reyes thought, “Oh my God, I want to work with her. I want to be her.”
The memory is so vivid that Reyes recalled it in present tense during a recent phone call. “There’s not a dishonest moment,” Reyes said. “You completely believe what’s happening on that stage.”
Reyes has since worked alongside Machado many times over — and even has a minor but memorable role in “The Horror of Dolores Roach.”
She now counts Machado — the godmother of her child — as one of her closest friends. And she said that the honesty she saw onstage that day is the essence of who Machado is in both her life and work. “Justina is ruthlessly authentic. I think she’s incapable of being dishonest,” Reyes said.
Machado spent her childhood in several of Chicago’s now-gentrified neighborhoods including Humboldt Park and Logan Square. “It’s an urban story. It’s one I don’t like to get too deep into,” she said. “But there was always a lot of love. It just was a small world.”
Machado’s world expanded somewhat when at 10 years old she was accepted into a magnet school, Franklin Fine Arts Center, in Chicago’s Old Town, where she studied dance. Machado was aimless after high school, miserable and working at a bank, when she got a phone call that changed her life. A friend’s mom, a talent agent, recommended she audition for a role at the Latino Chicago Theater.
She got the role — and another and another — but still didn’t consider herself an actor. “Everybody made fun of me,” Machado recalled. “Oh, yeah you’re an actor. You’re in the inner city of Chicago. It doesn’t even make sense to them. … My family thought it was ridiculous. My friends didn’t understand it.”
Her family — Machado is the eldest of five siblings — “is fully on board now,” and she said it was “Six Feet Under” that convinced them that an acting career “was possible.”
Since then, her work has generated buzz from fans of all backgrounds. Fans of “One Day at a Time” would often approach her, prefacing their praise with a disclaimer: “I’m not Cuban but I love your show.”
“It used to drive me crazy,” said Machado, who would often reply: “‘I’m not Cuban either, but I love the show, too!’”
While her new role is decidedly more morbid, Machado said she isn’t worried about viewers abandoning her character as she transforms from masseuse to murderer. “I think that she’s a relatable character, even though you’re not somebody who’s snapping necks or you’re not a serial killer,” Machado said.
“The beautiful thing about ‘Dolores Roach’ is it’s not a Latino story. It just happens to have two Latino leads,” said Machado, noting that viewers can see themselves in the diverse ensemble. “I love that — all of that is important. But it’s really freeing and liberating to know that that’s not the reason these stories are being told.”