Showrunner Tanya Saracho’s widely acclaimed new drama series is scheduled for it’s wide premiere this Sunday! A SXSW Film Festival Audience Award Recipient, make sure to tune in and catch Melissa Barrera, Mishel Prada, Ser Anzoategui, Chelsea Rendon, Carlos Miranda, and Maria Elena Laas on the small screen! Maintaining a close relationship with Saracho, NALIP was able to catch a few key points from the successful Showrunner on her new show!

What is Vida about?

"‘VIDA’ is about coming home, about a changing neighborhood. Two sisters, the hernandez sisters come home because their mother dies and when they come home they realize she's been married to a woman this whole time. And this secret is not shocking because she's a woman it's because she was having a family life without them. But that just highlights how fractured they were as a family and the show will be about these sisters coming back together. But you know you have to break bones before putting them back together. Its gonna take a while for them to come back together.

It's also about retaking their place in this neighborhood because they inherited a bar in this neighborhood with tenants, half of them being undocumented. So they have to make a decision, “do we become the gentefiers that are kind of threatening the neighborhood, or do we just leave it and go” every episode they have to make that decision."

What do you think is the impact of having a dominant Latinx cast?

"I think so many things have to align for a show like this to get going.  we are the first half hour on premium cable with a latinx gaze, with latinx cast/crew, the first. There's something pioneering about the fact that the show exists. Now the story too, we don't get too see a lot of complicated, scratched up imagery of latina females and the queerness aspect as well. In that regard it also feels a little pioneering if i do say myself. I didn’t have any models, I didn't have anything to compare it to in our community. And also the stories, i can't wait for you to see the cinematography, it's just gorgeous. We have  a latina cinematographer whos afro carribean who really cares about how our skin tones look. ALso the music it's all latina musical artists, mostly indie. It's important to use this platform to introduce new indie musical acts."