Image via Netflix
Keep Breathing is Netflix’s latest limited series to quickly climb to the No. 1 spot on the streamer’s Top 10 Shows list.
The six-episode series stars Melissa Barrera as Liv, a no-nonsense attorney living in New York City. She embarks on a journey to find answers about her family’s past but finds herself stuck in the wilderness after her plane crashes on the Canadian frontier. The show is very much a survival thriller that finds Barrera in one of her most physically demanding roles yet, but those intense scenes are just a fraction of the story the show is telling. The grueling physical scenes are balanced out by the emotional breakthrough that Barrera’s character is going through as she has to face the turmoil and trauma from her childhood that she has buried for so long after being abandoned by her mother.
Her trip’s goal was to find her mom and get answers, but Liv has to face her demons by herself instead and the show depicts those moments by using flashbacks to tell the story. While finding ways to survive, Liv realizes she is the only person that can help her heal from her traumas and out of this wilderness. Some viewers are having trouble understanding the show’s ambiguous ending, but Keep Breathing creators Martin Gero and Brendan Gall have already clarified how things end for Liv in an interview with Entertainment Weekly. We won’t spoil the ending, but the survival aspect of the show is not nearly as important as the process of growth and discovery the main character goes through internally.
Before Gero and Gall cast Barrera for the role, Liv was not written as a Latina. Barrera says the creators rewrote the script with the help of writer Iturri Sosa to help add more authenticity to to the character and her family. Latinxs are not usually depicted like this in Hollywood; Liv is a lawyer, while her father is a college professor and her mom is an artist. They have internal issues, the way all families do, but they aren’t struggling financially, which is so unlike the usual scope and stereotypes that Latin characters are usually given in TV and movies.
“I love this kind of representation, it’s the kind that I seek out in the roles that I play. The representation that is subtle and at the same time powerful because we’re breaking barriers and we don’t have to justify our existence,” Barrera, who previously starred in Vida and In The Heights, tells Complex. “There’s a little bit of Spanish in the show, but not a lot, and there’s no mention of her being successful and a Latina and what that means—she just is.”
She added: “Latinos can be successful and they can have money in the United States and they can live well. And I feel like in Latinx shows, we’re always struggling. It’s a reality and there’s a lot of merits to people that come from the bottom and then come up, but also, that’s not all that we are.”
Netflix has had great success with women-led limited series like 2021’s Maid, and its star Margaret Qualley secured an Emmy nomination in the Best Actress category—and regardless of what critics have to say about Keep Breathing, Barrera deserves the same type of acknowledgment for her performance. Complex caught up with Barrera to talk about the real meaning of the show, the extensive physical preparation and training she underwent for this role, and how grateful she is that there are more opportunities for Latinxs in the industry. [Ed Note: This interview contains some spoilers for Keep Breathing.]
Congratulations on Keep Breathing. I could not stop watching.
Oh, thank you so much, it means a lot. Everyone that was a part of the show worked so hard on it and I’m just happy that people are connecting with it and liking it.
Can you tell me a little about the process of getting involved with this project and what stood out to you about Liv as a character?
Well, I found out about this show because my team somehow found it and they told me there’s going to be this show on Netflix, it’s a survival drama, and immediately, I was like, “Yes.” Anything survival, I love.” I was immediately attracted to the idea of it, but then I got scripts and I read them and I fell in love.
I was like, “This is not what I thought it was going to be, it’s an emotional journey, it’s a psychological journey.” And I felt that made it even more special because everything that she’s going through in the wild is a physical manifestation of her childhood traumas and all of the issues that she has and all the things that she hasn’t been dealing with.
I just thought it was such a beautiful way to tell the story. Getting to spend so much time with a character is always a gift because you get to know them so well, and I have so much information because of the flashbacks and because of the way the script was written. It felt like I was reading a novel and I had so much to pull from and it just made it so easy for me to dive into her.
This was your Leo DiCaprio Revenantmoment for sure.
Oh, 100%. You know what? That was actually something that I would say, when I was in the water and I was freezing and I was shivering, I would tell the water team, I was like, “If Leo could do it, I could do it.”
That’s exactly what it reminded me of. You have a lot of emotionally intense scenes, but the physical aspect of it had to be a lot, too. You’re also a super strong swimmer from what I saw, so how did you prepare for that?
I don’t know that I’m a super strong swimmer. I could definitely swim, but when you know that you have to act and panic and do heavy breathing while you’re in freezing cold water, you really quickly get scared because you realize that you actually cannot breathe and you cannot take deep breaths because your body is shivering so much. So that was the biggest part of my physical preparation for the show, was the water stuff.
Oh wow.
I did cold water training, which was getting in my tub during quarantine with ice and water and a thermometer and making it colder and colder each day and just sitting in it so that my body got used to that, my nerve endings and my skin and everything got accustomed to the cold temperatures.
I did breath hold training with a freediving instructor who taught me to expand my lung capacity to be able to hold my breath for longer periods of time under water. I had a lot of underwater time inside the plane, and I did a scuba certification training, just to be comfortable in deep water. I realized that even though I loved that part of the shoot, it was probably one of the most fun and fulfilling weeks when we were in the water. I also realized that I am not a water person. Scuba diving will not become a hobby of mine, I still am very much afraid of drowning.
Do you feel like after starring in the show, God forbid you’re ever in this situation, do you feel like you’d be able to survive now from everything you learned from the training?
I definitely feel like I got more skills because of everything that I learned while shooting this show, but I honestly don’t know how I would survive. I would be more like a Sam probably. I’d be the person that is trying to get the hell out of the plane quickly and avoid being trapped inside a plane underwater. I don’t know, I genuinely don’t know how I would react.
But I am a problem solver, which is something that I have in common with Liv. I am a mover and a problem solver, so I would try and figure out where to walk. I would not know to stay by the beach and wait to be spotted in a clearing. I’d be like, “Hmm, I need shelter, I need to be under the trees covered and I need to start walking in one direction.”
The emotional aspect of the show is what made me sit down and really listen. The generational trauma and her trying to heal that relationship with her mother because she is pregnant. Can you tell me about the importance of that aspect of the show and the message of closure and being able to let go in order to move forward?
Yes. I’m so happy to hear you saying these things because you get it. You understood what our show is, and I feel like some people did not, they wanted it to be something else. The reason that I love this show is because it is a quiet, introspective character study of this woman that is dealing with all of these emotions and memories that are bubbling up to the surface because she’s stuck in the wild, in the quiet, in the silence, and there’s no way of avoiding them.
This emotional journey and this healing is what the show is about. And it’s what I think a lot of us went through during the pandemic when we were stuck indoors with our thoughts and it was hard for a lot of people to be on a forced pause of your life, to not be able to busy yourself to ignore all of the things that you don’t want to deal with. And that’s exactly what happens to Liv. And this idea of her seeking answers about her mother, because she is at that crossroad in her life where she is figuring out if she is ready for that path to become one, is very human. It’s this thing of, “I don’t want to be a mother like my mom was because she hurt me, and I don’t want to do that to my kids. So I need to know if I’m like her now. Now that I’m an adult, I need to know if I’ve turned into her because that’s scary.”
I feel like that scares us a lot. I know we all inevitably turn into our parents in one way or another, but when it comes to growing up with a parent that had a mental illness, I think that just becomes way more daunting. And the idea of passing that on and not being able to break those patterns, those generational patterns that you pass down to your kids is terrifying. Also what I love about the show is that—spoiler alert—but sometimes there are no answers. Sometimes there’s just goodbye and you just have to learn how to make peace with things because you don’t always get the closure that you want from people in your life.
What I also love about the show is that the main character is a Latina and she’s a successful lawyer. And it shows Latinos in a different light, it paints Latinos as humans with complex emotions. Is it important for you to be able to portray a character like Liv?
I love this kind of representation, I think it’s the kind that I seek out in the roles that I play, the representation that is subtle and at the same time powerful, because we’re breaking barriers and we don’t have to justify our existence. There’s a little bit of Spanish in the show, but not a lot, and there’s no mention of her being successful and a Latina and what that means, she just is.
Her parents are artists. Her dad is a professor and a poet, her mom is an artist. I feel like we rarely get to see those kinds of roles for people like us. And I just love that they weren’t struggling. They have this beautiful apartment, you don’t talk about that. Latinos can be successful and they can have money in the United States and they can live well. And I feel like in Latinx shows, we’re always struggling. It’s a reality and there’s a lot of merits to people that come from the bottom and then come up, but also, that’s not all that we are. The show was not written for a Latina. When they cast me, they then brought in a writer, Iturri Sosa, to add these nuances to the characters to make it more authentic without it being the focus of the story, because that wasn’t what this journey was at all.
That says a lot about the creators, for sure. Has that been your experience as an actress in Hollywood, where people are able to adjust to better serve you as an actress?
This has been the first time that that has happened, but now I know that it’s possible. So now I’m going to continue to fight for that. I know in Scream as well, the role wasn’t written for a Latina and then they cast me. But because Scream is about so many other things, there wasn’t anything that had to be said and done to adjust the role, they just were like, “Oh, okay. This is who we cast, that’s fine. The script can remain the same.” But Keep Breathing was definitely the first time that I was like, “Oh, wow,” because I read the script first, and then when they cast me, they sent that to me with the adjustments and I was like, “Oh my God, this is incredible.” It feels so good to know that the creators care about it feeling good and right for me as an actor and as a person.
You’ve done such a beautiful job representing Latinas on the big screen and through TV shows. Have you felt a shift and an increase in opportunities for Latinas compared to when you first started?
Definitely. I definitely see an increase in opportunities. I see it in my colleagues, I see it in my fellow actors and actresses. There’s more of us coming up, which I love, but I still feel like it’s a fraction of what it should be and we still have to fight and swim against the current a lot of times to even be seen for things. So I still feel like there’s a long way to go, but we’re definitely being louder and fighting and moving in the right direction.
Keep Breathing is now streaming on Netflix.