Making a name for yourself when George Lopez is your father can’t be easy, but Mayan Lopez is making it happen.
The 26-year-old is starring in the new sitcom Lopez vs. Lopez alongside the popular comedian. The NBC comedy is premiering on Nov. 4, and it is inspired by the strained relationship they had in real life. They will play a once-estranged father and daughter who are navigating dysfunction and generational traumas, as they attempt to reconnect when he comes back into her life.
Lopez says that she wasn’t on speaking terms with her famous dad just a couple of years ago. Now they are using the sitcom as a vessel to iron out their personal issues with the world as their witness. “Two years ago we weren’t truly speaking and now we’re having these conversations that we would’ve had in private, but we’re putting them on the screen,” Lopez tells Complex. “We know that this is our cause, our relationship represents so many and it’s bigger than ourselves.”
The George Lopez show premiered on ABC in March 2002 and aired for six seasons. The sitcom was about a Mexican-American dad raising his family in Los Angeles. The show went into syndication on Nick at Nite in 2007 and had an almost 13-year run on the network, gaining even more fans than when it originally aired. The new NBC sitcom will follow a similar format; it is a situational comedy covering familial topics but will have a slightly different premise.
Lopez vs. Lopez centers around Mayan who works at a veterinary clinic and has a white partner named Quinten (Matt Shively) and they live in her late grandmother’s home. The couple share a son named Chance, played by Brice Gonzalez. The 7-year-old social media star is known for making hilarious lip-sync videos with his dad Randy as the EnkyBoys. Lopez and the show’s showrunner Debby Wolfe discovered Gonzalez’s videos on TikTok and knew right away they wanted him for the role.
Lopez vs. Lopez is not a reboot by any means. But the actress does promise that fans of the OG George Lopez show will get their necessary dose of nostalgia here, too (including some special appearances from the original cast). Complex hopped on a call with Mayan Lopez to chat about healing her relationship with her dad in front of a live audience, representing Latinas on TV, the cast, and more. Check our conversation, edited for length and clarity, below.
Congratulations on the show. I watched the pilot and it was so funny. It’s so heartwarming. How are you feeling before the show premieres?
I am so excited for people to see this and to be able to see a very unique father-daughter dynamic and it’s really life imitating art. It’s about my dad, a once-estranged father and daughter, really trying to reconnect and realizing, I think especially with the pandemic, that time is really precious and that this relationship was so important to the both of us and that you don’t have to be perfect to heal and that you can find laughter is sometimes the best medicine.
For sure. And our parent-child relationships can sometimes get complicated as we get older.
Yeah. You start to see your parents as people and you may understand more as you understand your own humanity. And maybe you don’t agree with things but you can understand them and we kind of educate them. I think [in] Lopez vs. Lopez, as well as the older generation versus the younger generation, we cover topics of generational trauma and it being OK to talk about your feelings and that you don’t have to be perfect to have some sort of healing.
I think about having that in a sitcom aspect and performing in front of a live audience as well. Being in my dad’s kind of foreground—I was on the set of George Lopez ever since I was 5 years old. I always watched it and absorbed it and to now be able to collaborate with my dad in this way and on a medium that it’s kind of in the family business. It’s kind of a family format. It’s a family show and it’s just an honor and I can’t wait for people to see it.
I read that you two were a bit separated. Can you talk about using your art as a form to heal the relationship?
Yes. I’ve always wanted my pain to mean something. I didn’t know when that was going to happen and that time is now. But I’ve always wanted for people to feel like they are not alone. Because I think just the exposure and because sometimes you just feel like the world is your own and all your problems are just your own. You don’t feel like anyone can relate to that. And just simply having that exposure out there can make such a huge difference in someone’s life. I can’t wait for this show and I’m hoping that people will come up to me, hopefully, and show how the show relates to them. Tell me stories. And I just really want a core of connection.
Working with someone like your dad has to be really kind of nerve-wracking.
Oh yeah. It’s challenging. It’s challenging at times. But that’s what makes it such an incredible dynamic, is that it’s real. And putting that in a sitcom, which is already kind of situational. Two years ago we weren’t truly speaking and now we’re having these conversations that we would’ve had in private, but we’re putting them on the screen. But we know that this is our cause, our relationship represents so many and it’s bigger than ourselves. Even my dad’s show, with the original, it was kind of his life if he didn’t become a comedian. And now it’s a different father-daughter that’s still based on that sort of reality. And so it’s the Lopez way—we put ourselves out there for a bigger cause.
The dynamic between you two is so great. Did you learn anything about him as a professional working with him or about his work ethic?
He’s just a class act and how quick he is and how smart and how he’s already three, four steps ahead. He actually told me, he’s like, “Oh this is great. There’s two of me.” That we are able to bounce off one another and I’ve done my own studying. I studied at The Second City in Chicago and really thought I was going to be on SNL. And so being able to perform in front of a live audience and also get that tutelage and mentorship from him is… I’m going to have this forever.
I can’t wait to show my children. We get to kind of test run. I’m a mother on this show. I’m not a mother in real life, but we get to practice in some parts of the show. So it’ll be fun to watch back how many years from now and that hopefully, I think, it’ll always hold up.
