Mayan Lopez Reflects on Ups and Downs With Dad George Lopez: A ‘Sitcom Doesn’t Solve Everything’
- Oops!Something went wrong.Please try again later.
Mayan Lopez and father George Lopez haven’t always seen eye to eye but they got the chance to reconnect on their series, Lopez vs Lopez.
“I like to say a sitcom doesn't solve everything, but we have a lot of fun together,” Mayan, 28, exclusively tells Us Weekly about working with her dad ahead of the season 2 premiere of Lopez vs Lopez. “[In] rehearsals we're all laughing with one another and I think it's helped me with my trust with him being able to have more trust with him in work has helped me slowly work on trusting him in real life.”
Mayan shares that being able to do the NBC series with George, 62, has helped them make up “for lost time” since the father-daughter duo didn’t speak for nearly four years. The actress explains she was able to work it out with George after she “strengthened” herself as a person thanks to the help of “lots and lots of therapy.”
“I still love my dad and I've had to work on accepting that maybe I'm never going to have the dad that I envision,” she admits. “But I love and accept the dad that I have now and I'd rather work and experience one another for the time that we do have.”
Celebrity Kids Following Their Parents’ Acting Footsteps: Busy Philipps’ Daughter Birdie and More
Mayan confesses that she and her dad’s strained relationship began after her parents divorced. George and ex-wife Ann Serrano divorced in 2010 after seventeen years of marriage.
“Him abandoning me in a time after the divorce and it was really public and divorce is hard enough, but to have people making opinions about your family even for decades after is not easy on a 15-year-old,” she explains. “And it was quite a journey and it wasn't linear and I used to take breaks. It can be so much work to just make yourself OK with mental health. I think that's what I try to do in the show is just be honest about these things.”
Despite having their ups and downs, Mayan and George came together in May 2022 for Lopez vs Lopez. In addition to working on their relationship, Mayan says the best thing about working with her father is helping other families bond and reconnect.
“I joke that this is the most time that we spent with each other in 10 years, but it really is,” Mayan confesses. “And it's something that I think in the future I'm going to be able to show my children and it's going to be something that kind of connects my family and many families like it does now and hopefully more families in the future.”
Season 2 of Lopez vs Lopez kicked off on Tuesday, April 2, and Mayan teases that the new season has “a lot of twists and turns.”
“I think the heavy stuff road was really the first season and I feel like in the second I'm still bringing that in with certain topics, especially with the sobriety and figuring out a new relationship with your dad,” she tells Us. “That's definitely something that I've experienced in real life, but I'm having a lot of fun.”
Lopez vs Lopez airs on Tuesdays on NBC at 8 p.m. EST.
