George Lopez Reveals the Two Pieces of Advice He Shared With His Daughter Before Making 'Lopez vs. Lopez'
Lopez says he realized his daughter Mayan's 'wit was on the level of mine or [her mother] Ann’s' when she was around 12 years old.
George Lopez, the TV sitcom staple, talk show host and award-winning comedian, 61, returns to broadcast television with his new working-class family comedy, Lopez vs. Lopez (Nov. 4 on NBC). The show couldn’t be more aptly named: It also stars Lopez’s real-life daughter, Mayan, 26, and is based on her social-media postings about her dad.
Your stand-up comedy examines race, ethnic relations and Mexican American culture. Is that the idea for Lopez vs. Lopez too?
No. This show wasn’t created by me, it was created by [writer-producer] Debby Wolfe from seeing Mayan’s TikToks about our strained relationship. Based on our awkwardness, also on my divorce, Mayan and I didn’t speak for…it might be three years.
Related: Seven-Year-Old TikTok Star Brice Gonzalez Lands Acting Role in Lopez vs. Lopez
Have you always known that Mayan is funny?
I knew when Mayan was maybe 12 or so that her wit was on the level of mine or [her mother] Ann’s, who’s also very funny. I remember telling her that sometimes the first thing that pops into your head can be very funny, but I’d be concerned with where you say it. Control your instincts to be funny, because it might be more hurtful to somebody than a normal comment would be.
“The Lopez Way” is talked about in the pilot. What is that?
Boundaries. When somebody comes over to your house, if somebody went into my refrigerator, that would be [breaking] boundaries. Or noise boundaries. Or one time I let a guy stay with me as a guest in my house and he made a duplicate copy of my key. So he had to go. Personal space is a thing.
In Lopez vs. Lopez, George is portrayed as an absentee father trying to reconnect with his daughter. But then he lets it slip that he sold his house to pay his workers during the COVID shutdown. So we see a very caring side to him. Is he anything like you?
The real George does a lot for charity but doesn’t look for the attention. So I think making him good to the people that are his workers was a good thing. I would say that sometimes in my lifetime, I saw a business that would take care of its employees, because I worked at a factory, and I did all that. Versus when it all became about the bottom line and the first thing that went were the dental benefits and the medical benefits, everything for the employees. Where even in the government, you have to provide your own insurance.
In 1979, ’80, ’81, as a worker making a lot of money working in the factory, my medical and dental was taken care of. And that’s not the case now. So I think it’s part of a picture of George, that the guy would give you the shirt off his back even if it was his last shirt. That guy, which I would too, I always overpay, and I didn’t come up from a place where there was any money at all, and I don’t know where that came from.
I think probably being nicer to strangers than to people that I knew was maybe through my therapy, a part of it, because they didn’t know me, they didn’t have to know me. I could be good to them, I could make myself feel good, and they could say thank you and they’d go on with their life.
Casey Durkin/NBC
You’re pulling a little bit from your life, but are there things that are untouchable?
I think in the beginning Mayan was much more concerned about the tone of it, where it’s a comedy on television and things are a bit of an exaggeration. We really don’t have to exaggerate, and the things that she was protecting were more based on her mother personally and not the mother on the show.
What’s the most important Mayan learned from you? How to filter her comedy, or something else?
I told Mayan when she was in middle school deciding what to do, I said, “I’m going to tell you something that your grandmother never told me.” I said, “I want you to be happy. And if you’re ever in a place where you don’t want to be there, just leave and we’ll take care of it. Doesn’t matter if it’s school, doesn’t matter if it’s a job, whatever. Wherever you are, I want you to be happy to be there. And if you’re not, I want you to leave.”
Did she use it?
She’s used it a couple times. I think she got accepted to a school in London, and when she went, it wasn’t what she thought it was. I said, “Come back.” And we were left to pack up the dorm and all the stuff.
Do you look at this TV series as a way to find a younger crowd for your stand-up?
Oh, wow! You know, I hope not. Because if you look at a younger audience—which of course everybody wants to have a younger audience—they actually like $2 Buck Chuck that you get at Trader Joe’s, and then people who are older would enjoy a more mature wine.
So I think if you can satisfy somebody with $2 Buck Chuck, maybe you belong with the $2 Buck Chuck [crowd]. I think one of the things that’s more interesting to me as a person is that I was struggling to just have one identity, not nine. So stand-up is more adult, but also, I look 61 years old; maybe I look older.
But the fascinating thing to be on television for the last 20 years is at 9 o’clock in the morning, I can be 42 or 46. And then when somebody sees me at 3 in the afternoon in person, I’m 61. So we live in a thing where if you saw a picture consistently of someone, you would think that that was their age. And then you see somebody in person, you’re like, “Oh, man, I thought he was a lot younger than that.”
And because social media is everything with every picture all in this big pot, and there’s no “circa” at the bottom of any of our pictures. So in my own vanity, I would like people to see me as I am and not as I was in 2002.
I don’t really look at social media anymore. Somebody asked a question, “What would you consider the most damaging thing of our existence in this generation, in this century?” And I would have to say it would be the internet, and social media, because it’s just so dangerous.
Don’t you think the internet is good for research?
Absolutely. I was never much into outer space and Star Wars and things like that, but documentaries about music and documentaries about other things. I could go back and look at, let’s say Van Halen in 1981, and find a show that I was at. So for music and for things, it’s wonderful that way.
You have a philanthropic organization, the Lopez Foundation. Talk about the function and why you set it up.
When I was growing up, I was sick with my kidneys, but I had no idea. When I went to my baseball physical in 12th grade, I had borderline hypertension at 17. And I remember the doctors saying, “I’m going to pass you, but I think you should go to the doctor to see how a kid at 17 is borderline hypertensive.” And that was because I had narrowing of my ureters.
So cut to my early 40s; I needed a transplant. And when I got the transplant, I told my doctor that I didn’t look to be the poster boy for kidney disease, I just wanted to get healthy and get back to work. But a day and a half after I was transplanted with the kidney, I felt better than I had felt ever, ever, ever in my life. And at that point in the morning, I felt that I had an obligation and a duty to help people who were sick.
What would you like to see as your legacy?
There’s a lot of fathers who are estranged, and mothers and families who are estranged from their brothers and sisters, and people that don’t talk. I would like my legacy to be that I presented an opportunity for people to close divisions that they have. Or to reimagine what it would be like to have a relationship with someone where you thought all hope was lost.
