LATIN TIMES MAGAZINE - 1st QTR 2018 1st Quarter 2018 | Page 18

Isabella Gomez
So here I am sitting with a
cast of very gifted comedy
actors and that’s what I was
nervous about, I was like
‘Oh my god, what if Im not
funny, what if they don’t
like me..’ But it went over
okay!
by:
Jolie Gonzalez-Padilla
Jolie Gonzalez-Padilla: Well, let me start
off by asking you to share a little bit about
yourself, your background and how you
got started in show business.
Isabella Gomez: Great, well I was born in
Medellin Colombia, and I’m not entirely
sure how I started in it. When I was 5 or
6 I went up to my parent and said, “Hey, I
wanna act”. And my mom had a friend in
the industry and he helped me get started
with commercials, and a little bit of theatre
and stuff like that. I really fell in love with
it, but the opportunities in Colombia were
few and far in between and not so much
for kids, [yes], so then we moved to Florida
when I was ten years old, and that’s when
I started training. I went to this school
called Lisa Maile, and then I moved on to
a personal coach, who is like my second
mom and that’s when I started taking it
a lot more seriously. I went to a theatre
school too, and when I was 15, I came out
for my first pilot season, I was in LA for
7 weeks, and I booked a reoccurring on
Matador, and the bug bit me! So soon after
that we relocated to LA, I started training
a lot harder, 6 months after being here I
booked “One day at a Time”…
guys have such a great cast, so how was
your nervousness level on your first day on
the set knowing that you were just minutes
away from filming with these iconic actors?
Isabella Gomez: You know, luckily, the
magnitude of them didn’t really hit me
until later either. It didn’t hit me, once you
get to start knowing actors, you realize that
really are just people and that was really
nice because had I been thinking about
how incredible these people are, I probably
would’ve been a lot more nervous. Really,
I was nervous more about myself, in the
sense of I had never been a series regular,
and there is no one who teaches you how
to do that, you just have to show up and
see what you have to do. Also, I had al-
ways considered myself a dramatic actress,
I never thought I’d do comedy. So here I
am sitting with a cast of very gifted comedy
actors and that’s what I was nervous about,
I was like ‘Oh my god, what if Im not fun-
ny, what if they don’t like me..’ But it went
over okay!
Jolie Gonzalez-Padilla: From season
1 walking into season 2, how do you
think your role has grown or evolved?
Isabella Gomez: I think Elena has been
Jolie Gonzalez-Padilla: Well you know you through a lot in season 1. Obviously as we
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see in season 1 she deals with figuring out
her sexuality, and how her family accepts
it and in the finale we know that her dad
is dead. That’s hard on anybody especially
a 15 year old girl. I think she is tougher
now but she is also more vulnerable in the
sense that she now knows first-hand, rejec-
tion she felt it from her own father. I think
she is guarded but also tougher.
Jolie Gonzalez-Padilla: Well your now an
Icon to many young Latina’s too, how does
it feel to be look at as a role model?
Isabella Gomez: Its really, really, humbling
and really eye opening. When we filmed
the first season, because its Netflix and all
the episodes go out at once, we were kind
of in our own little bubble because nobody,
you know, saw it, so we were doing it kind
of for ourselves, and it’s hard to understand
the impact that something is going to have
when you’re doing it in a bubble like that.
Catch the rest of this exciting
interview online on our website:
www.LatinTimesMedia.com
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