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 18 18 L atin T imes M agazine www .L atin T imes M edia . com . latintimesmedia . com 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 braza el el calor calor de de tu tu cultura cultura A A braza ! !