Jessica Marie Garcia, Harvey Guillén, and Chelsea Rendon Talk Personal Brands and Cousin Bonds On Lopez vs Lopez
In Lopez vs Lopez, real-life father and daughter George Lopez and Mayan Lopez navigate dysfunction, reconnection, and everything in between as they make up for lost time. The NBC comedy has brought exciting guest stars in from Rita Moreno to Cheech Marin to the original cast of The George Lopez Show. In a new episode titled “Lopez vs Primos,” Harvey Guillén, Jessica Marie Garcia, and Chelsea Rendon appear as the Lopezes cousins who prove the grass isn’t always greener on the other side. Kristen Maldonado of Pop Culture Planet talked to the trio about their experience on the episode.
Chelsea Rendon is known for playing tough chicks on shows like Vida and Maya and the Three, so it was a change of pace for her to play the free-spirited Luna. “I really based my character off of Kourtney Kardashian. Like that vegan, healthy, still uppity vibe. That was something that Kelly [Park] was like, ‘Give me Kardashian.’ I was like, ‘I know exactly what you're talking about,’” she said. “It’s a character that I’ve never played before. I’m a tough chick so I naturally play tougher characters. She was so light and so it was really fun.”
On My Block and Liv and Maddie star Jessica Marie Garcia takes on the role of the fabulous, TikTok-dancing influencer cousin. “Yesika is an influencer, so I feel like I have a lot of research readily available to me. I’ve been called an influencer before… don’t know how I feel about it. It was not very difficult to step into her shoes, but, for me, it was even better doing a multi-cam again,” she shared. “So being able to play around and be a little bit bigger than we get to be on single-cam is so fun and getting an audience is just unreal. So Yesika came very, very naturally, but I was also like looking at my primos like, ‘Was that funny? Do you think that was okay? Like do you think I should punch that up?’ Like I was still having mini panic attacks, but that's like any other day on set.”
Harvey Guillén has had break out roles in What We Do In The Shadows and Puss in Boots: The Last Wish, but did you know both he and Garcia got their start together on ABC Family’s Huge? Playing the pseudo-intellectual Miguel on Lopez vs Lopez allowed him to tap back into bigger comedy after dabbling in more subtle role in recent years. “It was just fun to do three-cam again. I haven’t done it in a while and, like Jess said, we grew up doing three-cam. Jess, obviously, has done years and years of that. For me, I was doing the same thing to her. I was like, ‘Was that good?’ Because I’ve gone from like three-cameras — it’s big, it’s bigger than life — to doing very subtle grounded comedy. The comedy comes from almost whispering. It was the first time in my career that I’ve [gotten the note]: bigger,” Guillen said. “I did musical theater growing up so it was always, like, ‘So big, to the back of the room.’ That was the first time I’ve ever gotten that note because usually it’s like, ‘Tone it down. Bring it down a bit, Harvey.’ I’ve gotten so used to the mindset of playing Guillermo on Shadows where he’s so quiet and submissive and subtle that I was still doing the joke, but I was doing it for single-cam. […] So it took a second to get back into that. Once I did, man, I feel like no time had gone by. And working with these two lovely ladies was just a dream come true. Like the perfect family dynamic.”
Each primo has their own personal brands — from Luna’s #vanlife to Miguel’s flaming hot Chicano to Yesika’s girl who gets invited on a boat — so we had to find out this trio’s too. “I think it would be some kind of pastry, like a Concha. Delicious to be around, smells good, and you can't wait to get your teeth into it,” joked Guillén, with Garcia sharing: “Mine would be #relatability. Like nothing goes right, just a hot mess express.”
Rendon added: “I’ve been getting a lot that I'm an aggressive motivator. So I'm like, ‘You're beautiful, bitch. Stop doubting yourself.’ Like I did to you, Harvey, earlier. I feel like that’s my brand right now, where I’m super aggressive, but super positive and motivating.”
Through having their cousins over for the weekend, the Lopez family learns not everything is as it seems. While the cousins seem to be living their best lives, they’re struggling too. “I think in Hollywood […] we show a lot of things on IG or social then you meet the person and you realize, ‘Oh man, it's all smoke and mirror.’ That happens a lot. I think we’re always trying to keep up with the Joneses and trying to portray these lifestyles,” shared Guillén. “The other day Jess sent me a picture of her daughter in the grass playing with a little Perrito, which is a the movie [Puss in Boots: The Last Wish] that I did. I like these little moments of seeing someone that I care about in their life and there's moments where I can peek in, even though I can't be there personally. It was nice to be allowed to be a fly on the wall because it reminds me that we're all human beings at the end of the day. We're just living in our best lives and that's what makes life worth living.”
Catch their episode of Lopez vs Lopez currently streaming on Peacock.
