It's Estet Herndon, host of The Runup from The New York Times.
For over a year, we've been traveling the country.
We're talking to people in Wisconsin today about how they're feeling about the election.
We're talking to people in Michigan specifically because it matters so much.
We are in the answer.
Talking to voters about the issues that matter most to them.
Listen to The Runup wherever you get your podcasts.
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Is this true? It is, thank goodness.
Love now and all. Did you fall in love last night?
I fell in love. Love was stronger than anything else.
You feel the love? Love.
And I love you more than anything.
There's still love.
Love. From The New York Times, I'm Anna Martin.
This is Modern Love.
Every week, we bring you stories and conversations inspired by the Modern Love column.
We talk about love, lust, heartbreak, and all the messiness of relationships.
And today, I'm talking to actress and television writer Mayan Lopez.
Most of Mayan's life has happened on TV.
Her dad is the comedian, George Lopez, and when Mayan was a kid, he had a sitcom based on their family.
George played the goofy TV dad.
I lost every privilege except breathing.
You're never leaving this house!
I have to go to school!
Not anymore! We're homeschooling you from now on.
Whatever we don't know, you don't know.
When did the Korean War start?
I don't know it, neither do you!
Then, Mayan's parents went through a very messy, very public divorce.
Another family might have been permanently shattered.
But more than a decade later, Mayan and her dad came back together to turn their family drama into the thing they know best, a sitcom.
Trauma number one. The time nobody showed up to drive me home, and I was left at Ross for five hours.
On the show, called Lopez vs.
Lopez, they explore their father -daughter relationship.
But from a safe emotional distance, and with lots of jokes to keep it light.
I never told you this, but I'm so happy that I had dug you out of the lost and found out Walmart 35 years ago.
Today, I talk with Mayan about the real, unfiltered story behind Lopez vs.
Lopez, and she tells me how, long after their infamous divorce, her parents' relationship took an unexpected turn.
Plus, Mayan shares a modern love essay with an unexpected turn of its own.
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Oh, thank you so much, Anna, for having me.
I'm very excited to be here.
So can we talk about the story behind the show that's incredibly meta, is it not?
Oh, yeah. I think, you know what's so funny is that I even stumped my psychiatrist the other day.
No. Because he was like, I have never worked with someone in 40 years of psychiatry that goes to work with a person that traumatized her playing a version of herself and a version with of her father almost reenacting, you know, a fictionalized version of their relationship.
See, that's a Russian doll.
That's really a Russian doll.
It's funny because I always joke that I personally have a master's degree in my parents' divorce because I've just talked about it so much.
Well, I definitely want to hear more about that degree.
But first, take me back to the pre -divorce days in your family.
What was your dynamic?
I mean, obviously your dad is a comedian.
Was there a lot of humor in the house?
Oh, constantly. You know, my mother is hilarious in her own right very differently than my dad.
And, you know, I think being raised by a stand -up comedian is a very interesting and definitely unique childhood because we would communicate through humor.
Like we used to do little bits as a family.
If we saw like a woman going down with heels down the street, we would always do like, like, we would, you know, do little sound effects to things like that.
But also very similar to the story that I'm going to be reading later, there was no conscious problems in the family.
My parents were affectionate with one another, and I didn't see problems.
Were there moments where you really remember seeing that love between them?
Yeah, I think, you know, my mom was just always so incredibly supportive of him.
My mother donated a kidney to my dad.
How old were you when that happened?
I was eight years old.
Eight. Gotcha. And I think almost at that age, I didn't really understand that both my parents were going to be going into surgery and how, you know, big it was.
They actually like wrote and illustrated a little like book for me where there were stick figures and they drew a little kidney and they were like, catch, you know, mommy's gonna give, you know, daddy, a throwing a kidney.
And it went successfully.
It was actually a miracle because it was a one in three million chance that they were going to be a match, let alone a hundred percent match, which is what they ended up being.
You know, it's a gift.
And it's the greatest, biggest gift I think you could give someone is the gift of life.
And my mom says that if anything, if that was the purpose of their marriage, you know, she would do it over again.
So that was also a part of the divorce that made it harder because, you know, still, still in 2024, I'll get things where your mom should have kept the kidney or gotten the kidney back in the divorce, but it was her husband.
It was the father of her child.
She was, you know, of course she would want to.
I mean, I want to talk a little bit more about the divorce and your experience of it.
Can you tell me what happened?
Basically, my dad was cheating on my mom with prostitutes for three years.
And one of those women, I'll never read the article, but it was in the National Enquirer and leaked text messages.
It was everywhere. And I had no idea.
And that is so, so, so hard.
It was, the rug got pulled from under me.
You know, as kids are perceptive, parents maybe like to think that they are hiding things and that the kids don't sense that energy, but you do.
But when the article broke, it was, you know, the floodgates kind of opened.
I remember that day specifically because my mom was upstairs the entire day.
And I could feel that something was wrong.
But I came home from the school, I did my homework.
And then later that night, I went to the living room and my therapist was on one couch and my two parents were on the other.
And they told me to sit down and, you know, my mom said that we are getting a divorce.
And then to my dad, he's like, you had to tell her the reason why.
And I completely blacked out from just the rush of emotions.
And in my head, it's so interesting because I remember I was convinced that I was cussing him out.
