With Love, a new holiday-themed series from Amazon premieres its 5-episode first season on December 17. The comedy follows the Diaz family over the course of various celebrations and charts their romances and relationships. Created by Gloria Calderón Kellett, who turned the recent One Day At A Time reboot into a love letter to Latino families, the show starts on Nochebuena (Christmas Eve) as the Diaz siblings prepare very different romantic revelations for their parents.
Lily (Emeraude Toubia, Shadowhunters) has just broken up with her perfect-on-paper boyfriend while Jorge Jr. (Mark Indelicato, Dead of Summer) is about to introduce his new boyfriend Henry (Vincent Rodriguez III, Crazy Ex-Girlfriend) to the family. But while they are each sure of their choices, neither one feels the romance in their lives can compare to the seemingly perfect relationship their parents (played by Constance Marie and Benito Martinez) have.
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Rodriguez and Indelicato spoke to Screen Rant about the joy of portraying a healthy relationship between two cis men onscreen, and how their respective backgrounds formed a unique blend for the story.
Screen Rant: I love that we start in media res, if you will. You guys have already met when we meet you. What can you tell us about your dynamic?
Mark Indelicato: Our dynamic seems pretty picture-perfect, from the jump. I think that the only trepidation that Jorge has is – we start around Nochebuena on Christmas, and introducing any significant other to your family – especially when you’re very close to your family and on a holiday – is a very stressful situation.
We meet Jorge in his relationship with Henry in a very stressful time, but that’s not really indicative of what their relationship is. They’re very secure in their relationship. Despite the ebbs and flows of that throughout the season, they really do stay strong in their relationship.
They have a very healthy relationship in a lot of ways, and I think that is very lovely to see – especially with cis gay relationship. A lot of the stigma around cis gay men is that they’re extremely promiscuous, especially the representation is that we’re very promiscuous and cannot really be monogamous. And I think that Henry and Jorge are very much subverting that narrative, in that we are extremely monogamous and are very much in love and are representing many cis gay couples that are very much in love and monogamous.
Vincent Rodriguez III: Hashtag couple goals is essentially what Mark is saying. Jorge and Henry, couple goals.
You guys are in a loving relationship, and Jorge’s family is a very loving family. And yet, they are also a lot. What is that like for Henry?
Vincent Rodriguez III: I think Henry’s used to it because he comes from a big Filipino family. But Henry is also bisexual, and that is a stigma within the Filipino community. Obviously, a lot of progress has been made, and we’ve come a long way. But that human curiosity isn’t always there, because there’s a lot of fear, and there’s a lot of ties to religion and politics and history that fuel the Filipino culture – or any culture, for that matter.
To see it depicted in this way, how Gloria Calderón Kellett has framed, it is really refreshing. And I think the audience is going to be so blown away by how much they’ll feel actually represented no matter what color your skin is, or your background is – even though our show is very diverse. My character, Henry Cruz, being Filipino and having his background, and coming at it from where he’s at in his life… I just kept thinking to myself, “There’s an opportunity here.” We can break like Mark was saying, this narrative and these tropes of what typical homosexual couples look like.
What if these two men were very different, and they were together, and they come from these different backgrounds that are similar but different enough? These couples exist out in the world, but we haven’t seen them on screen in successful relationships that are for the most part trauma-free, but not without their differences and their challenges. And I think it’s one of the beautiful things about our characters – my character Henry being with Mark’s character Jorge: they love each other so much, and they have this way of just being unapologetically themselves.
Mark, you said that earlier, and I think that’s one of the root cores of their relationship. It’s this unconditional love; it’s acceptance of one another, but it starts with themselves. And I think that’s a really important aspect that Gloria wrote in, and that Mark and I got to bring to these characters. How often do we get to see that? How often do we get to see these kinds of characters have this quality of a relationship? I think that’s a beautiful thing to see, and really impactful right now – especially today.
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All 5 episodes of With Love premiere December 17 on Prime Video.
