One Day At A Time
Season 3 SABC3 (*193) 21:00 Comedy
The theme tune of rebooted comedy series One Day At A Time is a lighthearted, upbeat song that leads fans into the lives of the Cuban-American Alvarez family headed by Penelope Alvarez (Justina Machado), a United States Army nurse veteran and mother of two teens. It’s the perfect formula for a sitcom, but it throws viewers for loop when it brings the laughs while also tackling current social issues like mental illness, racism, immigration and homophobia – like when Penelope is educated on gender identity pronouns by her daughter Elena (Isabella Gomez). Justina praised the efforts of the show’s writers, saying that “we have LGBTQ writers on our staff who sat down with me and explained it. It’s interesting.
Our generation is open to learning new things and the show allows us to represent these issues.”
The 49-year-old Justina had a traditional Quinceañera, which is a celebration of a girl’s 15th birthday. She threw the party herself after her parents refused as a result of her constant butting heads with them. “I went and asked everybody in my family for money. My cousin made my dress and I organised it myself,” she recalls. Although her character is CubanAmerican, Justina is a US citizen with Puerto Rican parents.
Justina has been dancing for over 40 years and earned fourth spot on season 29 of reality dance show Dancing With The Stars in 2020.
She made her Broadway debut in 2009 as Daniela in Lin-Manuel Miranda’s musical In The Heights. Justina hates improvisation and refuses to change her scripts unless the writers tell her to.