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Google PlayMaking a name for yourself when George Lopez is your father can’t be easy, but Mayan Lopez is making it happen.
The 26-year-old is starring in the new sitcom Lopez vs. Lopez alongside the popular comedian. The NBC comedy is premiering on Nov. 4, and it is inspired by the strained relationship they had in real life. They will play a once-estranged father and daughter who are navigating dysfunction and generational traumas, as they attempt to reconnect when he comes back into her life.
Lopez says that she wasn’t on speaking terms with her famous dad just a couple of years ago. Now they are using the sitcom as a vessel to iron out their personal issues with the world as their witness. “Two years ago we weren’t truly speaking and now we’re having these conversations that we would’ve had in private, but we’re putting them on the screen,” Lopez tells Complex. “We know that this is our cause, our relationship represents so many and it’s bigger than ourselves.”
The George Lopez show premiered on ABC in March 2002 and aired for six seasons. The sitcom was about a Mexican-American dad raising his family in Los Angeles. The show went into syndication on Nick at Nite in 2007 and had an almost 13-year run on the network, gaining even more fans than when it originally aired. The new NBC sitcom will follow a similar format; it is a situational comedy covering familial topics but will have a slightly different premise.
Lopez vs. Lopez centers around Mayan who works at a veterinary clinic and has a white partner named Quinten (Matt Shively) and they live in her late grandmother’s home. The couple share a son named Chance, played by Brice Gonzalez. The 7-year-old social media star is known for making hilarious lip-sync videos with his dad Randy as the EnkyBoys. Lopez and the show’s showrunner Debby Wolfe discovered Gonzalez’s videos on TikTok and knew right away they wanted him for the role.
Lopez vs. Lopez is not a reboot by any means. But the actress does promise that fans of the OG George Lopez show will get their necessary dose of nostalgia here, too (including some special appearances from the original cast). Complex hopped on a call with Mayan Lopez to chat about healing her relationship with her dad in front of a live audience, representing Latinas on TV, the cast, and more. Check our conversation, edited for length and clarity, below.
