Cast of 'Primo' talks Hispanic representation, working with Shea Serrano at ATX TV Fest

Like many of the screenwriters scheduled to speak at this year’s event, San Antonio-born writer Shea Serrano did not make it to ATX Television Festival for the screening of his new series “Primo” due to the ongoing Writer’s Guild of America strike.

Primo follows the journey of 16-year-old Rafa (Ignacio Diaz-Silverio), his single mother Brea (Christina Vidal) and five boisterous uncles who ravage Brea’s kitchen and badger Rafa with unsolicited conflicting advice. The show, based on Serrano’s childhood, is set on the southside of San Antonio.

A small, but enthusiastic audience turned up to watch the pilot at Stateside at the Paramount at 10 a.m. Friday.  After the show, lead actors Vidal and Diaz-Silverio participated in a question and answer session with Rosy Cordero from Deadline.

Here are five things we learned about the show:

1. Working with Shea Serrano was a joyful experience

“As is evident by his massive and super ardent fan base online, he's just a super lovable guy. Like it's impossible to not fall in love with him when you meet him,”  Diaz-Silverio said.

“Shea was so generous. He was so encouraging," Vidal said.

2. Though the show is based on Serrano’s life, he gave the actors broad creative control

“He had a ton of input on the show. Like, you know, everything starts and ends with him,” Diaz-Silverio said. But Serrano never hovered over Diaz-Silverio’s shoulder giving line readings. “He was the complete diametric opposite of that,” Diaz-Silverio said.

When Serrano called Diaz-Silverio to let him know he got the part, Diaz-Silverio immediately began peppering the writer with questions about his life to get a read on the character. “And even with those initial questions, he was really clear about, like, 'You're not playing me, you're playing Rafa,'” Diaz-Silverio said.

3. The huge ensemble cast had a blast while filming

“It was so much fun,” Vidal said. Sometimes the cast would “get in a little bit of trouble” as they got off course cracking each other up, she said. “And we were just showing up to work every day just hanging out with our family, like just chilling.”

4. 'Primo' eschews stereotypes to provide important representation

“I've been covering entertainment for a good part of 20 years, and it's so nice to see a show that is not full of stereotypes about us,” Cordero said. “It’s just a family that's existing, that could really be any family.”

“The focus was the relationships and the family,” Vidal said. “And we just so happened to be Hispanic." Ethnicity was less important that experience. "It's just real life. It’s the person you work with, the person you went to school with,” she said.

“I don't think ‘Primo’ is a show about Hispanic people any more than, like, ‘It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia’ is a show about Irish people,” Diaz-Silverio said. It’s important in “the evolution of representation” to get to a point where “minorities can just exist on screen,” he said.

We're at “an important phase of our diversity, inclusion (process) where we are just normalizing,”  Cordero said. “We're just people living.”

“I think when we talk about representation, we give too much leeway for the focus to be on optics," Diaz-Silverio said. "I think when we focus on inclusion, representation takes care of itself.”

San Antonio gets a moment in the spotlight (sort of)

While the show is set in Serrano’s native San Antonio, the writer didn’t make the city a star of the show. 'Primo' was actually shot in Albuquerque and consequently, there are no shots of San Antonio landmarks like the Riverwalk or the Alamo. But there are hat tips to the Alamo City. Rafa has a Spurs jersey draped across his chair. His budding love interest is a military brat and, reflecting the city’s broad diversity, his mother Shea works at a Filipino grocery store.

This article originally appeared on Austin American-Statesman: Cast of Amazon Prime's 'Primo' talks Hispanic representation, family