When you're a starving artist, you make do. It didn't matter that I didn't know where my rent was coming from.

In TV, you're a 'writer for hire.' That means you're trying to guess what your boss wants and delivering that story. There's a lot of spitballing. The big thing is 'breaking story,' which means coming up with a story. You do it by episode and put it all up on a board.

I always was missing that female brown queer perspective, and I think in 'Vida' we have that. A lot of things I wanted to touch on and deal with, I get to do here.

I went in for a meeting with Marta Fernandez, and she said, 'We are looking for a female millennial show. Have you heard of the term 'chipster'?' And I was like, 'Of course - Chicana hipster.'

Most people who have grown up introverted in this very extroverted culture of ours have had painful experiences of feeling like they are out of step with what's expected of them. Parenting can pose unique challenges for introverted parents, who fear that their own painful experiences will be repeated in their children's lives.

My parents were/are straight-edge hippies. Mom roamed around gardening so we would have fresh food, and Dad was on wood-chopping duty to heat our passive solar home that they figured out how to design and build together. I was the kid with green peppers in my lunch, and I liked them!

There is no winner or loser - just one family, the U.M.P. The time for internal squabbles is behind us.

My mother's Maori, and my father's Australian. I take my strength from both my ancestors, and I'm really privileged.