Every week,CBSSuperior Donutsuses the setting of a Chicago donut shop to tackle various issues in American life.
EW spoke with Guerrero about developing the episode and her experience with the U.S. immigration system.
ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: How did this episode come about?
Credit: Monty Brinton/CBS
Before I even came on, Bob Daily mentioned that immigration was something they wanted to discuss as well.
I was very involved in the episode.
I mean, how do you find the humor in this?
They take someone whos been here their entire lives and send them to somewhere they dont know.
Where theres sorrow and conflict, it’s possible for you to find laughter and humor.
Thats what we tried to do while tackling a difficult subject.
Thats what we do on every show.
Americans are either divided on immigration or dont know anything about it.
I had to really let some things go and compromise on what I wanted to convey.
Yeah no, I was happy about that too.
It goes to show you how silly that character is.
Do you encounter that divide in real life when you talk about immigration?
Thats only because I feel like people really dont understand the immigration system and how broken it is.
Theres a scene where my character says, Hey, there is no back of the line.
If you knew where it was, hey tell me and Id be right behind it.
Arthur tries to touch on it by saying were all immigrants, the whole idea of bootstrapping.
But who had boots to bootstrap, and who didnt?
I was so glad we were able to touch on that.
But your family got deported years ago, when you were 14.
Its the same, its just that people are talking about it more.
DACA was seemingly this break from deportation for young people, and now thats being taken away ruthlessly.
Now people clearly dont know where to turn, because theres no protection.
Theres now a huge threat of mass deportations that we did not have before.
You were talking about the bootstrap mentality, and DACA was the embodiment of that.
Now that its been taken away, its really heightened the contrasts.These kids were vetted.
The program did exactly what it set out to do.
With this new administration, thats been taken away because of this whole immigrants taking your jobs theory.
But we really didnt get into that in the episode.
We didnt have time to get into DACA.
That was another thing.
The story was about the bakery getting raided and all this other stuff.
But there wasnt enough time to get in the whole explanation of what DACA is.
What do you hope viewers take away from this episode?
I hope people are able to put themselves in someone elses shoes and empathize with their situation.
The point is to see someone elses life for a second.
Maybe theyll start to see the value of comprehensive immigration reform, like Sofia does.
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