October 20th, 2021 
Jackson Murphy 
Jorge R. Gutierrez (El Tigre, The Book of Life) is the creator, writer and director of new nine-part Netflix event series Maya and the Three. It premieres this Friday October 22nd. His wife, Sandra Equihua, serves as Maya’s creative consultant. She and Gutierrez also voice two pivotal characters. They join me to discuss this bold, visually stunning project that’s been years in the making.
Jackson Murphy: Jorge, we met at Netflix Animation in July 2019. I was out there for San Diego Comic-Con and I stopped by. You were so excited to tell me about this show. Do you remember that day? We took a picture… there was all this incredible key art [up on the walls].
Jorge R. Gutierrez: I remember perfectly because at that time I think Netflix was starting to have a little bit of second doubts going, “Is this too crazy?” And I remember all you guys came in and I was like, “THIS IS GONNA BE AMAZING! YOU’RE ALL GONNA LOVE IT! YOUR EYES ARE GONNA EXPLODE!” And all the executives literally looked at you guys — the press — to see how you reacted and you all smiled and everybody nodded. And then when everybody left, I was like, “SEE! THEY LOVED IT! WE HAVE TO MAKE THIS!” So you, thankfully, you saved my show. Thank you, Jackson!
JM: WOW! I’m so honored. You are so welcome. It’s thrilling to hear that. As you were telling me some of the beats of the story, I went, “Yeah. I’m really interested in getting into this.” And I was watching some of the episodes, I was like, “That’s right! Jorge told me about this!” We had so much in between July 2019 and today. How does it feel that it’s finally here?
Sandra Equihua: It’s a dream. And nerve-wracking.
JG: Imagine being pregnant for three years. You just want the baby to come out!
SE: Yes!
JM: Sandra, [Maya is] only 15 years old. What makes her so special and what were your goals in what you wanted to achieve in terms of evolving her over the nine episodes?
SE: In a nutshell, we love that she’s a female leader… and she’s a Latino female leader. You don’t see a lot of those. And while we were doing our research with Jorge, we saw there were Mexican women that were… in history, but they weren’t really portrayed. The spotlight was always on the guys. We love that we decided to go in the direction of a heroine. She grows from being very uncertain of herself… She kind of knows what she wants and her parents are like, “What about diplomacy? Following in our footsteps?” And she decides to go with her heart in the end. She grows.
Jorge and Sandra
JG: The theme of the show is: “If it is to be, it’s up to me.” That became the thing that guided the show. And we kept saying Maya’s a rebel. When you meet her, she can fight. But she finds out what is worth fighting for. It’s a rebel who finds her cause.
JM: Jorge, did you know right away that you wanted to bring back some of your Book of Life stars, like Zoe Saldana, Diego Luna and Danny Trejo?
JG: Oh my God… I wrote all their names into the script. I remember pitching it to Zoe at the Book of Life premiere. She was pregnant and I was like, “ZOE! I’M MAKING THIS WARRIOR PRINCESS AND YOU’RE GONNA PLAY HER!” She looked…
SE: She went into labor. (laughs)
JG: Her mouth smiled but her eyes were… of horror. I wrote all the parts for them. I literally wrote them on Instagram and Facebook and Twitter and I would basically send them drawings and go, “Here’s what you’re gonna look like. I wrote this for you. You have to do it!” And to my complete shock, everybody came back.
SE: I have to say — not just because I’m his wife — but it’s really a pleasure working with him. And I hope that the feeling is mutual with these actors.
JM: I bet it is. Jorge, you had this concept in the back of your mind at the “Book of Life” premiere, which was seven years ago. How did it stay the same seven years later? How did it evolve seven years later?
JG: So back then, there was no Netflix Animation. And back then, it was supposed to be three movies. I originally conceived it as “The Lord of the Rings”. My Mesoamerican princess story. And I figured, “Hey, I’m a chubby guy with a beard. Peter Jackson was a chubby guy with a beard with Lord of the Rings. They’ll let me do that!” They did not let me do that. It took Netflix to become what it became and it took them asking me… this is a question I don’t know if I’ll ever get asked again… “Pitch us something you don’t think you can get made anywhere.” And I said, “I have this three movies in a row EPIC EPIC Mexican Lord of the Rings-type story.” And for some people who have seen it, I basically pitched them the ending. I always start with the end. Same thing with “Book of Life”. When people heard the ending, they would go, “Yeah, no one will let you do that.” But Netflix, to their credit, trusted and believed in it from the beginning and here we are. So I still can’t believe it.
JM: You both voice King and Queen Teca. Sandra and Jorge, what kind of work and what kind of fun was put into creating and voicing these characters?
JG: She designed the queen and I designed the king. I wrote these insane exchanges.
SE: Yeah, but while you were writing it I didn’t know that it was me! Jorge was like, “You know what? Usually I use you for scratch [dialogue].” So I come in and I do the scratch while we’re looking for the voice talent. Chapter 1 turned into Chapter 2. Chapter 2 turned into Chapter 3 and they kept using me for scratch. And Jorge was being very, very precautious about how certain lines were being read. And I was like, “When’s the actress coming? Bring her on.” Finally they ended with the series and I was like… “Eh… where’s the actress?” And Jorge was like…
JG: “The real actress is YOU.” (laughs)
SE: I was like, “JORGE!” I don’t like it. But all in all it was a lot of fun. We also did it in Spanish.
JG: It was amazing to see a character designed by her delivering lines from her and actual things she says to me in real life. It was surreal. We loved it.
JM: I love hearing that. One of my favorite elements of the show is that it has such a cinematic feel and look to it, especially with the lighting.
JG: From Day One, we treated it like a movie. We never spoke about it as a series. I’m a HUGE cinema lover. And obviously the geniuses at Tangent Animation love movies too. I was able to reference all the movies I love. Got really nerdy with lenses and how we shot things. I discovered a lot of the big movies in the history of film at home. I discovered The Good, The Bad and The Ugly and Seven Samurai — all these giant movies as a kid watching them on TV. So I always say movies premiere in the cinema but they live forever at home. So that’s how we approached it. And I love, love, love how other countries have done big, epic, sweeping movies.
SE: You’re a big lighting geek.
JG: A lot of cinematographers we love. We had a brilliant team in Canada. And we approached this, honestly, like a gigantic movie.
JM: And your statement about movies at home: that’s more important now than ever before. Sandra, what stands out to you about how the scenes are presented? The whole family can watch this but I noticed that kids will get the most out of *this* and adults will get the most out of *these* references and the action for teens and twenty year olds.
SE: We’re trying to make this project as universal as possible. And when we mean “universal”, we don’t [just] mean transcending culture. We’re also talking about age. It’s like a pinata of everything for everyone. We love that every episode is like a never-ending present. Each box contains so much. When you think it’s finished, there’s more in there. So you can go back to the episodes and find more things in there. If you’re a kindergartener and you missed it the first time, you can see it again and find more things that you like. It keeps going.
JG: It’s like a lasagna of film references.
SE: Layers and layers and layers.
JM: You’re making me and Garfield hungry.
JG & SE: (laugh) And hating Mondays!
JM: Jorge, your characters are always so complex-looking and the details you put into this are amazing. I look at them and I go, “Oh my gosh.” What excites you about giving yourself that challenge of making such complex-looking characters?
JG: If a character can look amazing and complicated and fun and funny or scary just standing there, then once they move, it’s even more. That’s how I approach it. These are sculptures that are gonna come alive.
JM: Wow. What do you think the approach is for people? Should they watch all nine [episodes] at once? Should they break it up into sets of three? What’s the vibe? What’s the recommendation?
JG: The recommendation from me is: we just cooked you the most delicious burrito you’ve ever tasted, and we hired a sushi chef to chop it up into nine rolls. You gotta eat ’em all. You gotta eat ’em all at once!
SE: We know people who have binged all nine of them and they survived, so they’re okay.
JG: (laughs)
JM: I think people will survive. (laughs) And the action sequences: I’m sure the difficulty level of putting them together was incredibly high because they were intricate. Could you feel that as you were making them?
JG: Yeah. I’m an action movie fan. So I love ’90s action movies from the U.S. And I love Hong Kong action movies. We are making gods fight. So they have to be spectacular and they have to build and they have to get crazier and crazier. And I read somewhere that you’re not a real director until you can make the audience cry, you can make the audience cheer and you can make the audience really enjoy a fight. I really took that to heart: “the fights in Maya… they gotta be little movies.” And that’s how we approached every one of them.
JM: What are “The Three” words you can best use to describe this experience overall?
JG: To me, it’s “glorious”, “death” and “sacrifice.”
SE: Ugh… “excruciating.”
JG & JM: (laugh)
JM: We’re going there to start. Okay.
JG: Hope it ends well! (laughs)
SE: “Happy.” And “heart-tugging.”
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