The new show ¡Rob! has become an overnight success, with 13 million viewers after it premiered last month.
Fox News Latino spoke with one of the shows’ stars, Diana Maria Riva, about the show's first season and how being a Latina has shaped her acting career.
The CBS comedy centers around Rob, the title character, and his relationship with his new wife, Maggie, and her tight knit Mexican-American family.
The show is loosely based on Rob Schneider’s marriage to Patricia Azarcoya Arce, a TV producer from Mexico. In the show, Riva plays Rosa, the overprotective mother to Rob’s wife Maggie and spouse to Maggie’s outspoken father Fernando.
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Taking a break from television for a few years, Riva was happy to go back to the sitcom format and enjoys the theatrical element of shooting in front of a live audience.
While Riva won’t name her favorite co-star, she said she loves playing her character, Rosa.
“The luxury of television is you have time to grow with the character,” Riva said.
The actress loves that Rosa “is so vibrant and outspoken.”
"She’s not overbearing," she said. "She’s just right!”
Riva also loves getting to play wife to Cheech Marin’s character Fernando, promising that in coming episodes viewers viewers will “get to see the things that really make Fernando & Rosa a great team, they bicker just as strongly as they love.”
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For Riva, being a Latina is what gave her the opportunity to work in Hollywood.
It was her role in a play as a Latina nanny that landed her a contract with ABC about 17 years ago.
One of the reasons Riva says fans have embraced the show is that everyone can relate to whether they are Latino or not.
“After a couple of episodes, people could see it was a universal story," Riva said. "When you marry someone, you marry the family.”
However, what makes Rob different from the normal family dynamic driven sitcom is that it is told with a Latino sense of humor.
“Of course I feel Latinos have a very funny sense of humor and the way we deliver a story is comical,” Riva said.
While ¡Rob! has had a record number of viewers, it is still too early to tell if the show will be picked up for a second season. The sitcom airs every Thursday at 8:30/7:30 Central on CBS.
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