Editor’s Note: The following interview contains major spoilers for Season 2, Episode 7 of The Cleaning Lady.With a second season well underway, Collider sat down with the showrunners ofThe Cleaning Lady,Melissa CarterandMiranda Kwok, to discuss some of the biggest twists so far.The Cleaning Ladycenters around Thony De La Rosa (Élodie Yung), a former surgeon from Manila who is trapped in Las Vegas as an undocumented immigrant after her visa expires. She becomes embroiled in a conflict with both the local mob and federal agents after meeting Arman Morales (Adan Canto), a gangster who agrees to protect Thony and her son in exchange for her cleaning up his crime scenes. On the other side, she is in a cautionary alliance with FBI agent Garrett Miller (Oliver Hudson), who is chasing after the mob and using Thony as an informant along the way.
Season 2 kicked off in a jaw-dropping manner when Marco (Ivan Shaw), Thony’s abusive husband, is accidentally killed by Chris (Sean Lew), Thony’s nephew and Fiona’s (Martha Millan) son. On top of that, Arman and his wife Nadia (Eva De Dominici) get involved with Nadia’s ex Robert Kamdar (Naveen Andrews), a dangerous local loan shark who becomes quite the thorn in their side. The season has taken twists and turns, with the most recent involving a sting gone wrong, ending in Arman being forced to kill Maya Campbell (Chelsea Frei) by order of Kamdar, lest Thony dies as well.
With so much to cover, we spoke with Carter and Kwok about how they prepped for the season’s main conflicts, Arman and Thony’s developing relationship, Garrett’s relationships with Thony and Maya, Chris’s struggle with the truth of the murder, and the arrival of JD (Ryan Sands), Fiona’s old flame and her daughter Jaz’s (Faith Bryant) father.
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Collider: I’m excited to talk to you guys about the season so far because it has felt totally insane. Was the plan always to link the stories between Marco’s death and Kamdar in some way? Was that the vision when you were going into it?
MELISSA CARTER: Well, not Marco’s death. We always intended that the money needed to bribe the judge to get Arman out of prison is how we always envisioned linking those two characters and those two worlds. That Nadia had this ex-boyfriend who now is the biggest loan shark in Las Vegas, who they’ve avoided not only because of personal reasons, because she used to be involved with him, but also because he’s so dangerous, that to take money from him really means you’re forever indebted to him and under his thumb so that was always the crossover there.
One thing I really love about Thony is that she, in a lot of ways, is always the most capable person in a room. Not only because she’s a surgeon, but she’s able to think on her feet and be able to not be completely ruled by her emotions. Is that something that comes from the writers' room or more from Élodie’s performance?
MIRANDA KWOK: It was something that was conceived right from the beginning, that this is somebody who defies all stereotypes. She is somebody who is going to face a lot of obstacles and challenges throughout her life. It is part of the immigrant story, people who are disregarded and marginalized, and she is somebody who is going to find her own power and come out on top. So that is something that was always an element of this character. And, you know, fortunately, we found Élodie who is fantastic, and she embodies a lot of the characteristics of Tony and how she was originally conceived, and of course, she has made the character her own. So it is an element both of somebody who was always meant to be y extremely intelligent, resourceful, and strong. Someone who is not going to take crap from anybody, who is going to find her own path in her own way. So that it is who she was always conceived to be and that Élodie has elevated in her own way.
Definitely. And I’m not afraid to say that I love the will-they-won’t-they thing going on with Arman and Thony. Even though they kiss before, it seems like Arman is not ready to accept these feelings until Nadia throws them in his face. Was the intention always to push them toward each other in a more romantic way, or did that come naturally through chemistry?
CARTER: No, we always intended to have them be this couple. I mean, right from the pilot, there’s this attraction just by the very fact that he allows her to live in this situation when she observes this mob hit. She should have been killed, but he has this soft spot for her not only because his mother was a cleaning lady, but there’s just that moment of connection when he defends her when Tarik (Deniz Akdeniz) throws a can that almost hits her head. He just instantly comes to her defense and there’s a moment of connection, of gratitude, that she shows him that he cannot kill her even when he should. So that one little decision that he makes to save her allows him to feel like a hero in her eyes like he does something good. He’s in a world where he makes lots of bad decisions, but by doing this one good turn for another person, he likes that feeling, and it becomes something that we play with as we arced out his character, that that one good deed really changes the course of his life.
And then he goes from I’m her savior to now, I’m her partner, and then now in Season 2 they’re basically on equal footing and so that kind of cooled down the romance a little bit and that they needed each other literally to survive in this season. But we wanted that simmering, that sexual tension, but that romantic tension, and also kind of a soul connection to continue. That’s always there in their relationship.
KWOK: The original concept, now that you ask, actually is that it was originally conceived as a love triangle between Thony, Arman, and Garrett, and that is an element that changed. So, we always wanted to tell the story that Tony is caught between the law and the mob, and that she’s balancing, she’s walking a tightrope of morality between these two worlds. In terms of chemistry, Thony and Arman’s chemistry really exploded, and that became more the relationship that we’re rooting for. Thony and Garrett have a different kind of chemistry that is much more of a camaraderie and a friendship because they are also very strong. And the actors themselves, Élodie, Adan, and Oliver, they all have very special relationships and bonds, but there was never that sexual chemistry between Tony and Garrett. So we didn’t play that.
That is something that has evolved from the original conception. But, of course, Thony is still caught between the mob and the Feds, and it is still these two men that both helped her in different ways, even though Garrett starts as an antagonist, they come to terms with each other, and they help each other in very different ways than Thony and Arman. The relationships are very different and yet very strong with each of these men.
Oh man, I am glad that you guys didn’t go in the love triangle direction just because love triangles are my nightmare. Speaking about Garrett, he’s easily one of those characters that I both love to hate and yet sometimes I feel like he has a point. But most of the time I’m not really sure whose side he’s on. Sometimes it feels like it’s whatever fits him the best, but it’s clear that Maya was sort of his Achilles heel. Can you tease how her death is going to impact him and how that’s gonna play out for the rest of the season?
CARTER: Yeah, he feels so much guilt about Maya in the fact that he took someone who was not in the criminal world, and he made her an informant because she was bartending at a place where she was able to bring back information about Cortez. But then the fact that he then stepped over the line, that he had an affair with her, that he had feelings for her, and then he lost her in this criminal world. She actually started dealing drugs for real. He bears that moral responsibility that he crossed a line that affected someone else’s life. And also we wanted it to feel like a cautionary tale of what he could be doing to Thony, that if he pushes her too far and pushes her deeper and deeper into crime, to bring back information, it’s that he — you hit the nail on the head.
It’s not that he’s out for himself, and he does what’s right for himself. He does what he thinks the ultimate goal is to bring down the bad guy, but he does it in such an unconventional, off-the-reservation way that it has all of these moral implications that affect other people’s lives and Maya is really the cautionary tale to that. So to tease out what ultimately happens to her, it’s that guilt that’s going to really bring him to a dark place and make him question everything and make him even more galvanized to go after the man that he holds responsible, which is Kamdar.
KWOK: Yeah, Garrett goes through an interesting arc, he starts off the series really believing that everything is black and white, everything is good or bad. You’re a good guy or a bad guy. And through his journey with both Thony and Maya, we see that change, and we see him realize, especially even through his own actions, that he’s somebody who doesn’t always do good things, even though he’s supposed to be the good guy. And he starts to realize there are many shades of grey, and that he’s a part of that, and Thony is a part of that. And in that cautionary tale, you know he lost Maya and because of that, he’s not going to want to lose Thony, and he is going to do everything he can to protect her, even though he is still putting her in a vulnerable position. He knows he is using her as an informant, which is something that is endangering her, but at the same time, he is in conflict because he does want to protect her.
Speaking about that scene with Maya in that final moment, I have to ask you about that dynamic between Thony and Arman in the car afterward. Where is Arman’s mindset after he has to, I’m assuming, shoot Maya? And what’s going on in their minds when they’re in that car together? How is that going to affect the rest of the season?
CARTER: Yeah, he is the one that pulls the trigger. But yeah, that moment in the car where she sees his humanity and sees how truly shaken he is. Even though he’s probably killed countless people as a criminal, this was taking the life of an innocent woman, of being forced to do it. Thony knows he did it to save her life, that it was a sadistic choice that Kamdar made him choose, but that it wasn’t an easy decision. And looking forward, this is that moral sacrifice that he had to make, both Thony and Arman are aware of this, and it’s a secret that they now have to keep from Garrett. So it has a lot of soapy ramifications, but I think it shows the audience something about Arman’s character, that we’ve seen him kill people and kill some people for Thony, and those were not really difficult decisions, they’re kind of part of the job description. But this was not an easy thing for him to do, he did not ever want to take an innocent person’s life.
KWOK Yeah, we wanted to show that killing is not easy. And Arman is somebody who didn’t want to necessarily go into crime, his father, both his parents, really resisted or tried to prevent him from doing that. He made the choice to do that and go into crime. But this is something that is not something he would have chosen, and it is obviously something that Kamdar is forcing upon him to crush his psyche. Because of that Arman also becomes more galvanized to take down Kamdar by any means, and throughout the season, he has not found the way to do that. And, he is going to find a way. We’re not sure if it’s going to work out, but he is going to start planning different ways of how to take him down now.
Ok, I’m excited about that! So just to switch it up a little, with Detective Flores poking into the business about Marco’s death, that has me nervous for Chris. But how precarious is that situation now that Garrett also knows the truth about who actually killed Marco?
CARTER: Yeah, we were actually going for something different from what would be more of a traditional TV choice of Garrett has this information and what is he going to do with it? Instead, [we chose to] show the more human, empathic side of Garrett, that having gone through what he went through where he killed Cortez when he was unarmed and Tony covered that up for him. He is also a character who understands that he’s made grave mistakes. He made that mistake with Maya. So when he finds out the truth, when Chris confesses what he did and that it was an accident, he does the human thing. For once, he doesn’t stand behind the shield, and instead, he has a very human reaction which is, it was an accident. It wasn’t your fault.
He realized that what Chris really needed to do was confess. In order for him to unload this burden that he’s been carrying, he just needed to tell someone the truth. So that’s how we decided to arc that character and that storyline out, instead of doing the traditional, you know, what is he going to do with this information? It’s like, yes, Garrett often seems out for himself, but when it really comes down to it, he is a good human being, and he does know that to do the right thing is not maybe to do the right thing by the law, but to do the right thing as a human being.
KWOK: The other thing that we wanted to really explore with that storyline is being an undocumented immigrant. Chris, Thony, and Fiona made choices about Marco’s death that other people might not have made, and they made those choices out of fear. They have no protections because they don’t have status. They don’t have any rights. So there’s this fear that the consequences of pushing Marco down the stairs were going to impact the family in different ways than another family who hadn’t would have dealt with it differently. Because of that, there were a lot of things that spiraled out of control. There’s one bad choice made after another, and how to protect the family after the motel manager comes after them. And, again, it leads to a crisis for Chris. We wanted to show a little bit of that mental health crisis and, again, being undocumented, isn’t able to talk to anyone. He’s not able to get the help that he needs.
What was really crushing him was holding on to that lie, and basically being forced to lie and hide that truth. That was what was eating him up. And so making that choice to go to the police was his cry for help, to reach out, to just say, “No, I just want to own up to it.” But then it’s like, “Well, then how is that gonna affect my entire family if I do?” So he pulls away, and so we wanted to show, as Melissa said, that different arc. What he needed was to actually purge his sins and stop lying, and that was going to be his path to healing.
I’m glad he got an opportunity to voice his feelings and Garrett made the human choice. I’m curious about Jaz’s father being back in the picture. I know he’s got a girlfriend, but it’s definitely clear that he and Fiona still have some sparks. There’s still some emotion there. How’s that going to affect the dynamic within that family?
CARTER: We want to show that Fiona is deserving of love and that even though he’s got a girlfriend maybe she won’t be hanging around, so I don’t want to give anything away. We just want to share an opportunity for Fiona to reframe the past. That JD lets her know that he didn’t have all the information. I can’t remember now what episodes these are in, so I may be giving things away. We wanted to show that when they were younger, they made decisions that didn’t ultimately lead to them being together. But now that he’s back, and he’s done with his tour in Afghanistan, there’s now hope for Fiona to really have true love and that’s what we want to just show. He’s a good dad. He’s been as present as he could be in Jaz’s life and now that he’s back, he doesn’t want to let this family go. This is a choice he’s making, and it provides a lot of new insight into Fiona’s past and the decisions that she had to make based on the fact that she was undocumented. She didn’t want any man to just marry her because she was undocumented. She has this pride and agency that, again, made her make some tough decisions. This is maybe a chance to recalibrate some of those past decisions.
KWOK: We really wanted to examine a story about an undocumented immigrant and how she dealt with these relationships in her life. And we didn’t want to fall into tropes. Because there’s, I think, an assumption that there are a lot of undocumented immigrants who will just marry for the sake of a green card, and we want to tell that story. And so what we chose was that Fiona didn’t tell him, she didn’t want to force his hand, either way, to tell him that she was in this predicament so that he would marry her just for that purpose. Because of that, she held back a lot. She held back even emotionally and because of that they kind of just missed each other, and had they communicated how they felt they would probably have ended up together. And he voices that as well, but she didn’t give him the opportunity to choose, and so now they’re in a place where they are being open and honest with each other.
But what’s interesting now is that there’s a different obstacle in their way, which is Thony and her life of crime. So, we also really wanted to show that, yes, JD is actually a good guy, and he’s the voice of reason on this show. He is pointing out that all these choices that Thony is making are endangering the family, and that there are choices to be made. Fiona has to make choices for her family as well. So, he actually presents conflict in our family, but in a good way, in a way that actually gets us to look at the choices that we’re making. And obviously, there will be consequences, there will be severe consequences by the end of the season. So that’s something that we’re going to tackle as well.
