The new One Day at a Time on Netflix isn’t like reboots of Roseanne and Arrested Development, which reunite casts and recreate sets. Gloria Calderón Kellett’s version of One Day at a Time changes almost everything. Norman Lear’s original sitcom, which aired from 1975 until 1984, featured a white divorced mom, played by Bonnie Franklin, raising two daughters, played by Valerie Bertinelli and Mackenzie Phillips. The new version features a divorced mom, too, but this new one is a Cuban American, played by Justina Machado, who’s an Army veteran and raising and a daughter and a son, played by Isabella Gomez and Marcel Ruiz. Also prominent on the new show that wasn’t part of the original show is a live-in grandmother character, played by the inimitable Rita Moreno.

You might think that 95-year-old Lear would resist futzing with his original idea. But Gloria Calderón Kellett told Studio 360 (which along with being a public-radio show is now a Slate podcast), that the futzing was actually Lear’s idea. It turns out that Lear and his producing partner had seen a study about the rarity of Latinas on TV shows, especially single moms, and Lear happened to have a well-tested single-mom story that he was looking to reboot.

Here is Calderón Kellett telling Studio 360 how she got the show, which has been green-lit for a third season, and then citing some of the favorite TV moms who influenced her.

Gloria Calderón Kellett: I was leaving a spin class, and I got a phone call that Norman wanted to talk about One Day at a Time and remaking it with a Latina lead. And you know I really took the meeting honestly because I just wanted to meet Norman Lear.

He said, “If this were you, Gloria, and you were divorced tomorrow, what would that look like for you?” And I said well first of all my parents would live with me. I mean my parents are at my house every day right now. That’s the truth of my life. You know it’s something that in my own life my parents were working parents. I spent a lot of time with my grandmother, my mother’s mother, who picked me up from school. I was at their house until my parents got home from work. I ate every dinner at my grandmother’s house because she lived next door to us. It was such a huge part of my life being with my grandmother. When I told that to Norman, he was like, “Well, great, let’s do it.”

Rita’s character is really loosely based on my mother and grandmother and that type of fierce stunning hilarious dramatic woman.

Carol Brady, The Brady Bunch

Calderón Kellett: Carol just always looked amazing. Always had a smile on her face. Always had good advice and stern words but also really loved it enjoyed her kids and her husband.

Mrs. Brady really reminded me of my mom. She always looked amazing. My mother always looked amazing. Looks amazing, she’s still alive. She looks amazing all the time. Like I don’t know she wakes up super early or she’s just sort of genetically perfect. It’s probably the latter.

Elyse Keaton, Family Ties

Calderón Kellett: This was sort of the first time I saw friends’ moms represented on TV, like the Caucasian houses that I went to have playdates at. She just reminded me of these, you know, fun, young, excited moms who had a lot to say and were very very smart and political and had strong points of view, and I always really appreciated that. She had different points of view than her kids.

Like that’s dramatic. I love it! That’s a dramatic conversation that’s done with humor. She is imperfect and is able to admit that imperfection, which is also really huge.

Angela and Mona, Who’s the Boss

Calderón Kellett: Who’s the Boss was amazing because not only was Angela who was also a professional divorcee raising her son, but Mona who is this fabulous larger than life glamorous grandmother, much like my mother and my grandmother, was in the home. So I really saw my family through those women. They were tough, and they were beautiful, and they were funny and fierce.

Oh my god, oh man. There was a sexuality to Mona that Lydia certainly has too, that I think people don’t often write to that much anymore. These amazing sexy older women who really live in there their beauty and their sexuality but also are really well-rounded humans. And that’s not something that is often seen for actresses beyond a certain age. And you know Rita’s 86 years old and you can’t get sexier than Rita Moreno.

Clair Huxtable, The Cosby Show

Calderón Kellett: Clair Huxtable in The Cosby Show was a frickin’ lawyer, like a bad-ass lawyer she was a working mom and also an incredible and warm and supportive parent.

So god I love her. Amazing Phylicia Rashad. Oh my gosh. My mom was a working mom. And to be able to see that represented on TV and to also see that this woman was a working mom had a thriving career but was also a wonderful mom, was also there for her kids, was really transformative because not only were these people of color–which is also something that I had never seen before and that I self-identified with. They were affluent, they were loving, and it was it was really really amazing to be able to see that because my mom got a lot of flak.

Growing up in the ’70s and ’80s, it was you know that was still sort of frowned upon, women returning to the workplace, as crazy as that sounds. You know my mom, to her credit, I don’t know how she managed to do it but there’s not one performance or speech or anything that she ever missed. She found a way to leave work and then work late to cover it or something, so that she could be at everything. And I feel like that was represented in Clair Huxtable for me: this mom who my god was determined to have her own life and career but also be a wonderful mom to her kids.

I think the thing I want to say about motherhood on One Day at a Time, you know, is that I really relate to Penelope a lot of the way she thinks and feels about being a mother and having a mother around is reflected through my lens. It’s very complicated and it’s hard and it’s painful, and it’s beautiful, and it’s joyous. And It’s not easy to raise these kids and to have a sense of who you think they are–and then they turn into whoever they are.

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Gloria Calderón Kellett spoke with Studio 360 producer Zoë Saunders. To hear a full audio version, listen to this episode of Studio 360 below, where host Kurt Andersen introduces the story at the top of the show, and subscribe to the show on Apple podcasts.