Guerrero’s community rallied around her, and she was taken in by the family of a friend from school. “She always wanted to be really good because she was terrified that someone would come and take her," Snyder Urman said. "So she’s telling me this story right as we started on Jane and I was like, That has to be in the fabric of our family and our community. When you hear the actual stories, it changes how you view the world.”

When she was developing Jane the Virgin, which is now in its second season on The CW, Snyder Urman didn’t actively set out to create a show that leaned heavily on social commentary — after all, Jane the Virgin was based on a Venezuelan soap opera. In her adaptation, she kept the family Venezuelan as an homage to the original series, and she quickly realized the larger opportunity a show about a three generations of tight-knit Latina women afforded: She had an immediate vessel through which to tell, and personalize, this wide-ranging immigration storyline. “We've talked about immigration through such a warm character that I think [it] makes the political really personal,” she said of Alba. “People will be like, ‘Why wouldn't you want Alba to be a citizen if she wants to be?’"

For Coll, who is Puerto Rican, playing Alba goes beyond professional accomplishment. It’s a source of personal pride as well. “It is very profound what Jennie and all the writers are doing with our family," she told BuzzFeed News in a phone interview. "It's very important to me as a Hispanic actor that we are depicted as human beings in a human relationship with each other, because usually it's a stereotype of an overly religious mother or grandmother with the easygoing daughter. But here, Jennie has created a family unit which is a universal unit. You seldom see that on TV for Hispanic characters, and I think that's what people are reacting to.”

To ensure the stories Jane planned to tell were as authentic as possible, Snyder Urman very intentionally filled her writers room with people who have diverse backgrounds, including some who have gone through the green card process. That was particularly important seeing as the Villanuevas's legal journey remained an important through line on the show — culminating in a beautiful moment in Season 2 when Alba was granted her green card.



“She really listens, man,” Jane’s titular star Gina Rodriguez said of Snyder Urman in a phone interview with BuzzFeed News. “She listens to real-life experiences and pulls from all these beautiful people she loves and admires. … She listens to the things we want to be a part of and she finds a way to bring them into the art because the fusing of art and social responsibility is the most effective way to change a culture for the better. She's a socially responsible artist, and I freakin’ love it.”