With The Fosters, ABC Family’s new one-hour dramedy set to premiere this month, the network is taking a gamble on a show filled with relative up-and-comers, produced by Jennifer Lopez, which features a bi-racial lesbian couple raising a gaggle of children both adopted and not. ABC and parent company Disney are clearly interested in portraying the ever-evolving ‘American family’, which of course can take on many shapes, forms and sizes. “We are all learning as we go,” says star Teri Polo of the show’s relatively novel content. “We all feel very empowered with what we’re learning on this set.” But one thing is clear for her: “This show should have been on the air ten years ago.” How right she is.
Alongside Polo’s cop-mom hyphenate Stef Foster, we have In Treatment’s Sherri Saum as her academic Latina wife Lena, and then, of course are their children. Wizards of Waverly Place’s Jake T. Austin along with Cierra Ramirez, fresh from the freshly cancelled Secret Life of the American Teenager, play twins Mariana and Jesus on the show, and Cierra in particular is thrilled to remain within ABC Family’s…family. According to the adorable young actress, it was a perfectly seamless transition. “I found out the day I auditioned for [The Fosters] that The Secret Life wasn’t going to get picked up for any more episodes,” she recalls. “I had just got done being a pregnant teenager!”
“It read like a movie,” Ramirez elaborates, discussing the Fosters script and what initially drew her to the show. “It deals with issues that aren’t really on television right now.” Jake agrees, going on to discuss the particular challenges that lie in Jesus’s path. “He’s very reflective [sic] of the everyday teenager and some of their problems…The show picks up at a time when everyone is trying to find themselves, in the midst of a lot of turmoil.”
Cutie David Lambert plays the twins’ musically gifted older brother Brandon, the only biological child in the Fosters’ household, while Aussie belle Maia Mitchell is newcomer Callie, the lost foster child who may or may not end up as a permanent addition to the Foster clan.
As with anything new and different, the show has already met with a bit of flack, but this has only reinforced the cast’s resolve. So far, the only feathers that have really been ruffled are those of the right wing group “One Million Moms”, which tried to boycott the show via Twitter for its gay content. This minor hiccup didn’t faze anyone though; many from the cast reiterate the point that One Million Moms only has about 74 twitter followers. Cierra sums it up perfectly: “Haters are motivators! If people aren’t talking about it, then you’re doing something wrong.”
The Fosters premieres Monday June 3 on ABC Family.
—DH