Television writer and producer Miranda Kwok wanted to see a different take on the classic antihero than the type of character we’ve become used to—which is to say one that is historically played by a white man. So she created The Cleaning Lady, the juicy Fox drama about an undocumented Filipino-Cambodian doctor-turned-service-worker who finds herself navigating the dark underbelly of Las Vegas after working for a crime syndicate to save her ailing son.
“We’ve seen crime dramas with other characters over and over again, but we’ve never seen these stories from the lens of these undocumented immigrants and Southeast Asian characters,” Kwok, who serves as a co-showrunner with Melissa Carter, tells The Daily Beast’s Obsessed. “We want to show characters that are fully fleshed out and multi-dimensional, and that we all have hopes, dreams, issues and challenges that we face—and the choices we’re forced to make when we’re put into these extreme circumstances.”
Much like its persistent protagonist, The Cleaning Lady—one of the few network shows to feature an Asian lead—feels like an underdog hit. The 10-episode first season averaged 3.1 million viewers per week, ranking as one of the biggest new broadcast dramas of the 2021-22 season; the pilot marked Fox’s highest-rated drama premiere in two years and, combined with multi-platform viewing, reached over 11 million viewers.
Equal parts crime thriller and family drama, the show stars Daredevil and The Defenders’ Élodie Yung as Thony De La Rosa, a whip-smart doctor who successfully performs a liver transplant in Mexico on her own son, Luca (Sebastien and Valentino LeSalle), after years of attempting to seek medical intervention in the U.S.
In the process, Thony becomes embroiled in a powerful crime ring in Las Vegas, where she meets Arman Morales (Adan Canto). He’s the syndicate’s brooding lieutenant, who hires her to clean up crime scenes and takes a vested interest in her life—and with whom she shares an undeniable attraction and connection. The problem is that Arman is already married to Nadia (Eva de Dominici), who makes her feelings about coming second to the “cleaning lady” in her husband’s eyes very clear.
Now the show, which airs on Monday night, is in its second season, proving the full potential of its promise of delivering a new kind of antihero. Whereas the first season saw Thony cleaning up scenes for the mob, the second often sees her cleaning up crimes of her own making. For instance, in last month’s explosive season premiere, which drew a total of 4.8 million viewers, Thony was forced to hunt down her estranged husband, Marco (Ivan Shaw), who threatened to take their son back to the Philippines after discovering her involvement with Arman.
During a heated familial confrontation at a motel, Thony witnesses the accidental murder of Marco at the hands of her nephew, Chris (Sean Lew), prompting her to use the tips and tricks that she learned from Arman to wipe away evidence and protect the rest of her family—especially her strong but sensitive sister-in-law, Fiona (Martha Millan). “We’re shifting from ‘anything a mother would do for her son’ to ‘everything that a parent would do for their family,’” Kwok says.
Spinning a web of lies in order to stay together is hardly a walk-in-the-park for the De La Rosa family. Consumed with guilt, Chris begins acting up, biking into oncoming traffic and vandalizing school property. After being blackmailed by the motel owner, who made copies of the security camera footage that ties Chris to the crime scene, Fiona knocks him unconscious and finds herself in over her head, so she calls Thony, who instinctively calls Arman to help put an end to their family’s latest threat.
“With Arman, we really wanted to show how Thony’s influence influenced him and vice versa,” Carter says, pointing to a scene where Thony threatens the motel owner in front of Arman. All of them must also deal with the ever-present threat of Garrett Miller (Oliver Hudson), an FBI agent who uses Thony as an informant.
Since the show’s inception, fans have been rooting for “Armony”—a portmanteau of Arman and Thony—to get together, especially after the two shared two hot-and-heavy kisses last season, and Kwok and Carter both admit the writers have been trying to strike the right balance between keeping them apart and giving the fans what they want. (Having suggestive lines, such as “I see you’ve learned a few things,” and silent looks is one way to keep up the sexual tension.)
That relationship, however, is complicated by the arrival of Robert Kamdar (Naveen Andrews), Nadia’s gregarious and “morally bankrupt” ex-lover who remains hellbent on driving a wedge between her and Arman.
“Robert is somebody who continues to respect Nadia and elevate her, and it’s not just for her beauty, but for her intellect and everything that she is, and it becomes harder and harder for Nadia to resist Robert. And then at the same time, Arman is caught between these two women that he loves, he cares for them both, and this obviously isn't a situation where they can continue the way it is,” says Kwok, who describes the interrelated relationships between Thony, Arman, Nadia and Robert as a dangerous “quadrangle.”
Although The Cleaning Lady attempts to shine a light on the plight of the undocumented, some might criticize the show for scripting characters from marginalized communities who consistently find themselves engaged in criminal activity. But Kwok counters that Asian characters should be allowed to represent the full spectrum of the human experience, in the same way that white characters are allowed to run the gamut from (anti)hero to villain.
In this case, while Thony ventures deeper into the criminal underworld, she is trying to offset anything bad she does, in the same vein as Robin Hood.
“Her motivation is, ‘I’m going to start a business to help my family, to help Fiona. We’re going to have a clinic in the back, we’re going to help other undocumented workers like us—people that don’t have insurance, people that are in need,’” Carter says. Considering the numerous roadblocks that she has faced in the American healthcare system, Kwok adds, Thony “becomes galvanized to help her community, to help other people who are undocumented, uninsured or impoverished to access basic health care and medicines that are required to stay alive.”
In doing so, the writers have been trying to keep Thony’s “moral center intact,” Carter says. “She was a surgeon in her home country. The hippocratic oath of ‘Do no harm’ is always her barometer … but the fun is watching that line that she draws in the sand move. Because regardless of what justifications you can make for being involved in crime, it will test her, it will test her family, and they have to pull together to protect each other. … I think all the great crime dramas have a character at the center of it who is justifying every choice they make. The audiences have to watch the characters and think, ‘What would it take for me to commit a crime? What would it take for me to cover up a crime?’”
For all the life-or-death stakes that come with a crime drama, the writers also wanted to explore the unique dynamics that exist within a matriarchal Southeast Asian family, with sisters-in-law (and best friends) Thony and Fiona essentially raising their three children under the same roof. That commitment to cultural authenticity was particularly important to Kwok and Carter from the outset, as they even changed Thony’s background to reflect Yung’s own Cambodian heritage.
In the second episode of this season, Marco and Fiona’s parents travel from the Philippines to the U.S. to attend Marco’s funeral, where they are dressed in traditional attire and observe specific cultural traditions and customs, including the mano po, that Fiona has not observed since immigrating more than 15 years ago. The hour also explores how, in many Asian cultures, sons and daughters are treated differently.
“There was a scene in episode 2 between Fiona and [her mother] Lola, and it was about how, as a daughter, she was treated poorly compared to Marco throughout her life,” Kwok says. “They both cried during and after the scene. It was very nuanced, but so real that it really touched them both.”
For all her selfless sacrifices for her children, the writers wanted to inject some love and levity into Fiona’s storyline this season. “We want to give her a little joy in her life and a little hope that she can enjoy herself, that she can start her own business, that she can maybe pursue and own her own home,” despite still being undocumented, Carter says. (Millan also reveals that she had her first-ever onscreen kiss, because she has often been reduced to playing “crack addicts” in the past.)
Earlier this year, during the show’s freshman run, Carter received some unexpected feedback from the husband of a former college classmate, who is a Republican and Trump supporter. Despite having taken a firm stand against undocumented immigration, he was moved to at least reconsider his stance after watching the show’s fifth episode, in which Thony and Fiona are sent to an I.C.E. detention center and the latter is nearly deported back to the Philippines. Yung, in fact, heard the same thing from one of her neighbors.
Kwok admits that she expected a little more pushback from conservative viewers, and says she was “grateful” for the overwhelmingly positive response—especially from migrants and domestic workers who have seldom seen parts of their day-to-day experiences reflected onscreen.
“The great gift of television and film is that you can put your audience in your characters’ shoes and really walk them through what it would feel like,” Carter says. “They’re afraid to go to the hospital, they’re afraid to even drive and get pulled over if they have a tail light out—all of the things that we all take for granted if you’re a citizen of this country.”
“The way you walk through the world as an undocumented immigrant is different because you don't have certain entitlements and privileges that everyone else does,” Kwok adds. “You are seen, perceived and forced to act differently, so I think it’s really great to be able to show an audience how people who are normally pushed into the shadows can actually find their strength. They are resourceful and intelligent.”
The Cleaning Lady, a show in which the lead character continues to use her sharp wit to dig herself (and her family) out of trouble, is doing just that. At a time when network TV might be having an identity crisis, making identity such an integral part of the fabric of the show makes The Cleaning Lady not just historic, but revolutionary—all while giving a new voice to people who have rarely seen themselves as the heroes of their own story.
