‘Lopez vs. Lopez’ Puts A Comedic Spin On The Father-Daughter Estrangement/Reconciliation Of George And Mayan Lopez

Mayan Lopez says that her life with her father has always been a bit of a competitive challenge. As an example, she points to a rare feat that she accomplished — a hole in one.

Mayan says that her dad, George, was trying to teach her to play golf when she was 11 years old and she was getting annoyed. “It was one of those moments where I was like, ‘Oh, yeah? You want to see how I can swing? Oh, I can show you how I can swing,’ and I just put all of my anger at him into the swing and I got a hole in one.”

Looking at her dad’s face in that moment, she says he was, ‘white as a ghost.’

“Even the other golfers [on the course] were like, ‘Did she just get a [hole in one’], and my dad’s [nodding, ‘yes]. It was wonderful,” says the younger Lopez.

George adds, “I screamed. You could hear me through the woods, like you see in the movies where all birds leave the trees, you know, all flying.”

Now the father-daughter duo have teamed up for their new series, Lopez vs. Lopez, a working‑class family comedy about disfunction, reconnection, and all the pain and joy resulting from that journey.

Mayan elaborates on the narrative saying, “My parents got divorced about ten years ago. There was a time where [my dad and I] didn’t speak and were estranged for about three years. The pandemic brought us back together.”

She says that she started making TikToks with her family to reconnect.

The videos were discovered by Debby Wolfe, and the series was born from that. Wolfe is now an executive producer/showrunner on Lopez vs. Lopez.

George, who headlined his own series, George Lopez, for six seasons in the early 2000’s, says, “To leave [television] for 15 years and to have Debby see Mayan do TikToks about the unfortunate break in our relationship [and] create a beautiful thing from something that was so painful and so much my fault is just a wonderful thing.”

Mayan adds, “I like to think of comedy as pain and time, and so now I feel like enough time has passed and we’re able to create laughter and beautiful stories.”

Evaluating his personal connections, George offers, “I used to give up on people, whether it was my fault or not. I would remove people from my life. I would just never see them again.”

But, he says, what he has with his daughter, “is the most valuable thing to me in my entire life.”

He says that in attempting this reconciliation, “It was very difficult to have to be honest with [myself] and know that whether it worked out or not, I was going to do something that was entirely new to me and was going to take me on a very painful journey.”

This is where the comedy part comes in, says George. “Laughter is the best medicine.”

The series, says Mayan, ‘is a gift of a lifetime — to be able to do this with my father,” explaining, “I’m playing a different version of myself and “Mayan [the character]” is teaching me things about my relationship with my dad. Now [he and I are] co-workers, and the bond and the love shows very clearly on-screen and it is just ‑‑ it’s a beautiful, beautiful thing.”

‘Lopez vs. Lopez’ airs Fridays at 8pm e/p on NBC, and is available for next-day streaming on peacock.