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Gina Rodriguez Shares How New Netflix Role Shaped Her Impending Motherhood

On Netflix's Lost Ollie, premiering Aug. 24, Gina Rodriguez plays the role of a TV mom. In an exclusive chat with E! News, find out the way it's influenced her own parenting philosophy.

By Daniel Trainor Aug 24, 2022 2:30 PMTags
Watch: Gina Rodriguez Is Excited to Enter Motherhood

Gina Rodriguez knows a thing a two about being a mom—on TV, at least. 

The Jane the Virgin alum stars in Netflix's Lost Ollie, premiering Aug. 24, where she plays Momma—the mother of Billy (Kesler Talbot)—who experiences the many joys and pains of motherhood throughout the half-live action, half-computer animated series.

For Gina—who announced she is expecting her first baby with husband Joe LoCicero in July—it was a very serendipitous experience.

"We shot this in February 2021, so a little over a year-plus ago," Gina exclusively told E! News. "My husband and I were just starting to have conversations about being parents and getting into that space. To look back at being able to play a mother who was so loving and empathetic and kind and really wanted to create a safe space for her child's creativity, and inspire and ignite their creativity? I want to be just like that."

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2022 TV Premiere Dates

In Lost Ollie, Gina plays a mother in the middle of Kentucky who makes a point to incorporate her own heritage and background into her son's life. It got Gina thinking about how she'll do the same as her own family starts to grow.

"I have mixed cultures in my family and mixed religions," she explained. "There's Christianity, there's also Buddhism and there's also Judaism, and all of the different traditions that are held in those different religions. My eldest sister, who converted to Judaism and her husband who's Jewish, they do Shabbat. They really do it. No electronics for the weekend. All family time and all togetherness and the dinner."

Gina said she's looking forward to integrating all sorts of different aspects of religion and culture into her child's life—even ones that aren't expressly her own.

"We get to be a part of that. I didn't necessarily grow up with those traditions, and now to see them imprinted in my nieces and nephews lives," she continued, "and how incredibly it brings the family together. Me and my husband can really be influenced by that experience because we participate with them."

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While the idea of raising a multicultural family is thrilling—the struggle of raising a child in the age of TikTok and technology? Not so much.

"Growing up, we all had dinner together. We always had dinner together. Dinner time as our time," Gina explained. "I'm older, so we didn't have electronics. We didn't have cell phones at the dinner table. So how do we keep that going? How do we make it so that our children are excited to talk to us during dinner time and tell us what's going on in their life?"

While we don't claim to have any answers, Gina is meeting the challenge head on.

"How do we really imprint those traditions that I had as a child and that my partner had as a child, and that we're learning from my siblings who practice other religions?" she questioned. "How do we pull those all together and create our own special traditions with our family with something that really makes sense to me and my partner? That's kind of all the conversations we've been having. It's kinda cool."

All four episodes of Lost Ollie are available Aug. 24 on Netflix.

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