Exclusive Interview: Creator Miranda Kwok Discusses The Cleaning Lady

Canadian-American screenwriter, actress, and producer Miranda Kwok has emerged as one of the voices of her generation. She’s brought diverse and inclusive narratives in front of—and behind—the camera with past credits including Spartacus, The 100, and more.

Her latest project, The Cleaning Lady, became Fox’s highest-rated new drama in two years. The must-see series follows a whip-smart Cambodian doctor who comes to the U.S. for a medical treatment to save her son, but when the system fails and pushes her into hiding, she uses her cunning and intelligence to fight back, breaking the law for all the right reasons.

Pop Culturalist was lucky enough to speak with Miranda about her illustrious career, The Cleaning Lady, and bringing marginalized voices to network television.

PC: How did you discover your passion for storytelling?
Miranda: Oh, wow. That’s going way back. I actually went to a school for the arts. I started as an artist. I was good at drawing and painting. My teacher said I should audition for what was Canada’s first school for the arts: Claude Watson. It ended up being this full day of auditions where you had to excel at three out of the four arts. I’m Asian, so I played the piano. [laughs] I managed to get into this school. All my friends were drama majors. I was really inspired by storytelling, being immersed in a story/journey, and being able to learn something from that. That was the very, very beginning of it. After I went to the art school, my parents were like, “Well, that was all fun and good. When are you going to get serious?”

I thought I would become a psychiatrist. I started counseling on a rape crisis line and also did some work with women’s shelters. There’s such a need there in terms of helping people. But at the same time, I really missed the arts, and while I realized that I could try to counsel people, it was also very difficult work. What I realized is that when you have a story that someone can follow and be immersed in, sometimes it’s easier to get something across. There are a lot of people who can be really closed off in their own lives, but they can sit in a dark movie theater and ball their eyes out because the story has impacted them and moved them.

When I came to the realization that you can affect someone and show them how to find their strength and how to navigate a situation, that really drew me to writing and storytelling. It’s important to tell stories that have an impact on people’s lives.

PC: Who or what has had the biggest influence on your career?
Miranda: There have been a lot of influences along the way. I started my career as an actor. There weren’t a lot of roles, right? There were not a lot of roles for Asians and women. I was interested in telling stories that actually mattered to me and that I cared about. I wanted to tell stories that had significance. I wanted to delve in and change the narrative. What’s really exciting about The Cleaning Lady is finally being able to put a lot of marginalized voices at the forefront of a show and really delve into those different perspectives that we haven’t seen. That was one of the inspirations and one of the things that drove me.

PC: You’ve had a lot of success throughout your career. When you look back, is there a moment that stands out?
Miranda: I worked for four seasons on a show called The 100 on the CW network, which was also produced by Warner Brothers. That whole experience was fantastic. It was about female empowerment and had a lot of really wonderful multidimensional female characters and leads. That was a positive experience. But after the third year, my contract was up. We weren’t sure if the show was going to get renewed. I went out for staffing. I was offered another job. I went to tell the showrunner of The 100 and he was like, “Whoa. I want you back.” The number two was like, “Well, we don’t know if we’re getting picked up, we can’t hold her.”

He was like, “Let me see what I can do.” I had no idea what they were going to come up with. Warner Brothers called to offer a blind script deal. They said, “We want you back on The 100 if it comes back.” In the meantime, they were going to give me a development deal as long as I said yes to coming back. Of course, I said, “Yes.” That was an amazing moment for me as a writer, professionally, to be offered that because they wanted to keep me on the show. They respected me and my work. Warner Brothers wanted to continue to develop with me. That was an amazing step in my career. I have so much gratitude for Warner Brothers—also Jason Rothenberg, who brought me on The 100, as well.

PC: Your new series, The Cleaning Lady, became Fox’s highest-rated new drama in two years, which is a testament to all the hard work you put in, the cast and the crew, and the fact that audiences want these types of stories. Many of your leads, and yourself included, have talked about the fact that roles and stories like this did not exist in the past. As a creator and writer, what has your experience been like in the industry? When did you start noticing that shift?
Miranda: I have been pitching a few different projects with Asian leads for a while now. I have definitely noticed a shift. Even back in 2014, I was pitching a project called Snakehead, which is inspired by a real-life person, Sister Ping, who was a woman born in communist China, completely uneducated, a mother of four. She became the biggest immigrant smuggler in history. She evaded the authorities for twenty years on six different continents. I had Michelle Yeoh attached to lead. I had Oliver Stone attached to direct. That project got to the script level but didn’t go further than that. It was a little before its time. Now a few years later, after the success of Crazy Rich Asians, I think people’s perspectives have broadened and we can see that there is an appetite and an audience out there.

I do feel that with The Cleaning Lady. I struck at a time when things have opened up. I got really lucky because there are a lot of great stories. There are a lot of people who have been pitching great stories. I feel really fortunate that I had the opportunity to create The Cleaning Lady in this climate. I also have to give credit to Warner Brothers. Because initially what inspired me to adapt this particular project was that I wanted to create a show with an unexpected hero, a show that was all about female empowerment, and a show that would have a Southeast Asian lead. They completely embraced that. It’s never been done, especially on network television—to have a Southeast Asian lead.

I developed the project with Warner Brothers for five months before we pitched it. They actually suggested pitching it to network instead of pitching to cable and streaming first (because pitching broadcast actually usually comes first) because there is a greater appetite for diverse stories right now. I said, “Okay, well, I don’t want to change too much about the actual story because there is so much about this that is meaningful to me. So I don’t want to change too many elements, but sure, I’ll pitch it to network.” Fox is actually the first place that we pitched to and they picked it up.

PC: I wanted to talk to you about the casting process. What was that like? Because every character feels perfectly cast. What was the moment when you knew you found your Thony and Fiona?
Miranda: Casting was a challenge for sure, especially because there haven’t been a lot of Southeast Asian leads and that scares people when you’re bringing on somebody who doesn’t have that kind of experience. It was a journey to find all of our actors. I will say, when Fox picked up this show to pilot two years ago, right before the pandemic, we were actually the first drama picked up by Fox. They said to us, “We recognize that we will probably have to find two relative unknowns or lesser-known talents.” We were so excited for the opportunity to put new voices on the screen. They recognized that it would be a challenge and embraced that challenge. We actually did casting out of LA, New York, Toronto, Vancouver, Australia, and the UK.

We cast a wide net. There were times when people suggested that we broaden the search beyond Asian actors. At that moment, I was like, “No, that’s not happening.” I actually did a deep dive into the internet to say, “Here are a bunch of Asian and half-Asian women that we still haven’t seen. Élodie [Yung] actually was at the top of that list. I sent that to casting. She auditioned and blew everyone away. As you can see, she’s immensely talented. She’s so authentic. She’s so real. She brings so much of herself to the role, which is this very intelligent, strong, resilient woman who has so much inner strength. She doesn’t even have to say a word, yet she speaks so much.

When we found her, we knew she was the one. For Martha [Millan], we did a lot of casting as well. Élodie was kind enough to offer to do chemistry reads with our final choices. It was over Zoom. We saw this instant chemistry. Élodie was in LA. Martha was in New York. They were on a Zoom and yet when they spoke to each other we could feel this instant bond between them. Right after that, Élodie called all of us to say, “It’s Martha, right? It has to be Martha. I love Martha. It has to be Martha.” We were like, “Okay, we have to go through the process. We love her too.” Of course, everyone fell in love with Martha. She’s so fantastic. I really love that this has been a vehicle for both of them to shine.

PC: They definitely do. You shared on social media how the cast and crew have come together to create little nuances to their characters. That brings that authenticity across the screen. How did you create that environment on set where everyone felt open to collaborate?
Miranda: Absolutely. Everyone has brought things. Even before we got to set, we sat down with all of our actors to talk about their characters. Adan Canto grew up on the border of Mexico. He lived in Mexico and went to school in the U.S. It was easier at the time to cross the border. But he has never been able to sink into a character that was from Northern Mexico before. He shared his experiences and brought a lot to the table.

PC: What I really appreciate about this show is that it highlights all these different cultures without calling attention to it or beating you over the head with it. Was that something that everybody involved with this project was really conscious about?
Miranda: Absolutely. We were all striving for the most authentic storytelling possible. Everyone embraced the fact that this was going to be a very diverse, very multicultural project. One of the things that’s important to me in terms of that is to show all these different people and immigrants from different cultures and different backgrounds—and really what that does is to show that all people are more similar than they are different.

It’s a way to get an audience to have a greater understanding of all these diverse voices. It’s about having compassion for the experiences that each of these characters has had. That’s why diversity is so important. Again, it was to show that we’re more similar than we are different. We all have our hopes, dreams, fears, and tragedies that we’ve suffered. We’re all trying to do our best for our families and do our best to survive and thrive. That’s what I think is really connecting with people and audiences. It’s such a universal story.

PC: There are so many intense moments within the series that are going to stay with viewers after they see it. For you, is there one in particular that you’re really excited for audiences to see in the upcoming episodes?
Miranda: I mean, there are a lot of really wonderful moments. One of the moments that I love is when Fiona has to tell Chris about his true upbringing. That was a dialogue that spanned a few episodes where she finally has to admit the truth. That’s one storyline that I actually wanted to tell right from the very origins of this story. He grew up thinking that he had all the privileges of being an American and then experiences that being taken away from him. How does that feel? How is he going to respond to that? That’s a storyline that I love and that I’m really happy to share.

There’s also Episode 4 when we deal with the bone marrow donor that backs out (who is going to be played by Lou Diamond Phillips, who is incredible). That is another very important story, where about fifty percent of people who sign up to be donors actually do back out because of circumstances. They don’t realize or think about the person that they’re affecting. So that whole storyline was also really important. How do we convince this person who has turned a blind eye to change their minds? Everyone is dealing with their own issues, their own problems, their own fears, and it’s easy to say, “It’s not my problem.” That was a storyline that was very important for me to tackle.

Episode 5 is all about the matter of being undocumented coming to a head. There is going to be an ICE raid that happens. That’s actually a story that I pitched in the very early development of this project when I was working with Warner Brothers. It was around the time that these horrible, unprecedented ICE raids were happening across the country. It was so devastating, especially seeing the videos of these children who had their parents ripped away from them on their first day of school. It was this absolute nightmare.

At that point, I actually had pitched to Warner Brothers the idea of having an ICE raid in the pilot. After some discussion, we realized it’s better for our audience to get to know our characters and fall in love with them before we show them what can happen. That’s a story that’s very dear in my heart as well.

PC: How much fun is it for you as a creator and writer to write these storylines, knowing that you have a cast that’s so capable of tackling all of these timely and relevant themes? How much do they shape the story that we’ll see in the future?
Miranda: It’s fantastic. Everyone in the cast, the writers, and everyone involved is so invested and impassioned about telling these stories in the most accurate and authentic way possible. Everyone is bringing their all. Everything we throw at these actors, they embrace. They allow themselves to feel. It really warms my heart to be able to tell stories that are so important and that can have so much impact. We have a team of people who are right there too, wanting to tell the best stories. They’ve opened their hearts so that audiences can open their hearts and ultimately become more empathetic and compassionate to people who are actually facing these realities in real life.

PC: You’re in a unique position where you get to see the fan response in real time via social. I’ve seen the tweets of people who actually feel seen on television now. What has that response meant to you?
Miranda: Honestly, it brings me to tears. I’ve got to say, some people also direct message me and tell me their own personal stories or their parents’ stories. There are so many people who have been touched by the show. It really warms my heart. It fills me with so much gratitude, being able to actually put this story on screen so that it can reach a lot of people.

PC: If we’re lucky enough to get a Season 2, is there a particular storyline or a character that you’re really excited to dive deeper into?
Miranda: Absolutely. All of the characters. We’ve only cracked the surface. There are a lot of stories that we’ve been generating in the writers’ room as well. With the kids, Chris and Jaz, we’ve only touched the surface of their stories and what they’re going to go through. There is so much more to tell.

This is a story of empowerment. This is just the beginning for Thony. She is someone who was disregarded, almost killed in the pilot, pushed into the shadows, and forced to navigate this criminal world. The question is: how is she going to end up on top and maintain who she is? There is a part of her that is going to continue navigating these moral landmines. How is she going to hold onto her moral center through it all?

At the same time, Fiona is also somebody who has now faced her biggest fear. How is that going to empower her to face the world differently? There are a lot of exciting stories to tell.

The relationship between Thony and Arman is another lovely part of it all. They’re both holding a mirror up to each other. Arman is also someone who didn’t necessarily want to choose a life of crime. Now he’s in it. Now he’s embraced a lot of the things that come with that—the power, the lifestyle, all of that—but he’s still a good person at heart. That’s what Thony sees in him. She’s forcing him to make better choices as well. They’re going to continue to impact each other and influence each other.

The same can be said about Oliver Hudson’s character. He’s coming in as an FBI agent, but he’s not always doing it in the right way. It’s all shades of gray. There’s no black and white. There are no good guys, bad guys, even though that’s the way his character comes into it. He himself is going to learn to see things differently in his journey and will be influenced by Thony as well.

To keep up with Miranda, follow her on Twitter and Instagram. Watch The Cleaning Lady every Monday at 9/8c on Fox.

Photo Credit: Jack Gorton Photography