Back in 2016, Lucifer became one of the first shows to get canceled and then aggressively un-canceled due to sheer fan demand. Despite Fox pulling the plug after season 3, the series—which stars Tom Ellis as the literal Devil, desperately trying to avoid hell while assisting the LAPD—is set to return to Netflix next week for the back-half of its fifth season. So when we sat down with Aimee Garcia to discuss Hulu's M.O.D.O.K, we also had to know what it was like for the actress—who has co-starred on Lucifer as forensic scientist Ella Lopez since season 2—to work behind-the-scenes on a show with that level of fan validation.
Here's exactly what Garcia told us:
"We were cancelled and people from all over the world, Europe and Mexico and Australia and Canada and India and Japan and Malaysia, just started voicing their opinion and banding together. It was such a cool thing to know that people of all races and all genders and all sexual orientations, we have fans going from eight to 80—eight seems a little young for our show, but to each their own [laughs]—and it was great. It was so nice to have that global embrace of knowing it wasn’t people in corporate positions pushing for a certain show. It was literally the people speaking and voting for a show that they felt represented them and made them feel less alone. And inspires them, which I think the best media does. It makes you feel like we are all in this together and we are not islands. We’re part of the human community. To me, the best storytelling really brings people together."
For Garcia, a significant part of what makes the Lucifer fandom special is its diversity, a reflection of the show the cast and creatives are trying to make.
"Going to work after [getting revived], my heart was so full. Especially for me, in particular, I don’t play a cool character. I’m not an angel, I’m not a demon. I have no celestial powers. I’m just a scientist. And I’d go to these comic-cons and girls would dress up and cosplay my character. They’d have forensic gloves and have a forensic jacket and have a forensic bun. I was so tickled, because these girls weren’t dressing up like Storm or Squirrel Girl or Black Widow, they were dressing up like a scientist, which is something they could become. Or teachers say, 'Hey, I show clips of Lucifer, of you in the lab because you make science cool and you’re a woman of color in STEM.' It’s such a good feeling.”
Check out exactly what Garcia had to say in the player above, and be on the lookout for the rest of our interviews with the M.O.D.O.K. cast later this week. Lucifer season 5B hits Netflix on Friday, May 28.