Award-winning Mexican-American writer and director, Alyssa Toledo, was born and raised in the Central Coast. She has written and directed three short films of her own, two of them are based in her hometown — Oceano. She expects her latest, Toledo, to be released next year in 2024.
Alyssa said as a kid, she was trying to find her way out of Oceano. But as an adult, she has learned to appreciate its beauty.
“I was like, 'man, this place sucks. I gotta get out of here,' you know, and then I left and I was like 'man, this is like the most beautiful place and there's so many stories to tell here in such a beautiful, diverse landscape,'” Alyssa said.
Today she lives in Los Osos, and the Central Coast continues to inspire and infuse her films.
She doesn’t have Hollywood parents who got her the job.
“My mom is from Des Moines, Iowa, you know, very white, very traditional and my dad is from Michoacan, Mexico. So I grew up kind of balancing back and forth between the two. And I wanted to explore what is the Mexican-American voice in film,” she said.
Making films was not always her dream — she originally wanted to become a firefighter.
Then one year, she took a filmmaking class at Allan Hancock College in Santa Barbara County.
“And I was like, 'oh my God. I love film.' That had never been something that was even a possibility or talked about. I didn't know people made movies,” Alyssa said.
Eventually she transferred to Cal State Fullerton, to major in filmmaking. Alyssa was ambitious and determined. The only way she was going to get to the next step was to do something bold.
“I cold emailed the head of Netflix at the time,” she said.
And she did that once a month for about a year and a half.
“I just kind of checked in with her. I would love to just get your advice and chat.”
She said she finally got a response after she graduated. The head of Netflix invited her to their offices. And when they met, they gave Alyssa an offer she couldn’t refuse.
“She was like, I have this new show that's filming in South Carolina called Outer Banks. Do you want to go PA on it? And I'm super poor, like, I just graduated. I'm, like, at Netflix. So I'm like, yeah, of course!”
So she packed up her Prius and drove across the country to South Carolina.
During downtime on set, she wrote and wrote and wrote. She also became friends with the lead actors on the show. So she asked them for advice on her scripts.
“I kind of just wanted an opinion from an actor that I admired,” Alyssa said.
So far Alyssa's three short films have been funded with help from her Outer Banks friends, who also acted in them. Her most recent, Toledo, is being executive produced by Outer Banks actors Chase Stokes and Jonathan Daviss,
It’s based on her father’s immigration story to the Central Coast from Mexico.
She said when her father was just 13 years old, he worked on a cilantro farm with her grandfather. Both didn’t speak any English.
One day, while her grandfather was moving irrigation pipes on the farm, he hit an overhead utility line.
“And, he was electrocuted and he passed away,” Alyssa said.
She said after her father witnessed his father’s death, he was all alone in America.
“I always knew that I wanted to try to explore that in some way,” she said.
Alyssa spent years trying to figure out what the story, and her voice in it, should be.
“I think when people think of traditional immigrant stories they’re typically very sad and like dramatic. My main goal for Toledo is, I think it can be something that has those, kind of, sad exterior elements, but at the end of the day, it's really an angsty teenage love story,” Alyssa said.
Her dad falls in love with a local girl who speaks a different language. As he fights for her affection, he also battles with his identity. It’s an internal struggle that resonated with Alyssa.
“More than anything else, that is much more reflective of my experience.”
Now she's working on turning Toledo into a feature film.
Her road to becoming a writer and director as both a Mexican-American and a member of the LGBTQ community, she said, has been hard.
But, she wants to keep creating stories based in the Central Coast that she loves so much.
You can view the trailer for Toledo here.
