Ella Lopez’s Last Case: An Interview with Lucifer’s Aimee Garcia

As we prepare to close the doors on Lucifer after it’s sixth season, I was given the opportunity to chat with Aimee Garcia, who portrays Ella Lopez on the Netflix hit. Aimee brings the same joy to the conversation that she does in all of her scenes as the Midwestern forensic scientist and its infectious. Seated in front of a bookcase brimming with treasures from the shows she’s been a part of (Lucifer, Dexter, M.O.D.O.K.) and gifts from fans, our conversation was quick and enlightening.

Read on to discover what we can expect from Ella Lopez’s last case as we say goodbye to a fan favorite show and character.

Aprille Morris-Butler: Hi, Aimee, my name is Aprille’ and I am the Head of Editorial for Off Color, which is a digital online publication. I’m super excited to be here today to speak with you about the sixth and final season of Lucifer. Just a few questions.

Aprille: Because this is the final season, what will you miss most about the show?

Aimee Garcia The people. And obviously, Ella, she was such a love bug and she just wanted to hug people. But I think just the whole thing, you know, it’s not every day that a show resonates globally and there’s a lot of content out there. I think it’s really rare to find a story that resonates with people in Brazil and India and Europe and New Zealand and Mexico and all over the United States and across all different genders and all different ethnicities and all different age groups and all different religions. It’s really touching. It’s really cool.

I saw a video on Twitter, a bar in India with a huge screen. And when Dennis Haysbert shows up, as God, the whole bar started cheering. And I thought, how sweet. It’s people in a bar. And they were watching an episode right above the bartender and they just cheered for him and and they were so committed. And so I thought, this is so wonderful that that you’re part of a story that just really resonates with people all over the world.

AMB: I was also very, very into that reveal. The Allstate Guy as God? We’ve been waiting a long time for God, so it was a huge moment. Speaking of Ella obviously, Ella is a very personal connection for me. I’m also from Detroit. I’m also a science nerd. So she and I are like friends,  in my mind. So what is it been like for you to bring this character who’s brought so much joy and so much life to the screen for the past four seasons?

AG: It has been an honor and I don’t mean that in a hyperbolic way. It has been an honor to represent a Woman of Color in STEM. It has been an honor to represent a woman who did not come from easy beginnings. She grew up in poverty. She came from a family of criminals. Her own grandmother taught her how to steal cars. Her brothers have been in jail. I mean, but she did not let her past affect her future.

And that, to me, is a really powerful message of: it doesn’t matter what cards you are dealt, you are not to be limited by your circumstances and you are to have faith in yourself and you can manifest for yourself what you want. Here is a Forensic Scientist, I never had that as a kid. I never had characters who look like me as a kid. So it really is important, I think, to have characters that show that representation really does matter because it affects how people see the world.

I could not be prouder of representing a woman who, you know, has strong faith. She’s a woman of science. She’s a woman of faith. She is a family woman. She is a lovebug. She’s a dork. She’s a nerd. She speaks multiple languages, she doesn’t have it figured out. She has a crisis of self, a crisis of faith and chooses the wrong guys constantly. Ella is just figuring it out. She’s not celestial. She can’t fly. She doesn’t have superpowers. She’s not supernatural.

To have people dressed up like her is really moving and to have guys and girls say, “Hey, I’m going to major in biology now because of Ella,” and to have science teacher say, “Hey, I actually show your scenes from Lucifer in my science class because Ella makes science cool,” I am like a bag of buckets. I just it really warms my heart that people just say,  “I was having a really crappy day and Ella just made it brighter.” or  “I see myself in her.”

And it’s not just girls. I mean, it’s like tatted up 30 year old men that relate to her. Like I said, I think universal characters transcend and and I love her spirit and I love that she still believes in humanity. I think we need that, especially right now when the world is upside down. We really need characters who are positive role models, especially for Women of Color.  I’m really going to miss her. She’s going to be a tough one to let go of, but all good things must come to an end, I guess, unfortunately.

AMB: This season, Ella goes through quite a bit. She has three really big pivotal moments. The first is one that fans have been waiting for for a long time. They thought it was going to happen at the end of Season five. It didn’t, but Ella finally finds out that Lucifer is…well…Lucifer. How fun was it for you to portray that moment?

AG: Oh, so fun. I mean first, to just get drunk. I loved being “tipsy”. You know, she’s the smartest person in the room, but she still thinks that the Devil is an unemployed actor who can’t book a gig. So there is something so fun about seeing Ella, who is usually the smartest person in the room struggle with this. She’s got great deductive reasoning. She is really good at asking questions. She’s got a detective mind and she is starting to piece together this end of the world thing and this frog falling from the sky thing. And it’s so fun to just see her being more pissed that her friends lie to her than the fact that Celestials exist.

I think that when she finally goes off on this group of characters that have become her friends. It’s so fun, I mean, I really just, the writing on the show is incredible, so I just let it rip. She’s a little tipsy so I’m going to add in some Spanish. Spanish is my first language. And I’m just going to add some Spanish and just have her go off on her family who love her. She feels very betrayed by them. So I think it’s hysterical that you can see Ella’s priorities where she’s like,  “Demons and devils and angels, blah, blah, blah.” But FOMO (fear of missng out), “you kept me out of the loop!”

Like that is a line. She just feels like she was lied to. So I think that she’s a woman of integrity and and she has a really hard time trusting people. And she trusted these people and they lied to her for years. So that was really cathartic, both personally and as a character, to just go off on everyone. We never get to see that with Ella. I don’t have the luxury, as my character, to have long scenes. I don’t get to have long monologues. She kind of has these zingers and pops in and out. So it’s really nice to go in and just let it rip.

AMB: And it’s deserved. It’s well deserved. Also happening this year for Ella is being the most religious character on the show, which is hard to do when a lot of the main characters are celestial beings, she struggles pretty heavily with herfaith because Lucifer isn’t quite ready to take up the mantle of being God. How did it feel for you to work through her struggle and the potential breakdown in her faith?

AG: It was really exhilarating and partially scary for me personally. D.B. Woodside, who obviously plays Amenadiel, directed one of our episodes and it was a very heavy episode. It was the episode where Ella reels and has to sit with that feeling of this loss of faith. That was really hard for me because D.B. kept saying, “You have to be still,  just trust that if you’re still other stuff will happen”, because Ella is always dancing and singing and moving and joking and and she’s very expressive. So to not be able to do that was also like a crisis of creativity for me, personally.

But I trust D.B. And I told him that’s one of my strongest performances, I think of my career and it’s all because of D.B. I owe it all to him. That for me personally, it was very challenging as an actor and I think as a character. Ella’s struggle is very relatable. What happens if you have faith for all these years and it’s shaken up? 

I love what she says. She says God isn’t there to make the bad things go away. God is there to give us the strength to deal with the bad things.  It’s one of my favorite Ella quotes because it really gives us the strength to be our own kind of superhero and be our own source of strength. That’s really tough, and we’re dealing with a show where the Devil becomes God. I mean, just think about that for a second. If that’s not mindblowing enough, that is just where our show lives. The fallen angel, that is Lucifer Morningstar, who’s been kicked out from heaven, is now going to run Heaven. And I think what’s so special about Ella is, she could feel it, right?

I mean, God, Dennis’s character has gone to an alternate universe and so we start the season where she’s like,  “I know it sounds crazy, but it’s almost like He’s not there. It’s really weird. It’s like He’s not on the throne,” and she could just feel it in her bones. And I think that that’s very relatable. I think that there are definitely years and moments in our life where we’re like, are we here on our own? Is anyone listening in? And if He did exist or if She did exist, why were these terrible things happening? So I think that her struggles very real. And I’m really lucky to have been able to go on that journey of a very human experience of what happens when you feel alone and what happens when your faith is shaken. How do you get that back?

AMB: Perfect. I think I have time for one more question.  this is the sixth and final season. Lucifer went on quite a journey from cancelation to being revived on Netflix and then having three additional, pretty successful seasons on Netflix. What is it that you want fans to take away from this experience, from this last season? What is the message that you hope resonates with them?

AG: Oh, I think just a sense of family and them knowing that they were always part of our Cast. You know, I always call them our “other series regulars.” Whether you were in Detroit or Chicago or New York or Atlanta or Seattle, or Canada or Mexico or wherever you were, you were there with us. The reason that we got this far is because of the fact that, unlike other shows that I think just go on for various reasons,  one hundred percent the reason that we came back, literally resurrected from the dead was because of the fans. 

They’re the reason that we got this Season. I really want them to know that this is a tribute to the fans. We were supposed to end with Season five and because there was just still an appetite for this show and the story and these characters we got to continue.  I want them to know that they’re really a part of this. And I want them to know that they were in it with us the whole time and that they were essentially part of the Lucifer family. That they were on set with us.

The Sixth and Final Season of Lucifer premieres on September 10th, only on Netflix. To tide you over until its released, check out our review of Season Five here.