How Doom Patrol’s dark storylines helped Diane Guerrero face her own mental health demons
Orange Is the New Black star Diane Guerrero has always been open about mental health issues but she reveals why playing “Crazy” Jane in Doom Patrol really pushed her limits.
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US actor Diane Guerrero went to some pretty dark places while filming the latest season of Doom Patrol — so dark, in fact, she felt compelled to go into therapy.
The 34-year-old actor, best known for her roles in Orange Is the New Black and Jane the Virgin, plays “Crazy” Jane on the action-drama series, based on the cult DC Comics of the same name about a group of misfits who gain superpowers as a result of horrific accidents. Her character suffers from dissociative identity disorder stemming from a childhood trauma and is host to 64 different personalities, each with their own superpower.
Guerrero, who has a history of anxiety, depression and self-harm, noticed that as Jane’s mental health was tested through the course of the second season, she found it more and more difficult to separate her own life from her character’s and sought professional help
“I am very open about my mental health struggles,” she says via Zoom from her Los Angeles home. “I am someone who has suffered from trauma and trauma has affected my life in a very deep level and at different times in my life I have had to reach out for help.
“(This time) it was about me thinking about my life and what was important and certainly being in such a dark place with Jane, it certainly encouraged me to seek help in a different way this time. My purpose was to obtain a deeper understanding of where my happiness lies and Jane really helped me with that.”
With help from her therapist, she developed breathing techniques that helped her shake off the character at the end of the day’s filing — “you just have to leave it, you have to hang up the phone” — but she says she’s glad that conversations about mental health are becoming more common both on screen and in real life. The dark, sweary and sometimes violent Doom Patrol, with its dysfunctional family of outcasts and misfits including cyborgs, a shapeshifting former Hollywood starlet and radioactive ex-pilot, is geared very much towards the older end of the superhero spectrum.
In addition to the obligatory wisecracking and ass-kicking required of the well-worn genre, the two seasons so far have been lauded for not shying away from relatable and complex themes including post-traumatic stress disorder, body image, trauma, disability, acceptance and LGBTI issues. Guerrero says that seeing mental health issues play out on screen helps to normalise them and “stories like these encourage people to reach out or to connect”.
“We only have misunderstanding or fear of things when we don’t talk about them,” she says. “So that’s why I am so grateful for shows like Doom Patrol that can discuss this openly. I am a person who can discuss mental health openly — I don’t think there is anything to be ashamed of and I think much of our success as humans can be put down to having a well-balanced emotional life and part of that is sharing with others so you are not feeling alone.
“I get a lot of nice personal messages, especially from people who are either dealing with DID or have DID — dissociative identity disorder — or suffer from mental illness. Their feedback seems to be that they are glad this show is telling these kinds of stories.”
Guerrero says she also relates to the outsider status of her Doom Patrol character, thanks to her upbringing in Boston as the daughter of undocumented immigrants. She was the only member of her immediate family with US citizenship and when she was 14, her parents were detained and deported back to their native Colombia, while she stayed behind. The disturbing experience led to her becoming an outspoken advocate for immigrant rights as well as her 2016 autobiography In The Country We Love: My Family Divided.
“I think having your parents kidnapped by ICE (Immigration Customs and Enforcement) and being told by the entire country that your family are criminals and you don’t belong, would certainly make you feel some kind of way and will have you feeling ‘otherness’,” she says. “I did experience that in my younger years and I think that as I evolved and sought help I realised that there is no need to feel that because as human beings we are one and we are equal and I think that our plight is that not everyone feels that way.”
Guerrero says the trauma she suffered as a result of being separated from her family fuelled her passion for social justice, human rights and betterment of the immigrant community. She’s hoping the coming US presidential election will be a chance to reinvigorate the conversation on what has become an increasingly divisive issue in her homeland.
“We all should go out and vote because the situation is quite dire for a lot of people,” she says. “COVID has exacerbated that and we have seen how many families are suffering because of the inaction of our government so we obviously need somebody that cares for our people.”
Like many of this year’s TV shows, the second season of Doom Patrol was curtailed by the coronavirus-induced shutdowns, with the intended 10 episodes cut short by one. The cliffhanger finale, which recently aired in the US, set up the possibility of an even crazier third season and Guerrero has high hopes she can get back to her on-screen family as film and television productions slowly come out of hibernation. “It would be lovely to go back and take all the measures necessary,” she says. “I know some productions are going to be back so I am looking forward to getting back to work and doing it safely and responsibly.”
But for now, she’s taking the enforced downtime chance to reset, reflect and re-evaluate her priorities and wellbeing.
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“I think this is a time for self-improvement and extra care — care for yourself first and foremost, but definitely also care for others,” she says. “It’s a time to reflect, it’s a time to be responsible and think about the things that are important. And right now, human life is important and we’re losing a lot of it carelessly. So, I want to live in a world where we are all concerned for each other. That would make the workload a lot less heavy for some.”
Doom Patrol is streaming now on Binge. Season 2 streams from September 2.