On Lifetime’s The Lottery, President Thomas Westwood (Yul Vázquez) delves into the politics of reproduction. OHSOGRAY chatted with Yul about how much the President really knows and whether the audience will see the origin of the fertility crisis.
Do we know yet whose “fault” is it, reproductively, that people can’t have children any more? Is this a problem with the males or the females?
Yul: We haven’t seen it yet. We don’t have the answer to that yet. Hang in there; I think you’ll get the answer to that. You haven’t missed it. The writers haven’t told us yet. Listen, here’s the thing about this. Athena and I wait for these scripts the same you wait for an episode to see what happens. We literally for week-to-week, sometimes we don’t know what’s coming. It’s exciting because you have to work very quickly with very heavy issues. So sometimes, the writers are writing as fast as they can and they’re working 24 hours a day, literally. I mean, it’s crazy what they’re doing. They get the stuff to us as quickly as they humanly can. We will get it the night before we start shooting. It’s not that we don’t want to answer these questions, it’s that we actually don’t have the answers. But, I think you’re going to see that. I think that they have to tell you.
So far the President is mostly concerned about keeping his political office. Is he blind to the threat that the military might pose to his administration and the country?
Yul: He’s not blind to anything. He’s behaving in a particular way right now and the way that you’re watching him behave in the show…there’s something which I cannot tell you, that is coming. It will explain to you why he’s behaving the way he’s behaving, and why it might seem to you like he’s blind to the military situation. There’s so much happening in the unsaid. So, I guess that’s a long answer to your question. No, he’s not blind. He may seem blind, but no.
For the President, right now we’re picking up with the crisis where people can’t have children and we’re dealing with the lottery, but are we going to take a look backwards and figure out the origin of the crisis and whether or not the President had a role in it?
Yul: It’s anybody’s guess. I would imagine we’ll see the origin of the crisis because I think it’s important for the audience to know how the crisis began. As far as the President having a role in it or not, that’s a …I have no idea. I think the writers, I think everyone is finding the show and anything is possible. Specifically that, I couldn’t tell you for sure. But I think you will learn what happened.
The Lottery airs Sundays at 10/9c on Lifetime.