Justina Machado holds nothing back when asked about her twisted new horror comedy The Horror of Dolores Roach. “I really wanted to be a part of it,” beamed the Jane the Virgin and One Day at a Time star. In fact, she had listened to creator Aaron Mark’s hit podcast of the same name about an ex-con turned massage therapist whose “magic hands” suddenly become a lethal weapon.

That would be the show’s titular character, Dolores, who follows up her 16-year prison sentence by doing massages in the basement of her friend Luis’ (Alejandro Hernandez of the medical drama New Amsterdam), struggling empanada shop. Through a series of truly macabre slip ups, Delores acquires a body count. And Luis finds a new filling for his empanadas…

Dark, twisted, fun, and irreverent, this offbeat comedy should turn heads when it lands on Prime Video July 7. It’s been a 10-year journey for creator Aaron Mark since he launched this inventive premise — a spin on the legend of Sweeney Todd — into a one-woman play called Empanada Loca. The streaming version expands his Dolores universe, showcasing some of the finest work we’ve seen from Machado and Hernandez. The costars shared more about their new series with MovieWeb, and you can watch their interview and read about it below.

It’s Never Dull with Blumhouse on Board

For Machado, part of the allure to star in the series had something to do with Blumhouse Productions. The successful production company was launched by Jason Blum more than 20 years ago and has given birth to hot film properties like Paranormal Activity, Insidious, The Purge, Get Out, The Black Phone and M3GAN. TV outings thrill, too, from The Thing About Pam to Unseen.

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“I listened to [Aaron Mark’s] podcast before I even got the script, because a friend of mine had said, ‘You should really listen to this… Blumhouse has acquired the rights. It’s great. It’s going to be a TV show,’” shared Justina Machado in the above MovieWeb interview. “I listened to maybe the first two episodes, and I was like, ‘Wow, what an incredible part. This is so great.’ I had a deal somewhere else, so I really wasn’t looking at anything, but then my manager was like, ‘You should really take a look at this,’ and when I read the script, I started mouthing the words. And that’s how I knew. I was like, ‘Oh my god, I love this part.’

I actually started reading it aloud and acting it out. I just fell in love with the material — how unexpected it is, how different it is with the two genres together. I thought it was very funny, really different, and liberating. And I decided that I wanted to be a part of it. She also noted that she hopes viewers see something in the series they’ve never seen before. Deep down, viewers will undoubtedly care about Dolores. The character is in major transition, and she can’t seem to find a break. It’s a far cry from her character Penelope Alvarez on One Day at a Time, but there’s something about Dolores most people can identify with. Aside, of course, for, well, suddenly finding herself in an absurd cannibalistic survival story.

Alejandro Hernandez on Finding Depth
Prime Video

In The Horror of Dolores Roach, Alejandro Hernandez’s Luis had a thing for Dolores long before she haphazardly wound up in prison. Upon her return, he genuinely wants to help her out. “Luis is a complicated guy, he has so many layers,” explaiend Hernandez. “He’s this present to the world, and he’s funny, friendly, and charming. But beneath that, you know, he has a lot of darkness there. A lot of pain. There’s a lot of trauma. He has a big sense of inferiority, a big sense of insecurity, and it drives him in many ways to be the way that he is. I wanted to be able to play with those layers. When I first read it, I was like, ‘Man, this is gonna be so cool.’”

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It’s interesting to see how creator Aaron Mark spins Luis here. And the entire new outing for that matter. Back in 2013, Mark had been living in Washington Heights, “watching a harsh gentrification sweep through, and the sensation of a neighborhood feeding on itself.” That brought led him to one of the greatest cannibalism tales of all time, Sweeney Todd. He went back to the original 1850 Victorian penny dreadfuls and through many Sweeney retellings, most of which found the character depicted as a bloodthirsty white man. What if Dolores was a woman driven to absurd actions by twists of fate and untapped emotions? What if, instead of a barber, the character was a massage therapist?

That’s one of the other things that attracted the actors to the project, and Hernandez said that viewers will be surprised at how the first season ends in “quite a wild way… I don’t think most people are going to see it coming. People who were perhaps fans of the podcast, are going to be interested in the surprises as well.”

The Horror of Dolores Roach heats up Prime Video on July 7.