Brendan Fehr and Majandra Delfino on ‘Baron and Toluca’ and the Pilot’s Connections to ‘Roswell’ [Interview]

It was “lightning-in-a-bottle chemistry” that ultimately sparked the idea for Majandra Delfino and Brendan Fehr’s pilot, Baron and Toluca. The pilot was written and conceptualized by Delfino, and directed by Fehr, with both of them starring in the lead roles.

Baron and Toluca follows Jake Baron (Fehr) and Toluca Mendez (Delfino), ex co-stars from a teen sci-fi drama series, who find themselves involuntarily reunited in a familiar part of New Mexico. The estranged co-stars must work together to unravel the chaos surrounding them, in order to save themselves and life as they know it.  

Following a screening of the pilot at the ATX Television Festival, I had the chance to sit down with Delfino and Fehr to discuss their years-long journey in creating the pilot, its connections to Roswell, and the chemistry between their two characters.

Delfino described how her initial idea for the pilot began, which was based on the chemistry she and Brendan Fehr had on Roswell and the relationship between their characters on that series, Maria and Michael.

“You’re young, and you think you’re going to have all these things, options, and whatever,” Delfinso said. “Then you grow up and you’re like, oh man, that actually was a lightning-in-a-bottle chemistry. And for me, I thought, we can do something there,” Delfino said.

Delfino began brainstorming ideas and landed on the “meta concept” that eventually turned into Baron and Toluca. 

“This whole meta concept came up. And then weirdly, as I was working on that, he had pretty much the same idea,” Delfino said. 

“Well, I only had the idea that I wanted to work with her,” Fehr added. “She had already been writing it, hilariously enough. She’s like, ‘Funny you should say that, because I’m writing something and created something for us.'” 

They started pitching their idea, but after hearing “no” a few too many times, they decided to take a different approach.

“We just went, ‘Oh, you know what? Let’s just prove it to them,” Fehr said. “‘We’ll show them that we can raise money from the fans. We’ll show them that we can do a really great pilot.”‘

Delfino and Fehr mobilized the fandom and launched an Indiegogo campaign in 2020, which funded the pilot.

Both Fehr and Delfino made it clear how much the fan involvement really mattered in the production. In fact, during the Q&A that followed the screening, they asked the audience how many of them had just seen their name on the screen when the credits rolled, and a large group enthusiastically raised their hands.

“On Indiegogo, we sold producer slots. It’ll be labeled. If you contribute this amount of money, we’ll put you on as a producer, [which] didn’t require them to come there,” Fehr explained.

They also sold slots that would allow fans to do set visits, be extras, work as production assistants, work in wardrobe, and so on. “Some were actors in the show, we gave them one or two lines, and all that,” Fehr said. 

“There’s a great thing on Instagram that we had all been sharing, about how you should never undermine a fandom. And that it actually takes incredible skillsets to run these things online,” Delfino said, noting how often these fans would also help them overcome issues that could have gotten in the way of production.

After screening Baron and Toluca, it was clear that there were several fun nods for Roswell fans, but it was important to the actors that those elements were secondary.

“We wanted it to be its own thing, but we wanted to put a couple of things in there for people who were a fan of that, that would just deepen or heighten [it],” Fehr said.

“If we made it in any way, shape, or form reliant on Roswell, that would’ve been bad from the start. It would’ve been a bad choice on so many levels because we’re not those same people, and we’re not in the same position,” Fehr continued. “We have a show that we wanted to exist on its own. So we wanted to do that first, and then we reversed… I mean, they were already in there, but in a sense reverse engineer those little fun things.”

A few of their favorite fun details in the pilot are appearances by other original Roswell cast members and even one specific costuming choice. 

Of course, it’s the relationship between the characters of Baron and Toluca, played by Fehr and Delfino themselves, that’s the most important element of the series.

“We definitely wanted to keep the dynamic that Michael and Maria on Roswell had, but in these characters. And there was also an interest in our personal lives as actors,” Delfino said. “So we were trying to find a way to give everybody that, while not just being either a complete ripoff or feeling like a reality show. I think that we found it — where there’s contentiousness, but clearly sexual chemistry, and then [they are] a good team, even though they’re always fighting.”

“When you bring someone in as a boyfriend or as a girlfriend to compete as a love interest, when you shove it down the audience’s throat, they tend to reject it. Because they’re like, I don’t want my favorite main character to be in love with this new character coming in. I want the regulars to be the regulars, and everyone else comes and goes. And it was a really valuable thing,” Fehr said.

“Hart Hanson, on Bones, had said that when I did that and I was supposed to come in, and I was [David] Boreanaz’s brother, and he was just like, we tried to set Emily [Deschanel] up, her character with some other — and they’ve all fallen short. And he was like, ‘So you need to be a bit of an asshole. We don’t want to like you and that’s what’s going to make it better. And this isn’t quite that same thing, but I think it’s important. You can’t spoon-feed the audience. You have to be willing to let them hate you in order to understand you, and then bring them around,” Fehr continued.

“So for these two characters — we don’t get along, and I think the audience actually wants us to. So we actually have to force them to be fighting and to find differences and to piss each other off, because that’s going to fuel that fire,” he said.

Now that the Baron + Toluca pilot has been made, the focus is on trying to get it picked up. “Now we just don’t have to pitch it in the same way,” Fehr explained. “It’s a fully fleshed-out pilot.”

“And we’re the showrunners,” Delfino added. “Prior to this, there really was no proof except just our word that we can pull that off. And now, there’s proof.”

“There’s proof of the concept because the pilot exists, there’s proof that we can run a show because we did the whole thing ourselves. I mean, when we say ourselves, obviously with the fans and all that stuff. But, it was all us,” Fehr said. “We made this thing happen and we did it for a set amount of money. I think we’ve proven ourselves on a number of levels. And I think there’s someone out there that is going to recognize that and appreciate it. And we just got to find the right fit.”

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