Despite bringing back “Magnum PI” with Latino, Jay Hernandez, in the title role, the CBS reboot has no Latinx in the writers room, according to showrunner Peter Lenkov.
“When you’re staffing the show, it’s incredibly hard to find writers,” Lenkov told reporters during the show’s Television Critics Association panel on Sunday. “We have a very diverse writers room, it just so happens that we don’t have any [Latinax].”
The gender-neutral term “Latinx” has become more commonplace in recent years as a replacement for “Latino” or “Latina,” but it still is used as a reference to Latin-American cultural or racial identity. The plural is “Latinxs.”
On that diversity in the writers room, Lenkov said the current gender breakdown is four men and three women.
But fellow executive producer Eric Guggenheim said that it’s not like they’re going to pretend that Hernandez’s version of Magnum isn’t a different nationality compared to Tom Selleck.
“We’re certainly not blind to the fact that he’s Latino,” Guggenheim said. “It is something that is acknowledged.”
Lenkov also pointed to the fact that, on the show, the role of Higgins is gender-swapped in the reboot, this time being played by the British-born woman Perdita Weeks. “I thought it was a boys club, the original show.”
“Magnum P.I.” will air Mondays at 9 p.m. this fall on CBS, leading in to “Bull.”
