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Diane Guerrero Says This Book Makes Her Feel Like She Can Do Anything

The actor, activist, and author opens up about season two of HBO Max's Doom Patrol and her fave self-care rituals.
Diane Guerrero
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Diane Guerrero has been awake since 5:30 a.m. when we talk. The actor is doing a satellite media tour for the second season of the live-action DC Universe series Doom Patrol, but she jokes it might as well be renamed Zoom Patrol during this socially distant time. “I was like, What is this strange feeling?” she says of the early call time. “And then I was like, Oh, it’s just waking up early, Diane; you’ll survive.”

The name Zoom Patrol does fit. The HBO Max series about DC’s strangest group of heroes jumps—or zooms—all over the place in the “wild, unlikely world we live in,” as Guerrero calls it. This season will find her character, Jane, still struggling with finding out that Niles Caulder, a doctor who took in Jane and the other members of the Doom Patrol, isn’t who he said he was. On top of that, every character is dealing with very real issues like mental illness and post-traumatic stress disorder. 

For Guerrero, taking care of her mental health on set was especially important because she plays a character with 64 different personalities, each with their own super power. “The first season I was really excited to take on all these different emotions, but it affected me because I hadn’t dealt with personal issues,” she says. But playing Jane, Guerrero says, inspired her to work those out in therapy. “Since I was in college, I sought out therapy,” she explains, “but because my character is so affected by trauma, I decided to look into some of my own stuff that I really needed to unpack.”

One of the things she learned: to let the character go at the end of each work day. “It induced so much within me,” she says. "I’ve been getting a lot better at that.”