As a Child Star, Natalie Guerrero Left Broadway Behind. With Her Debut Novel, She’s Going Back.

Spoilers below.

Natalie Guerrero didn’t intend to write a New York story. Her initial plan for her captivating and charming debut novel, My Train Leaves at Three, was to set it in California, where she had recently moved, and use her evocative new surroundings to explore power dynamics in the workplace. But, as she drafted, something about that concept wasn’t working as Guerrero had hoped. So she turned to an exercise popularized by Julia Cameron’s The Artist’s Way: waking up each morning to write three pages of stream-of-consciousness in longhand.

“The ‘morning pages’ work,” the New York native tells me from her sunny Los Angeles abode. “I know it sounds very woo-woo, but the book revealed itself to me. I did a free-write one morning, and the first few lines I wrote were, ‘I was supposed to have a poodle and a pool, but my sister’s dead and my hair is still frizzy.’ All of that just came out. I thought to myself, ‘Oh. This [book] is about grief and sisterhood.’” Soon, Guerrero had re-positioned her main character, Xiomara Sanchez—a gifted Afro-Latina singer in her late 20s who dreams of performing on Broadway—in Manhattan’s uptown neighborhood of Washington Heights. “I was so happy that it landed there,” she says.

The novel—out today—follows Xiomara as she grieves the tragic loss of her older sister, Nena, while also trying to kickstart her budding theater career. Her journey to self-actualization is complicated by monotonous odd jobs, a thorny relationship with her mother, and predatory dynamics with older men. (Oh, and she must also navigate her Saturn Return.)

Below, Guerrero sits down with ELLE.com to discuss the sprawling themes behind My Train Leaves at Three; the childhood connection to Broadway that inspired the story; and the forthcoming feature adaptation that’s currently in the works.

My Train Leaves at Three by Natalie Guerrero

My older sister and I are 11 months apart, and she’s someone whom I couldn’t ever imagine losing. She often jokes that this book is like a eulogy and love letter to her. Sisterhood in all its forms is important to me. I thought about the worst thing that could happen that would make someone lose their voice and sense of self, and that was losing a sister. I also grew up in a house where my mom experienced sibling loss when she was pregnant with me, so I always felt called to the topic. That kind of experience forms grief over generations, and I grew up around that energy. So once those themes came out on the page that morning with my free-write, I decided to go in that direction.

Oh, I had such a hard Saturn Return. And that’s probably the L.A. part of me that snuck its way into the book. I do think when you say “Saturn Return” to women who are in our age range, it’s a vocabulary we can all relate to. I was in mine when I started writing, and I just kept thinking, “When is this gonna end? This is really hard.” I went through a big heartbreak, moved across the country, had an intense job, and was stressed about finances. Everything that could happen during a Saturn Return was happening to me.

But then I started having a lot of conversations with my white friends about it, and I felt like there weren’t many opportunities to talk to Black girls about this woo-woo thing. The stark difference I notice between my white friends and my Black or Latina friends is that most of my Black girlfriends aren’t as self-indulgent. I thought Xiomara deserved to indulge in the wild world of getting to know herself—something we really don’t often get to do. And it’s something I feel committed to doing in my own life. But it’s quite an American thing. My dad’s Dominican, and my mom’s Puerto Rican. I didn’t grow up seeing Black or Latin women asking themselves about themselves, so the Saturn Return was a wonderful way to get there.

I’m gonna go way back for a second. I was a child actor, and I played Young Nala in The Lion King on Broadway. It was a really gratifying and formative experience, but it was also incredibly traumatic. I don’t talk about it a lot, but I usually like to say that it was the first place I learned that women “shouldn’t” be bigger than men. I was constantly scrutinized for how tall I was getting. Mind you, I was 12. And I’m 5’4 today. But everyone kept saying to me [at the time], “You’re getting too tall, and your contract’s not going to get renewed. You can’t be taller than Simba.” It was so horrifying to me, and I would look in the mirror and try to be smaller.

After I finished acting and put that chapter aside, I worked at WME in the books department, then came out to L.A. and worked for a production company. And the common denominator in those spaces was that there were men who I felt were smaller than me who were allowed to take up so much more space than I was. Manny’s power looms over Xiomara in such a horrific way. He deliberately uses his power to get what he wants. But then I also think it’s a commentary on the line of consent when you’re talking about someone who has so much more power. A lot of their relationship was consensual, and also, there’s a gray area of how much of it was a transaction.

I always had two non-negotiables when I was selling the book: Xiomara is Black, and she’s also never getting the part. Those were two things that I was never going to change.

So much of Broadway had been tainted for me because of my experience and my growing pains away from it. I distanced myself for so long, but it’s my first love, so I was excited to write about it. I can dissect so much of this book, and it can be a little heady, but with this, I was like, “She’s grieving her sister, having horrible sex, and getting assaulted. Let’s give her a voice. Let’s let her have some fun.” I also loved the playlist that I listened to while I was writing, and being able to dive into what songs she might sing. I genuinely believe that people who hate musical theater haven’t seen the right musical. You have to inherently believe in hope and storytelling to love musical theater.

A lot of musical theater like the Songs for a New World soundtrack. I was also listening to Olivia Dean and SZA. SZA is such a storyteller. I was listening to her on repeat because she really captures that angst that Xiomara was feeling. Then there was a lot of Latin music, like Elvis Crespo and Juan Luis Guerra, and the classics: bachata, merengue, and salsa.

Oh, 100 percent. That and Ariana Grande’s “Saturn Returns Interlude.”

Harmony, not balance, babe. [Laughs.] But no, there are some days when I’m not promoting the book at all because I’m at this amazing writers’ residency and I want to give those writers my full attention. I’m also working on my second book right now. I’m still figuring out where I need to pour into myself so that I can have the energy to pour out. I’m definitely a writer who can get into that mode of like, “I didn’t write today. What am I doing?” That “grind” work ethic has really gotten into me, so I'm trying to get out of that. But I’m committed to being in community with other writers, and it’s something that my day job has allowed me, and I want to continue to do that.

She’s amazing. She’s one of those Black writers from the generation before me who helped hold the door open. Jenifer Lewis is another one. I worked with her on her essay collection, Walking in My Joy. I’ve found mentors in Mara, Jenifer, and Jennifer Rudolph Walsh, who I worked for when she was at WME. I think mentorship is so important.

I do look at it that way. I definitely don’t want this cycle to end with me. And I’m just getting started, so by no means am I on the top of the mountain. But I would really like to help other people while simultaneously growing with them, too.

It’s a little too early. I haven’t even given it to my editor yet, but please stay tuned! I can share, though, that I’m now starting to adapt My Train Leaves at Three for film, and I’m really excited.

Thank you! I’m adapting the feature script, and I just started writing act 1. I’ll be working with Dominican filmmaker Gabriella Ortega. In deciding who to collaborate with, it was important to me to work with another amazing Dominican voice to bring Xiomara’s story to life. We’re circling a few high-level producers who I can’t name just yet, but it’s going to be indie, gritty, raw, sexy, and fun. All the things!

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.