First, let us count the many ways that fortune has blessed T.V. personality Mario Lopez.
He has the dimples of a demigod. A chin that could shrug off a slap from Kimbo Slice. Hair we'd strangle someone for.
He's had the kind of career longevity that just doesn't exist for most performers in the entertainment industry. The man can dance, act, wrestle, and probably kick our asses. Not to mention, he's a loyal fan of Foos Gone Wild.
And perhaps life's biggest blessing: he's Mexican American.
This last fact was unknown by many internet denizens, as a digital firestorm broke out around that Lopez, born in Chula Vista and raised in San Diego, was born of Mexican heritage.
His mother, Elvira Soledad Trasviña, is from Tijuana, while his father, Mario Alberto López Pérez, hails from Culicán, Sinaloa.
Lopez took to TikTok this week, his hair never better, his Access Hollywood delivery safely stowed away, to let this fact be known.
In a video titled "Ok, Let's Set the Record Straight," Lopez says he saw himself trending on X this week as the dumb residents of social media questioned his heritage in a cloud of disbelief that he's Mexican. Some people were, of course, even mad about it. And then, so were some other people.
"They've been thinking I'm everything from Italian to Hawaiian," he says, dimples and glimmering teeth going off in every direction like the 4th of July while professing his love of mariscos and rocking a Wild Card Boxing shirt.
He points to his food videos, in which he says "foo" and
"homes" a lot, then gets a couple of plugs in for his main gigs.
"I can't be like that on Access Hollywood or my radio show. I'm trying to cash these checks," he says. "I can't be sounding all 'hood and all that."
Seems Lopez has the cashing checks part down pretty well, with a reported net worth of $35 million. So it's working.
Lopez goes on to establish that his whole green room crew is Mexican, including a dude in "nana glasses" and a Tijuanense named "Conejo."
So why did people assume a dude named Mario Lopez is not Mexican -American?
It could be that the name "Mario" is now forever associated with an Italian-American plumber who loves tripping balls on boomers and torturing poor turtles. As in, "it's a me, Mario... Lopez!"
It's possibly due to the fact that Lopez rose to recognition as the not-very-Mexican-sounding "A.C Slater" on Saved the Bell with an activated mullet back in an era when the similarly pated Menudo were the only Latino kids you saw on T.V.
Likely, Lopez's mastery of code-switching into the most marketable smooth TV host in the U.S. and his subsequent embrace by the most mainstream of media was somehow not aligned with being thought of as Mexican.
Those of who look at it closely have always known Mario Lopez is raza. On Saved the Bell, that foo called out Zack Morris for treating his Mexicanidad like it was invisible, acted like a No Sabo when some shortie tried picking him up at Max's, and then was stunned when same said shortie schooled him on his name being Anglicized from "Sanchez."
Yes, a Mexican American Slater was there all along, America, right in your living room, making your daughters, and many of your sons, feel funny on the inside.
Beyond that, Lopez played a charmer on The Golden Girls who was facing deportation, co-starred as Tomás on ABC's Paul Rodriguez vehicle AKA Pablo, and, like so many of Hollywood's Latino actors, was relegated to the role of a babyfaced gang member in Colors.
Should none of that proof suffice to prove Mario Lopez is Mexican American, we all know by now that famously adorable actor Mario Lopez, host of Access Hollywood, moonlights as Chicano deity Lil Mr. E from Foos Gone Wild.
Case closed.
