Sitting cross-legged on the floor Chateau Marmont from Los Angeles, Gael García Bernal He looked with admiration at his lifelong friend and also an actor. Diego Luna. Just the night before, they had gone on stage at the Peacock Theater and, as expected, they had delivered the Emmy for best director of a limited or anthology series or television movie.
Less expected, and in a move they said was not approved in advance, they had presented the award speaking in Spanish.
“They just told us that the Emmy “They are losing a large part of their audience,” he said. Garcia Bernal in English to the public and almost 7 million live viewers. “So Diego and I decided to do something to push the limits, to erase the borders.”
Moon He greeted the more than 50 million Spanish speakers in the United States in Spanish. Next, the award went to Ripley’s Steven Zaillian for “Best Directing,” as Luna said in Spanish, in a limited series.
Regardless of its provocative qualities—in our interview, Garcia Bernal cited Donald Trump’s divisive rhetoric on immigration as motivation—the speech was also a sly promotion. As noted in much of the subsequent coverage, the two actors have their own limited series premiering on October 9, The machineHulu’s first original production in Spanish.
Friends since they were children in Mexico City, Garcia Bernal, 45 years old, and Moon44, are indelibly linked, largely through their roles in the Alfonso Cuarón film And your mom too (2002), in which they played best friends from different social classes on a road trip that would change their lives.
But they have not appeared together on screen very often. The next time it was like rival brothers caught between soccer and music in Rude and Corny (2009), by Carlos Cuarón, and then once again with Will Ferrell in my father’s house (2012).
In the machine, Garcia Bernal plays the veteran boxer Stephen. (The title refers to Esteban’s nickname, The Machine). Moonunder heavy prosthetics and a spray tan, plays his sleazy manager, best friend, and plastic surgery obsessive, Andy. Back at the top after winning a big fight, the two are threatened by a criminal organization, which tells them that Esteban has to lose on purpose in his next fight or they will both die.
The series arrives more than a decade after Garcia Bernal and Moon, who are also executive producers, conceived it for the first time, originally in film form and later as a series.
“It’s hard to understand its genesis very well because it’s unlike anything we’ve done before,” he said. Moon. “But it has that interest in putting us together again as actors in a project that once again touches on issues that have to do with brotherhood and with our context, which is Mexico. Boxing there becomes a very useful tool.”
In person, Moon seems to be the most judicious complement of Garcia Bernalwho tends to irreverence. They spoke in Spanish, which allowed for spicy double entenders (known in Mexico as albures) and subtle displays of sincerity, not all of them translatable; their jokes reflected a lifetime of shared setbacks and triumphs.
Witnessing them together was like attending a long-lasting gathering. These are edited excerpts from the conversation.
The last time they performed together was in my father’s house. It’s hard to believe no one has offered them anything together since then.
GAEL GARCÍA BERNAL: There have been rare situations where they tell us, “I just thought of a story. It would be great if you and Diego acted it.” As if it were a new idea. Only the one who could have it like this instantly would be Alfonso or The fat man Del Toro (filmmaker Guillermo del Toro), for example. But the truth is that no one has called us to work together. No?
DIEGO MOON: Well, I do…
GARCIA BERNAL: “I did take you out of star wars”, he was going to say.
MOON : Yes, they told me, but I told them that your beard wasn’t growing, that you weren’t right for that character.
GARCIA BERNAL: It was not good for them ewoks (laughs).
—How did it come about The machine?—
MOON: More than 10 years ago we said, “Hey, we need to do something together again. But now we are going to do it and put it into action.” I had made a documentary about Julio César Chávez in 2007 and Gael had been training boxing for a long time, and boxing emerged as a space where this could happen. We wrote a script with Julián Herbert, a wonderful Mexican writer, thinking of it as a film first. (The final script is based on a story by García Bernal, Herbert, Luna and Monika Revilla).
Time passed and other things happened to us and we started doing other projects. Then we came back to the idea as a series. We sat down with Searchlight, and then Hulu decides to be the studio to produce it.
GARCIA BERNAL: We did it among our friends. It was divine to arrive on a set where you know everyone except the new people, because well, we are already in another older generation. Then there were people who told me: “I grew up watching your movies” (fakes an awkward laugh).
MOON: We’ve been working together for a quarter of a century!
—Diego, where does your love for boxing come from?—
MOON: I started to really like boxing when I was a child through the story of Julio César Chávez. We would meet at my uncles’ house or at grandpa’s house to watch their fights. Boxing is also hypnotic, a spectacle that is difficult to stop watching. Then I started to see boxing through cinematography. Curiously, the first time I went to live boxing in Las Vegas I saw the fight sitting next to Julio César Chávez. That is also where the documentary was born and part of the reason for my involvement with The Machine.
—Where did the idea come from to make Andy someone who has had too much plastic surgery?—
MOON: The exact genesis cannot be shared, but the reason comes from the height of the transformation that makes evident the discomfort we have with ourselves and our appearance. We don’t realize how much we are overexposed to the camera. They have become a tool present at all times to tell us about our lives through social networks. But when you see what people do to themselves you say: “How sad.” Andy is a character who is destined to be behind a more popular person, and there is an implicit envy in his wanting to appear.
—How have you maintained such a close friendship over the years?—
MOON : A little while ago I tried to articulate it and I’m going to say it in Spanish and it will be easier. I think the easiest thing would be to tell you that “it is a daily decision to work on our friendship.”
GARCIA BERNAL: Or like: “The plant is watered every day” (laughs).
MOON: But it is simply something we cannot give up. I don’t want to, but even if I wanted to I couldn’t. That’s the great thing. Friendship relationships can sometimes be very intense. Sometimes you need space. Sometimes you confront yourself. And everything has happened to ours and yet we are still there. We continue because there is a deep bond of which I believe we have already lost control.
Even if we wanted to avoid it, life wouldn’t let us. And it is because it is something so profound that I believe it was founded from the love that our mothers had for each other, which in some way they inherited from us.
—If you weren’t actors who have worked together, would you still be such friends?—
GARCIA BERNAL: Our friendship would have been different, but I think so.
MOON: I think we would probably be more friends. Because we are more like brothers.
—What is the best advice you have given to others?—
GARCIA BERNAL: There is one that came to mind very quickly, but it was from other times.
MOON: And does it have to do with romance?
GARCIA BERNAL: Yeah!
MOON : (Laughs) It didn’t help you at all.
GARCIA BERNAL: It was not taken into account.
MOON: With his example, Gael has shown me the importance and implications of involvement in anything. He hasn’t told me. He has shown me with how he makes his decisions. That is something that little by little I have been applying in my life.
GARCIA BERNAL: Diego is one of the few people who makes me change my mind. When we exchange or I have an idea, talking about it with him helps me see it from another perspective and always for the better.
MOON : How beautiful!
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