In ‘La Máquina,’ Gael García Bernal and Diego Luna Get a Rematch
For their first screen roles together since 2012, the longtime friends undertook a Spanish-language series about a boxer who must fight for his life.
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Reporting from Los Angeles
Sitting cross-legged on the floor at the Château Marmont in Los Angeles, Gael García Bernal stared with admiration at his lifelong friend and fellow actor Diego Luna. Just the night before, they had walked onstage at the Peacock Theater and, as expected, presented the Emmy for best director of a limited or anthology series or TV movie.
Less expected, in a move they said wasn’t preapproved, they had given the award in Spanish.
“We were just told that the Emmys are losing a big chunk of its audience,” García Bernal told the crowd and the nearly 7 million live TV viewers. “So me and Diego decided to do something to push the limits, to erase the boundaries.”
Luna saluted the United States’ more than 50 million Spanish speakers. Then the award went to Steven Zaillian of “Ripley” — for “mejor dirección” in a limited series.
Whatever its provocative qualities — in our interview, García Bernal cited Donald Trump’s divisive immigration rhetoric as motivation — the speech was also a canny bit of promotion. As much of the ensuing coverage noted, the two actors have their own limited series coming on Oct. 9, “La Máquina,” Hulu’s first original Spanish-language production.
Friends since they were children in Mexico City, García Bernal, 45, and Luna, 44, are indelibly linked, not least because of their breakout roles in Alfonso Cuarón’s breakout film, “Y Tu Mamá También” (2002), in which they played best pals from different social classes on a life-changing road trip.
But they haven’t appeared together onscreen often. The next time was as rival brothers caught between soccer and music in Carlos Cuarón’s “Rudo y Cursi” (2009), and then once more with Will Ferrell in “Casa de Mi Padre” (2012).
In “La Máquina,” García Bernal plays the aging boxer Esteban. (The title refers to Esteban’s nickname, which means “the Machine.”) Luna, under heavy prosthetics and spray-on tanner, plays his sleazy manager, best friend and plastic-surgery obsessive, Andy. Back on top after winning a big fight, the two are threatened by a criminal organization, told that Esteban needs to throw his next match or both men will die.
The series arrives over a decade after García Bernal and Luna, who are also executive producers, first envisioned it, originally in the form of a movie and later as a series.
“It’s difficult to understand its genesis very well, because it’s unlike anything we’ve done before,” Luna said. “But it comes from an interest in putting us together again as actors, in a project that touches again on the themes of brotherhood in our Mexican context. And boxing becomes a very useful tool to do so.”
In person, Luna comes across as the more levelheaded complement to García Bernal, who tends toward irreverence. They spoke in Spanish, which allowed for raunchy double entendres (known in Mexico as albures) and subtle displays of sincerity, not all of it translatable; their banter reflected a lifetime of shared mishaps and triumphs.
Witnessing them together felt like dropping in on a hangout long in progress. These are edited excerpts from the translated conversation.
The last time you acted together was in “Casa de Mi Padre.” It’s difficult to believe no one has offered you anything together since.
GAEL GARCÍA BERNAL: There have been some strange situations when someone tells me, “I just thought of a story, and it would be great for you and Diego to act in it.” As if that were a new idea! We would instantly say yes only to people like Alfonso or el gordo del Toro [the filmmaker Guillermo del Toro]. But no one has actually called us to work together. Right?
DIEGO LUNA: I mean, I ——
GARCÍA BERNAL: He was about to say, “I asked them not to put you in ‘Star Wars.’”
LUNA: They did ask me if they should put you in “Star Wars,” but I told them that you couldn’t grow a beard and that you weren’t right for the character.
GARCÍA BERNAL: I wasn’t right to play one of the Ewoks. [Laughs.]
So how did “La Máquina” come about?
LUNA: More than 10 years ago we said: “Hey, we need to do something together again. But now we are going to create it and put it into action ourselves.” I had made a documentary about the boxer Julio César Chávez in 2007, and Gael had been training in boxing for a long time, so boxing came out as a space where this could happen. We wrote a script with Julián Herbert, an amazing Mexican writer, thinking about it as a film at 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 did other projects. Then we came back to this idea thinking about doing it as a series. We sat down with Searchlight, and then Hulu decided to be the studio to produce it.
GARCÍA BERNAL: We did this with friends. It was lovely to be on a set where you know everyone — except for the younger people, since we are now the older generation. Some of them would tell me, “I grew up watching your movies.” [Pretends to laugh awkwardly.]
LUNA: We’ve been working together for a quarter-century!
Diego, where did your love for boxing come from?
LUNA: 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 my grandfather’s house to watch his fights. Boxing is hypnotic, a spectacle that is difficult to stop watching. Then I began to see boxing through cinema. Curiously, the first time I went to see live boxing in Las Vegas, I saw the fight sitting next to Julio César Chávez. This is also where the documentary I made about him was born and, in part, the reason for my involvement with “La Máquina.”
Where did the idea come from to make Andy someone who has gotten too much plastic surgery?
LUNA: We can’t share exactly where, but the “why” comes from how the surge in these transformations make evident the discomfort we have with ourselves and with our appearance. We often don’t realize how overexposed we are to cameras. They have become an ever-present tool to narrate our lives through social media. But when you look at what people do to themselves, you think, Oh, that’s so sad. Andy is destined to be in the shadow of someone who’s more popular, and there’s implicit envy in how he tries to be noticed.
How have you maintained such a close friendship throughout the years?
LUNA: I recently tried to articulate this, but now that I’m going to say it in Spanish, it’ll be easier. It would be easy to tell you, “It’s a daily decision to work on our friendship.”
GARCÍA BERNAL: Or, “You have to water the plant every day.” [Laughs].
LUNA: But it’s simply something neither of us can give up. I don’t want to, but even if I wanted to, I wouldn’t be able to. That’s what’s badass about it. Friendships can sometimes be very intense. Sometimes you need space. Sometimes you confront each other. And all of that has happened to our friendship, and yet we are still here. Because ours is a profound bond of which we’ve lost control.
Even if we tried to avoid each other, life would say, “No chance, dude.” And that’s because this bond was forged by the love that our mothers had for each other. In a way, we inherited their friendship.
If you weren’t both actors who have worked together, would you still be such close friends?
GARCÍA BERNAL: It would be different, but I think so.
LUNA: I think we would be more like friends in that case. We are now closer to brothers.
What’s the best advice you have given each other?
GARCÍA BERNAL: There is one thing that came to mind right away, but it’s from a different time in our lives.
LUNA: Did it have to do with romance?
GARCÍA BERNAL: Yes!
LUNA: [Laughs]. I don’t think it helped you at all.
GARCÍA BERNAL: I didn’t much take it into account.
LUNA: Through his example, Gael has showed me the importance of understanding the implications of getting involved in anything. He hasn’t told me; he has shown me in the decisions he makes. That’s something that little by little I’ve applied to my life.
GARCÍA BERNAL: Diego is one of the few people who can make me change my mind. Talking about my ideas with him helps me see them from a different angle. Always for the better.
LUNA: That’s beautiful!
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