Javier Bardem and Diego Luna first met 26 years ago on the set of Julian Schnabel’s film “Before Night Falls,” and since then, both have risen to become titans of Spanish-language cinema — and TV stars too. On the true-crime drama “Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story,” Bardem plays the hard-driving, possibly abusive father of two young men desperate to break free of his control. (The sons kill him and their mother, played by Chloë Sevigny, and the parents are seen in flashback.) Luna plays a more heroic role, as a thief with a burgeoning political conscience driven to fight the Galactic Empire in the “Star Wars” extension “Andor.”
Javier Bardem: You are a “Star Wars” hero, man. How do you feel?
Diego Luna: I must confess, it feels cool. I grew up watching “Star Wars.” We did “Andor” like in the old days — interacting with droids and machines voiced by an actor through a speaker. [They’re] these wonderful creatures, [and so are the] people working behind the scenes to move them. It’s a kid’s dream. No green screens. It’s moviemaking.
Bardem: You know that you’re not going to be called back for reshoots — there are no sets.
Luna: Exactly. At the same time, it has a feeling of everything is from a galaxy far, far away.
Bardem: It must be helpful to be surrounded by things that remind you you’re not in this world.
Luna: The idea of this show is that we tell the story of regular people. There are no Jedis. You’re in their kitchens and living rooms. You see how they nap. This is about the regular life of people in an extraordinary moment. But there are rules: No shoelaces. No buttons. The jackets just close. I got to wear a cape.
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When I was 13, doing theater and TV in Mexico, it was through your work that I realized that cinema was an option for me.
Bardem: I love you, my friend. I admire you so much for everything you do as an actor, producer and a man. How lucky are we that we are here almost 30 years after “Before Night Falls,” which was my first job in English and one of your first jobs?
Luna: I couldn’t call [my dialogue] English.
Bardem: I know what you’re talking about. We both have the same problem. Your instincts are not in English. I’m less shy in English. In Spanish, I feel like I can’t hide myself. In English, I can.
Luna: I don’t feel that way. I am too self-aware of my limits in English. For José Menendez, how did playing this character become part of your life?
Bardem: I had the greatest time.
Luna: How is that possible?
Bardem: I was not familiar with this story. It was very powerful here in the States but not in Europe. There is a secret rule for actors to not play pedophiles. I asked Ryan Murphy how he would deal with this, because I can’t play any scene with a minor in a room. I can go with a cattle gun killing people in “No Country for Old Men,” but this thing? He said we didn’t have to go there, and he didn’t want to either.
There are four people who know what happened [in real life]. Two of them are dead, and two of them are in prison. That’s interesting, because I play a character you’re supposed to think is capable of such an atrocity, but at the same time we don’t know if he really did it.
Luna: I watched and said, “Holy shit. How much can be hidden in this big personality, one that fills the room, always putting on an act? What’s hiding behind?” It made me think about many people I know.
Bardem: It’s a type of machismo that we know because of [where] we come from. Playing José Menendez really put me in contact with what it meant to be a man educated with the wrong values towards women and themselves. I saw traces of my own education — being raised up in certain stereotypes of what it meant to be a man. In my case, I was blessed by being raised by my mother more than my father, and that was a lifesaver. She was a fighter. She was always her voice and her face in front of everybody for women’s rights and for labor’s rights, and she was an advocate for many causes. And I saw that like, “OK, that is correct.”
From Variety US