“Do people like ‘Narcos’ in the Philippines,” executive producer Eric Newman asked just before we started our series of roundtable interviews at Marina Bay Sands.
Since 2015, Netflix subscribers all over the world have been riveted by the tale of Pablo Escobar, the “gentlemen” of the Cali cartel, and the DEA agents who have made it their mission to take them down.
“Narcos: Mexico,” the fourth installment which premiered just over a week ago, is already getting praise from both critics and viewers. It’s just as addictive and thrilling as the previous seasons—maybe even more so. It takes the audience from Colombia to Mexico, back to the 1980s, during the birth of the Mexican drug war. “I grew up in that Mexico. I was born in ’79. I was really young when all of these happened but I do remember that Mexico,” said Diego Luna (“Y Tu Mama Tambien,” “Rogue One: A Star Wars Story”), who plays Felix Gallardo, the man responsible for the rise of the Guadalajara cartel.
Very complex
He describes Felix as “very complex” and “very different from anything I’ve ever played before,” adding, “The first thing you have to do as an actor is distance your moral standards and not judge the character and try to understand where his decisions come from. You have to try to find truth in what you’re doing in order to create a three-dimensional character and to humanize the character. That’s very important when you’re playing a guy who is well-known for doing so wrong to society.”
He found the violence a challenge, too. “I’m not a violent guy, I’ve never been in a fight. I like boxing but I suffer while I watch boxing. I’m like, ‘Oh no!’ And here, this guy is very violent.”
Michael Peña (“Crash,” “Ant-Man and the Wasp”) plays Kiki Camarena, a DEA agent who moved from California to Mexico in his desire to make a difference. To discover more about his character, Michael talked to Kiki’s wife and to James Kuykendall, a former DEA agent who worked with Kiki. “There was very little written on Kiki. There was a Time magazine article, there are a couple of books but they interviewed people who knew him, they never interviewed him himself… I had to rely on Mika and Jamie.”
It was important for Michael to figure out “what makes Kiki tick.” “What kind of person drives himself in danger to stop the bad guys, to stop what he sees? He was the kind of guy who couldn’t sleep at night knowing that something was happening outside. It was really refreshing to play somebody who very much knew his purpose and had a single drive.”
The gray areas
The Mexico painted in the series isn’t a pretty one. Diego said, “I’m not proud of this part of my history. I’m not proud at all… I live in a country that is at war, I live in a country where many people have died because of the reality we’re living, and to understand the present we need to revisit our past. ‘Narcos’ is not a TV series that you’re gonna go watch and say, “Oh, look, I love Mexico.” Gladly, there are all the other stories of Mexico. That beautiful Mexico is there. That culturally rich Mexico is there. One project cannot tell you everything about a country. It can tell you something specific about one story and this story, sadly, is a story no Mexican can be proud of.”
For Eric, it’s essential to humanize the characters in the show, even the “bad guys.” “If you watch the show, you see that these people meet horrible endings. They’re all dead or in jail. They’re also not particularly happy people. Now, could someone watch it and say, ‘Oh, he’s cool?’ There will be moments of that. Part of the great thing about the medium of television is that in 10 hours, 20 hours, you can get to know someone, their humanity, despite some of the inhuman things they do, which is very important. Our goal in the show is never to glorify but, at the same time, you have to humanize these people. We would be doing a greater disservice to the audience and to the world, to paint these men strictly as monsters.”
Diego said, “It’s not black and white. ‘Oh, there’s a good guy chasing a bad guy.’ This story lives in the gray areas, you know.”
Corrupted system
He added, “It’s not a story about a bad guy who created so much mess, it’s about a system, a corrupted system that allowed this to happen. And for this to happen, the involvement comes from politicians, police, military and there’s a market, obviously. As long as there’s a market, there’s someone feeding that market.”
The show is intense, both for the audience and the people who work on it. To take a break, Diego said, “I drink a lot of tequila and I get out of there and I go and experience the Mexico that I love because I believe it is there. I go out in my country and I enjoy my country. I have so many love stories there. I just have to leave on set that character and that story and I wander around the country that I love.”
“Narcos: Mexico” features a fantastic ensemble that includes Tenoch Huerta, Joaquin Cosio, Alyssa Diaz and Teresa Ruiz. Diego said, “The cast here is unbelievable. I’ve been working in cinema in that country all my life and I’ve never seen them all together. It’s like a dream team of Mexican film industry.”
Blown away
Michael said, “I just remember watching the rough cuts and I remember just being blown away because of these guys. The cast is fantastic. People are in for a real treat.”
If you haven’t seen a single episode of “Narcos,” you can actually start with “Narcos: Mexico.” “You can come in on season 4 and get the whole picture and also go back and watch 1, 2 and 3 and not miss anything,” said Eric.
Diego said, “We are not pretending to do a documentary. This is entertainment and people are going to get hooked on the story but I just wish this generates some curiosity in audiences to go a little deeper. Hopefully you see this series and get interested and dig a little more in history and go into the book and the documentaries and see what actually happened.”
“Narcos: Mexico” is now streaming on Netflix.
