VARIETY ‘Actors on Actors’: Javier Bardem and Diego Luna on MONSTERS, ANDOR and More

In a new conversation for VARIETY’s “Actors on Actors” issue, Javier Bardem and Diego Luna discuss Luna becoming a “Star Wars” hero, Bardem’s experience portraying José Menendez in “Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story,” presenting different selves in English and Spanish, and more. 

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Luna on becoming a “Star Wars” hero:

“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…At the same time, it has a feeling of everything is from a galaxy far, far away…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.”

Bardem on portraying José Menendez: 

“I had the greatest time…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…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.’”

Bardem and Luna on presenting as different selves in Spanish and English:

Bardem: “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.”

[Photo Credit: Peggy Sirota for Variety – Video Credit: Variety/YouTube]

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