Diego Luna says Hollywood only offered drug dealer roles before ‘Star Wars'

Diego Luna revealed his personal experiences with Latinx typecasting in Hollywood prior to taking on the Empire in 'Rogue One: A Star Wars Story.'
During an installment of the Hollywood Reporter's roundtable interview series, 'Off Script,' the Mexican star of the Emmy-nominated series 'Andor' revealed he was only offered drug dealer roles before he hyper-sped his way into a galaxy far, far away.
'Before 'Star Wars,' the only projects I'd get offered would be [about] drug dealers,' Luna said during the discussion, which included fellow drama actors Walton Goggins and Adam Scott. 'I could be the nice drug dealer and not the vicious one, but still a drug dealer.'
The Golden Globe-nominated actor has been acting since he was a child in his native country of Mexico. He starred in various telenovelas during the 1990s before making his cinematic breakthrough in 2001 with Alfonso Cuarón's Oscar-nominated film, 'Y Tu Mamá También.'
Luna would later appear in English-language films, such as Steven Spielberg's 2004 movie 'The Terminal' with Tom Hanks, as well as 'Dirty Dancing: Havana Nights,' in which Luna played the main love interest. He eventually starred in Netflix's cartel TV series, 'Narcos: Mexico,' as Miguel Ángel Félix Gallardo, a founder of the Guadalajara Cartel.
Luna added that Hollywood productions were not 'sending messages' that he could be himself in projects where he could see himself reflected in the roles. 'I remember being asked, 'Are you going to clean up your accent?' That's not part of the conversation anymore,' he said. 'But when I was 20, it was like, 'Man, you're great, and if you work with your accent, you'll be doing what this person or that person is doing.' And you go, 'Why would I like to do that? This is what makes me unique.''
Luna's presence in American productions has arguably helped increase the small percentage of Latinx representation in Hollywood; according to a 2023 report from the USC Annenberg Inclusion Initiative, Latinx people represent 19% of the U.S. population, but they only account for 4.4% of actors in lead or co-lead roles. And when they do appear on screen, the study revealed, they tend to depict people who are immigrants and living in poverty, as well as characters that skew violent, angry and criminal.
In February, Netflix committed $1 billion in Mexico productions of series and films, in hopes of creating opportunities for Latinx people nationwide, according to the Hollywood Reporter.
'This investment, and the productions derived therefrom, will benefit Mexican production companies and will contribute to the growth of the local audiovisual industry,' said Ted Sarandos, co-CEO of Netflix, during the press conference announcing the investment.

Try Our AI Features

Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:

Learn with AIFact CheckingText to SpeechAI Summary

Related Articles

Yahoo

an hour ago

• Yahoo

‘Outer Banks' rolls on final season, Academy Museum details ‘Jaws' exhibit, and more of today's top stories

Gold Derby's for June 20, 2025. Filming on the fifth and final season of the Netflix teen treasure hunt drama has officially begun in Charleston, S.C. Series regulars Chase Stokes, Madelyn Cline, Madison Bailey, Jonathan Daviss, Drew Starkey, Carlacia Grant, Austin North, and Fiona Palomo are all returning, while Tony Crane and Cullen Moss have been upped to regulars. Season 5 of Outer Banks is expected to hit Netflix sometime next year. More from GoldDerby Will '28 Years Later' take a bite out of 'Elio'? Will 'Dragon' continue to soar? Here's our box-office prediction 'Jaws' turns 50: Steven Spielberg's caught-on-camera Oscar snub still smarts - and shows need for Best Director reform All the 'Abbott Elementary' Season 4 Emmy predictions, including those 'Sunny' guest stars The Academy Museum of Motion Pictures has revealed some exciting details about its upcoming Jaws exhibit to commemorate the film's 50th anniversary. Spanning six galleries, the collection will feature a number of artifacts from the actual shoot, including zoom lens used for the iconic shot of Chief Brody on the beach, as well as several recreations of memorable locations, such as the dunes from the opening sequence. Jaws: The Exhibition will open on Sept. 14 and run through July 26, 2026. The Television Publicity Executive Committee revealed its list of honorees for 2025, which included The Pitt for Campaign of the Year, Lioness for Returning Drama Series, and Only Murders in the Building for Returning Comedy Series. The shows were awarded alongside CBS publicist Chris Ender, who received the Ben Halpern Lifetime Achievement Award. Elba, a one-time recipient of an art grant from the King's Trust, is teaming with Charles III on a documentary about the program the royal founded in 1976 to help with vulnerable youth. Netflix will release the film in Fall 2026. Best of GoldDerby Everything to know about 'The Pitt' Season 2 Adam Brody, Seth Rogen, Jason Segel, and the best of our Emmy Comedy Actor interviews Kristen Bell, Tina Fey, Bridget Everett, and the best of our Emmy Comedy Actress interviews Click here to read the full article.

Newsweek

an hour ago

• Newsweek

'Toxic Avenger' Reboot Trailer Shows Best Look at Peter Dinklage's Toxie

Based on facts, either observed and verified firsthand by the reporter, or reported and verified from knowledgeable sources. Newsweek AI is in beta. Translations may contain inaccuracies—please refer to the original content. Entertainment gossip and news from Newsweek's network of contributors The red band trailer for "The Toxic Avenger" reboot is here and it gives us our best look yet at Peter Dinklage as Toxie, the eponymous hero. It also delivers plenty of dark laughs and gore. You can watch the trailer below. Read More: Ryan Reynolds' 'Dragon's Lair' Netflix Movie Recruits 'Muppets' Director The official synopsis for "The Toxic Avenger" reads, "When a downtrodden janitor, Winston Gooze, is exposed to a catastrophic toxic accident, he's transformed into a new kind of hero: The Toxic Avenger." "Now, Toxie must rise from outcast to savior, taking on ruthless corporate overlords and corrupt forces who threaten his son, his friends, and his community. In a world where greed runs rampant... justice is best served radioactive." Toxie in "The Toxic Avenger". Toxie in "The Toxic Avenger". Troma Entertainment Inc. While Dinklage provides the voice for Toxie, Luisa Guerreiro does the body work for the toxic superhero. Speaking about the new Toxie suit, filmmaker Macon Blair said, "The goal was to try to stay true to the vibe of Lloyd's original Jennifer Aspinall/Mitch Cohen creature, with some influence from the 'Toxic Crusaders' cartoon's look, while also trying to do something new and weird and lovable with Toxie's design. I love what Millenium FX did with it — part human, part mutant, all heart." Taylour Paige plays JJ Doherty in the film, an investigative journalist who is looking to expose the company Gooze works for and bring them to justice. Jacob Tremblay plays Winston's stepson, Wade. Kevin Bacon plays chemical industrialist Bob Garbinger while Elijah Wood plays his younger brother, Fritz. Macon Blair, who wrote and directed "The Toxic Avenger" reboot, previously collaborated with Wood on his feature directorial debut, 2017's "I Don't Feel at Home in This World Anymore." The reboot has been in the works for over a decade, but thankfully for Troma fans, things have changed since development began. The plan was originally to turn the "Toxic Avenger" reboot into a PG-13 action comedy. Blair has instead stuck to the splatter spirit of the original. "The Toxic Avenger" hits theaters on August 29. The film is written and directed by Macon Blair. "The Toxic Avenger" stars Peter Dinklage, Luisa Guerreiro, Jacob Tremblay, Taylour Paige, Kevin Bacon, Elijah Wood and Jane Levy. More Movies: Blumhouse Buys Rights to 'Saw' Franchise Jeremy Allen White Transforms Into Bruce Springsteen in Biopic First Look

Atlantic

an hour ago

• Atlantic

A Love Story That's Afraid of Romance

Modern dating, experts have lamented, has become a numbers game; the more matches you make, the more likely you are to land a mate. But in the new film Materialists, the only number that really matters is a suitor's net worth. Take Harry (played by Pedro Pascal), for example: He's a partner in a private-equity firm and the owner of a $12 million penthouse apartment in Manhattan. John (Chris Evans), meanwhile, lives paycheck to paycheck as an aspiring actor and part-time cater waiter who splits his rent with roommates. Between the two of them, Harry's the obvious 'unicorn'—the most desirable kind of bachelor, according to Lucy (Dakota Johnson), a professional matchmaker and the film's protagonist. Lucy sees dating as a marketplace of potential spouses whose worth is determined by their income as much as their looks. Never mind their interests or how they'd treat a partner; a guy like Harry is inherently more valuable than someone like John. Lucy isn't heartless. Rather, she sees herself as pragmatic about modern romance. Materialists, the writer-director Celine Song's follow-up to her sensitive Oscar-nominated feature, Past Lives, tracks Lucy as she finds matches for her clients, many of whom also think about future partners as commodities. The men tell her that they want women under a certain BMI and age; the women want men above a certain height and tax bracket. As amused as she might sometimes be by their demands, Lucy promises to introduce them to their 'grave buddy.' To her, finding love should be easy—it's just math, she likes to say—yet Lucy's own love life has remained stagnant. She asserts to anyone who asks that she'll either marry rich or die alone. This being a romantic dramedy, Lucy ends up in something of a love triangle anyway: She falls for Harry while harboring a lingering affection for John, who happens to be her ex. But her predicament isn't really about which suitor she'll choose; instead, she's caught between two versions of herself—the cash-strapped idealist who once pursued acting alongside John, and the polished working girl she's become. The core conflict of Materialists is similar to that of Past Lives, yet Song renders it less successfully here. Lucy's journey takes too many cynical turns to be satisfying, and the film's ideas are too scattershot to be convincing. Materialists falters most when it tries to mesh its competing aims: to deliver a throwback love story while also deconstructing the reality of modern dating. Instead, in the end, the film resembles the very world it tries to critique, offering a litany of observations about finding The One without ever substantially arguing for any of them. The film's glossy veneer of confidence, much like that of its lead, belies an uncertainty. Apart from some punchy dialogue probing the economy of marriage, its tale is shallow, with almost nonexistent stakes. John and Harry pose little challenge to Lucy's notions about partners needing to check each other's superficial boxes; both are handsome and smitten with her, and the disparity in their wealth never presents much of an obstacle for Lucy either. She had taken issue with John's poverty when they were together, as shown in a clunkily inserted flashback, but his finances are a mere asterisk to their present-day dynamic. Lucy is as thinly written as her suitors—a nod, maybe, to the threadbare profiles of app-fueled dating, but one that makes her a frustratingly inscrutable romantic lead. It doesn't help that Johnson, whose flat affect can be an asset in enigmatic dramas such as The Lost Daughter, isn't particularly believable as a woman with hang-ups about money. (If she's the provenance behind ' iPhone face ' in the misguided Netflix adaptation of Jane Austen's Persuasion, here she has what I call 'property-portfolio face.') The bigger problem, however, lies in Lucy's inelegant transformation from a skeptic about love to a wholehearted believer in it. When her most persistent client, Sophie (Zoë Winters), is sexually assaulted on a date, Sophie alternates between being furious at and grateful for Lucy, leaving the third act a confused mess. Although Winters captures Sophie's despair, her character gets compressed into a plot point and her arc produces a jarring shift in mood. Lucy's realization that she should, as Sophie advises her, treat her clients as more than 'merchandise' rings hollow as a result. Not to sound like someone still pining for an ex, but Materialists made me miss the work Song did in Past Lives. In that film, which followed a married woman yearning for the person she used to be after reconnecting with her childhood crush, Song used intimate specificity to unearth reflections about love—romantic, platonic, and otherwise. In Materialists, the director has essentially done the opposite: Her characters are mouthpieces for broad philosophies about connection, while their stories end up getting buried. The effect is a work that's tonally at odds with itself. Though Materialists is similarly packed with insightful monologues, it's heavy-handed in a way that Past Lives never was. Song bookends her latest with sappy scenes of prehistoric humans falling in love, and she injects flippancy into moments that call for sentimentality: When Lucy and Harry finally have a much-needed conversation, the script incorporates an absurd bit of physical comedy that undermines the poignancy of their heart-to-heart. There's much about Song's movie that I enjoyed. The fizzy sequences of Lucy meeting one client after the next, inspired by the director's own experience as a matchmaker, remind me of classics such as Broadcast News; they offer a glimpse into a gig that consumes a person whole. Besides, there's a real pleasure in seeing Hollywood stars fall for each other. But in trying to both critique and poke fun at the costs of modern love, Materialists never coheres into an emotionally potent tale. To put it in Lucy's terms: The film is beautiful and smart, and it clearly contains enough appeal to make it stand out in the marketplace. It's just no unicorn.