When asked in a new profile for Vanity Fair how an accomplished Mexican actor with indie cred ended up in Disney’s Star Wars machine, Diego Luna’s answer is more or less that it was because he was an accomplished Mexican actor with indie cred. He had a meeting with Rogue One director Gareth Edwards, and Edwards “told me that he wanted to make a very particular Star Wars movie, with a different style of acting and hyperrealistic tone bordering on naturalism,” Luna explains. “He wanted to create something that was close to being almost like a documentary in its tone. ‘I want them to improvise, to take over the characters, the dynamics between them. I’d love to feel like I’m watching something like Y Tu Mamá También,’ he told us. At that moment I thought, Well, maybe this is a role for me.”
Of course, Luna is also a major Star Wars fan (Let Diego Luna Touch Jabba The Hut!!!), so that helped too. But Y Tu Mamá También, directed by Alfonso Cuarón and co-starring his friend and future production partner Gael García Bernal, is still the cornerstone of his career. He remains appreciative of that breakout role, because “I think Y Tu Mamá También remains one of the best films I’ve ever made,” he says. “I was lucky to be able to make it in my own country, with my best friend, and with an incredible director. Also, even though I was already known in Mexico and had been working there for years, it was the moment when my career took off.”
He continues, “We went to Venice, then to San Sebastian. It was a very crazy year, but it was definitely the moment when things changed. Also, Alfonso Cuarón played a fundamental part in helping me understand the medium. He taught me to see cinema in a different way, and sparked in me, for the first time, a need to experiment with directing and to start producing films too. It was the beginning of a journey that has brought me to where I am today.”
Y Tu Mamá También brought him to his biggest film ever, Rogue One, and “After the success of Rogue One I thought that from that moment on I could do whatever I wanted…and, well, no,” Luna admits good-naturedly. However, with the prequel series Andor, which “talks about social issues that have always concerned me,” Luna learned “that you can push smaller projects and allow them to grow without setting any limits on them.”
