Peacock’s Original Series “The Resort” – Interview by Rafy Mediavilla w/ actress Gabriela Cartol & actor Luis Gerardo Méndez. Where we spoke about the ever changing story, their characters, and the impact of diversity and inclusivity in the Hollywood. Out Now!
A multi-generational, coming-of-age love story disguised as a fast-paced mystery about the disappointment of time. An anniversary trip puts a marriage to the test when the couple finds themselves embroiled in one of the Mayan Riviera’s most bizarre unsolved mysteries that took place fifteen years prior.
Criticólogos:
We are coming to you from San Juan, Puerto Rico, so I wonder, what was it about this project that told you besides coming to Puerto Rico that you said I have to do it?
Gabriela Cartol:
Of course, Puerto Rico was a hooker. You know, I was like, yeah, I’m there. Thank you to everything the creative part did the team, the cast, the story of course, and the challenge of being able to act in English and Spanish. That was really, really attractive to me. And also this story that has no like it could it. If it’s not obvious, you don’t know which road it’s going to end up in. So that’s one of the things that attracted me the most relief.
Luis Gerardo Méndez:
I loved the Palm Springs, the first the movie that Mr. Andy Siara, our showrunner, did. I never. I haven’t left that much in in years when I saw that movie. And I also was a huge fan of Mr. Robot and Homecoming, all the shows the producers did before. So all the ingredients were good. But when I read the scripts, I was screaming. I was screaming while I was reading them. I was like, Oh, my God, this show is so unique. It’s so smart, and it’s you never know what the show is about.
It’s changing all the time. And when I saw it on the screen, I realized it was the same thing. Like, the show is always mutating into something different. And that’s fascinating when I’m watching a show and I know what’s going to happen. I lost the interest there, the interest immediately. And this is changing all the time. And I think, yeah, it made me scream to the screen the way I scream to the pages in the first place. So I think that’s a good sign.
Criticólogos:
Baltazar is such a mystery guy, I wonder, because you’re not like that. So who were you channeling to create that aura? I felt something from the Pirates period. There’s so many things that I saw when you were creating Baltazar as a character, who where the inspiration for the character?
Luis Gerardo Méndez:
I mean, it’s a mystery. It’s a mix of a lot of stuff. You know, like I was working on a lot about these really rich people. Well, they really rich people. They’re always not always. But most of the time they’re a shady you know, they’re like really powerful families are shady as hell because they need to deal with a lot of things. They need to keep themselves in power. And sometimes to keep yourself in power, you need to destroy your opponents on or destroy your the other competition badly that you know, and that makes them do shady stuff. So I think that was in a way there, but also just, you know, like we were just playing, throwing clues to the audience, misleading clues all the time to never know what really happened. I mean, they’re going to know at the end of the show what really happened. But these characters as this show are never the thing you think they are.
Criticólogos:
I want to talk about how important is for you guys how Hollywood is moving on how we the Hispanics, latinos, are finally getting to recognize. We are getting the recognition we work so hard for, fighting for diversity, we are getting placed in the roles that we deserve for who we represent. How do you feel that we’ve finally seen Hollywood moving in this direction?
Gabriela Cartol:
I think it’s a great, exciting era, to be honest, to be an actor and an actress, you know, and for this diversity and for these opportunities that now are opening up for us as Latinos and I, I do believe that if you get there, then you set a path for someone else to get here. So that’s one of the most things that excites me about about it. Like when I when I decided to be an actress, it was really important to me to see someone that looks like me, you know, on screen, because it made me think if. There isn’t a place for me there. So I think that’s the importance of representation. You do exist and you do matter.
Luis Gerardo Méndez:
Yeah, but I also think, especially with this show, with The Resort, what I love about the representation is about how specific it is. You know, like my character, for example, is this rich kid from Yucatan who has this very specific accent of the people in Yucatan, you know, like. And the only way of being these are specific talking about the Maya sun ruins and there’s not this the only way of doing that is hire hiring Mexican writers, you know, like Latino writers to write these stories that it’s like.
And this year I had Manuel Alcala and Maria Vargas in the writers room. And that’s why this feels so tempting, you know, because if you have an American writer that has never been to loom or to the Riviera, maya, writing about this place is just going to be old cliches and commonplace as you’ve seen before. You know, like you need to have local people like, like people that actually know the culture to write these stories because otherwise it’s empty, you know? And that’s I think that’s now I think the thing now is not about representation. It’s also about what kind of representation.
See the interview below:
Trailer: