When comedian Will Ferrell decided to make the comedy Casa de mi Padre as his first Spanish language film, he called upon one of Mexico’s finest exports, Gael Garcia Bernal, to play La Onza, the merciless druglord who plagues Ferrell’s naïve young rancher, Armando Alvarez, while also reuniting him with his childhood friend Diego Luna for the third time on screen since they first got attention with Alfonso Cuaron’s Y Tu Mama Tambien.
Bernal himself appeared in similar Telenovellas as the ones “Casa” spoofs as a child before breaking out in Alejandro Iñárritu’s 2000 debut Amores Perros and going on to work with some of Latin and South America’s top filmmakers including Cuaron, Walter Salles and Fernando Meirelles.
Recently, Bernal was pegged to join many great actors to don the mask of Zorro in the title role of 20th Century Fox’s reboot Zorro Reborn, which is sure to raise American awareness of Bernal even further.
ComingSoon.net had a chance to talk with Bernal last week and in the video interview below, you can hear us talk about:
* How he got involved with Will Ferrell’s spoof
* How he thought the Spanish translation was terrible
* Whether he changed the wording to make it sound more natural
* How they were able to improvise despite the language barrier
* The fun in playing such a bad guy and his inspiration for La Onza
* Whether he had to play the character seriously to make it work as comedy
* Reuniting with Diego Luna and how they decided together to be in the movie
* Talking about their work together in the past and future
* Our attempt at asking about Zorro Reborn falls short since Bernal says he knows nothing about the project, hasn’t read a script and only knew about it due to someone asking about it on a red carpet
And more!
