After a billion dollar movie and a two-season show that has redefined the genre, it’s hard to imagine Diego Luna as anything other than an engrossing protagonist and hero (albeit one prepared to do the darkest things) but in the years of his career prior to Rogue One, the range of roles offered to him were far more limited, as he explains to the The Hollywood Reporter’s drama actors roundtable alongside Jeffrey Wright, Walton Goggins, Adam Scott, Cooper Koch, and Eddie Redmayne.
“Before Star Wars, the only projects I’d get offered would be drug dealers, and then I could be the nice drug dealer and not the vicious one but still a drug dealer.”
“Because the system wasn’t even sending messages of, like, ‘Yes, you could find a way to be yourself and still work in those projects that you’re looking at and hoping to see yourself reflected in,'” Luna continued. “But I do think that’s changed, and the middleman between the audience and us is not there anymore. There’s no guy with a cigar saying, ‘You! You’re gonna be a star, boy.'”
Luna added, “People just click now, and suddenly it’s like, ‘Shit, they’re watching a Mexican show.’ You can be as far away as you can from the system, and the system will go and search for you if there’s a need to hear your story.”
