At the 2023 Sundance Film Festival to promote his new Amazon Studios film “Cassandro,” Gael García Bernal is excited for his fans to see a story about a gay athlete that was embraced by the macho world of Mexican lucha libre when he decided to take on a more flamboyant persona.
“A character like Cassandro is so much more fun than just being a straight up superhero character, behind the mask,” said the Mexican actor during an interview inside the IndieWire Studio at Sundance, presented by Dropbox. The Roger Ross Williams film tells the true story of the first exótico wrestler to start winning matches and become a fan favorite on the lucha libre circuit in the 1980s.
Speaking to the arc of his character, whose real name was Saúl Armendáriz, García said, “He plays a character [Cassandro] in order to find out who he wants to be. . . I hope that people come out of this thinking ‘Ok, we can always make an act, and we can always portray some other character, and we can always reinvent ourselves, and there is a potential for that.’ And we don’t need to have a definition of who we are because that’s just unnatural.”
All that said, García is still in the business of playing superheroes, having just starred as the titular “Werewolf by Night” in a Marvel Studios Halloween special on Disney+. Though the actor does not know what’s next for him in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, García did tease that he may know what’s up next for his longtime friend and “Y Tu Mamá También” co-star Diego Luna in Season 2 of his Star Wars series “Andor.” Comparing their conversations about being part of Disney’s two biggest franchises to kids playing “I’ll show you mine if you show me yours,” García said “I know certain things, but the other thing is [to] remember that actors are the last ones to know what’s going on.” He also joked, “Maybe Diego knows better what will happen with my character in Marvel.”
“Cassandro” premiered at the 2023 Sundance Film Festival. Amazon Prime Video will release it later this year.