Gael García Bernal and Diego Luna’s scene-stealing chemistry is undeniable. The actors and friends, who go back a long way – even beyond their steamy performances in the 2001 film Y Tu Mamá También – have been told that their on-screen bromance is like magic.
The pair are at it again, this time co-creating and starring in the upcoming Hulu series La Máquinaabout an aging boxer in Mexico who wants to make a comeback after a devastating loss. Bernal and Luna have known each other since their childhood in Mexico City, and it shows.
That longstanding friendship is reflected on screen in the show, which premieres on October 9. In the streamer’s first Spanish-language original series, Bernal plays troubled boxer Esteban “La Máquina” (“The Machine”) Osuna, while Luna plays his best friend and looks-obsessed manager, Andy Lujan. (Luna’s prosthetics are almost their own character.)
“Everything that we take from our friendship just comes out in the work that we do,” Bernal told Yahoo Entertainment.
The Golden Globe winner added that he and Luna hit the “sweet spot” in terms of our combination of the personal relationship and our working relationship, because that’s how it manifests, in an unspoken kind, unspoken accuracy and also unspoken fun .”
La Máquina‘s showrunner, Marco Ramirez, agrees.
“Every time they’re on screen together, it’s basically beyond anything I could have ever planned or written because their chemistry is so human,” he told Yahoo Entertainment.
“They’re starting to do their own things with lines, improvising and expanding,” Ramirez said. ‘And the director, Gabriel [Ripstein]was very good at saying, ‘This is magic. All this preparation has led us to this magical six-minute moment.’”
Luna told Yahoo Entertainment that they know “what the other is thinking or going to do.”
That “doesn’t mean we don’t surprise each other,” he added.
“The communication is unique because I don’t have it with any other actor,” Luna explained, “and it makes every opportunity we get to perform together very special.”
La Máquina is a project that has been in the works for more than 15 years for the stars and executive producers, who also have their own production company in Mexico. The series marks the duo’s first on-screen reteaming since 2012 and their first series together.
Bernal explained that Luna had just completed the 2007 documentary JC Chavezabout Mexican boxer Julio César Chávez, and that he was training as a boxer when they talked about moving forward with a creative project about “our best sport.”
“We are in this world, like we know this world a little bit, we touched it, let’s do something with it,” he recalled when speaking to Luna, noting Mexico’s “rich boxing culture.”
While Luna says this is a very Mexican story, the couple and their team have taken steps to make the show more universal. Bernal’s “La Máquina” not only marks the end of his career, but he also lives with an amicable but failed marriage to journalist ex-wife Irasema (Eiza González), who is also the mother of their young children. Luna’s Andy struggles with maternal boundaries while also trying to become a father himself.
The couple also wanted to tackle growing older – an arguably appropriate topic for lifelong friends.
“We use boxing as a tool to talk about other, more universal issues that matter a lot today, namely how to grow older, how to say goodbye, how to learn to let go and how to receive what comes with excitement and not with the feeling of losing something,” Luna said. “That actually comes with age.”
Luna also admitted that he and Bernal ‘talk about what’s important to us’ La Máquinaand it was important to collaborate from the beginning on a project that was so personally meaningful.
“We think about things that are important in our lives,” he said. “We reflect on a context that we share, and it is a wonderful tool to actually set up a project with which we can say something together.”
La Máquina begins streaming October 9 on Hulu.
