Texan actor Raúl Castillo premieres ‘Cha Cha Real Smooth,’ on Apple TV+

Mexico City — Texas actor Raúl Castillo enjoyed playing a complicated love story in Cha Cha Real Smoothbecause he himself has been through similar situations.

Also read: Review of the film ‘The Father of the Bride’, with a strong Latin accent

The film, directed, written by and starring American filmmaker Cooper Raiff, follows Andrew, a young man in the midst of an existential crisis after graduating from college who works as a bar mitzvah entertainer and falls in love with Domino, a single mother played by Dakota Johnson. The problem is that she is engaged to Joseph, a successful lawyer played by Castillo.

“Love is not something black and white, it’s something complicated,” said the actor of Mexican origin in a recent interview by video call from New York, where the film was presented at the Tribeca Film Festival prior to its premiere on Apple TV + on Friday. . “I think that’s life, life is not black and white, it’s more gray and I love stories like that.”

Castillo, whose parents are originally from Reynosa, Tamaulipas, was born in McAllen, Texas. He might not have been born on the other side of the border had it not been for a stroke of luck from his grandmother.

“My grandmother won a lottery many years ago and with that money she bought several trucks for my grandfather and sent my father to study in Laredo, Texas,” he said.

Although he grew up and studied in the United States, Castillo kept in touch with his family in Mexico and, in the middle of last year, he had the opportunity to film the movie “Cassandro” with Gael García Bernal on Mexican soil, about an amateur wrestler from El Step, Texas. The film, directed by Roger Ross Williams, will soon be released on Amazon.

The 44-year-old actor started acting as a teenager, when he was a shy student and thought it would help him attract girls. Over the years, theater became his passion and he studied playwriting at Boston University. He shot his first short film when he was about 22 years old and fell in love with cameras ever since. His credits include Army of the Dead, We the Animals y Knives Out.

In the case of Cha Cha Real SmoothRaiff’s second feature film after Shithousewhat attracted Castillo was the script and his character, in addition to the fact that he quite liked the director’s first film when he saw it at the South By Southwest festival, where it won the jury prize.

During the pandemic they worked together remotely to create Joseph’s biography.

“Cooper is very collaborative and he let me be creative,” the actor said. “He and I talked a lot about the character, about his ‘backstory’, about who he was before he met the character of Dakota, and he helped me bring her more to life than was in the script.”

Even though Joseph has Latino features, it’s not something the script dwells on.

“We never say that he is Latino, it is never mentioned in the project. I loved that, that he was just a lawyer named Joseph and that is all we know about him in terms of his culture, ”said Castillo, who also acts as a lawyer in the Adam Sandler film. Hustlerecently released on Netflix.

“I love that I have two projects in which I play the role of a lawyer without a beard, because I always make characters with a beard,” he added with a smile. “My mom is delighted that I go out like this in the suit, without a beard and with short hair.”

Domino, the character played by Johnson, keeps her relationship with Joseph at a distance and does not seem very convinced of the turn her life will take if she marries him. But when they manage to be together they get along.

For Castillo, one of the keys to having chemistry with her was that they first filmed the last scene they had together.

“I don’t want to give the spoiler, but the last scene is very sweet,” he said.

It also helped him meet Ro Donnelly, Johnson’s partner at TeaTime Pictures (one of the film’s producers), as he felt comfortable knowing it was their project.

“As producers, they were very supportive of Cooper as a really young and early-career director. I think that there they, as more veterans, were guiding him, “said Castillo. “I saw how they supported him and guided him and that really caught my attention and gave me a lot of confidence.”

The film was filmed in Pittsburgh and premiered in January at the Sundance Film Festival virtually due to the pandemic, but it generated enough buzz and was acquired by Apple.

As for experiences similar to Andrew’s, Castillo had a seemingly impossible to pin down platonic love story.

“I knew from the first time I saw her, from the moment I met her, that I loved her very much, immediately,” said the actor. “It was like two years that we were friends and there was that tension. And since we were both in another stage of our lives and it was already the right time, it was a very nice experience to get engaged, ”he added about how he started the relationship with his girlfriend, with whom he has been with for nine years. .

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