Were it not for COVID-19, Diego Luna would still be making the rounds on late night talk shows all over the world promoting Narcos: Mexico. The second season of the Netflix drama premiered on February 13 and proved to be the darkest yet. So while we got Luna’s very funny anecdote about his seeming adoration for Jabba the Hutt on the Tonight Show in early March, we’ve had to do with less Luna press since. Thankfully, his most recent live-streamed interview with IndieWire is chock full of tidbits — and deserves to be watched in full.
Ostensibly a chat with IndieWire chief critic and executive editor Eric Koh about Luna’s projects (including the upcoming Rogue One Disney+ spin-off series: “I can’t really talk about it”), the interview opened with a candid revelation: his kids had just gotten over the Coronavirus.
“I want to start by saying this, it’s why I look so happy in such weird times, my kids had the virus long ago and they just were allowed to come home,” he shared from his home in Mexico City. “They’re immune now, they’re in the next stage. Yesterday was the first night they slept here and life has changed dramatically for me.”
And even as he shared a devastating confession about whether we’d see more of him soon in Narcos: Mexico — “Not for now, not for now, no, no, no,” he said, “I need rest, those two years were really intense for me” — he constantly pivoted the conversation to discuss how Mexico’s socioeconomic situation makes dealing with COVID-19 a lot more difficult.
“You’re talking about a country where poverty is huge, where inequality is huge, where the gap between those who have and those who don’t is humungous,” he said. “There’s a big chunk of the population who can’t even think about staying home. Because that wouldn’t be called surviving.”
He singled out the country’s rampant gender violence. “What happens with domestic violence? It’s another thing we don’t think about enough: How can you tell those families to stay confined? How can you tell that daughter, that wife, to stay home if the aggressor is there?”
Elsewhere, the actor discussed the country’s low wages, the impact the Coronavirus is having on small businesses and yes, even what he’s been binge-watching during self-isolation.
Narcos: Mexico is now streaming on Netflix.