For Adriana Paz and Luis Gerardo Méndez, Animals offered the chance to work with director Ben Affleck on a film they described as a “love letter to the relationship between Mexicans and people from the US.” Both actors praised the experience—and the movie itself.
“Ben loves Mexico,” Méndez told Remezcla. “He spent a couple of years in Mexico when he was young working. And I feel like he has a special interest, and he’s very curious about everything that is Mexican and Latino. And I feel that curiosity is why the movie is so good. It works because it’s a love letter to Los Angeles, of course, but it’s also a love letter about the relationship between Mexicans and people from the US. And that relationship is very complex, and you need a lot of curiosity to actually understand it.”
The actors also emphasized how Affleck’s connection to Mexico and Latin America, along with his collaborative directing style, helped shape their characters into real people rather than stereotypes. “It was amazing that he was very open to listening to our opinion and learning about our background, our culture,” Paz shared. “He was like, you are allowed to change anything that you feel that it’s not real.”
“And when you hear that, it’s like, okay. Maybe I didn’t really believe that, but when we started working, I realized he was serious about it, and we could change anything that wasn’t accurate or didn’t feel real. And I feel very thankful about that because that brings reality to the story and to the characters. I think people are going to appreciate it.”
That openness was especially meaningful when collaborating with an Oscar-winning writer. “And it gives you a lot of confidence when you have a director-writer that won an Oscar for writing Good Will Hunting, telling you, ‘Let’s write the scene together,’ you know, because we did that. We wrote some scenes with him. So, it’s very surreal to have this person telling you that, yeah, let’s write it together. It’s like, ‘I guess this is the right way of doing it.’ You know, like a collaboration, and it’s very beautiful to see the movie and be like, yeah, I’m actually very proud of what we did. But I have to say, it’s very rare.”
Animals explores the gap between perception and reality—a theme both actors hope resonates with audiences.
“Question everything. For me, the movie is about that, about who controls the narrative of the world we’re living in. And yeah, it’s usually the people with more power, with more influence and with more money,” Méndez said. “Our characters are taking the biggest risk, have the least protection; they are actually doing things right, but the system is never going to allow them to be heroes, you know? And that’s really fu*ked up, you know? So for me, we need to question everything, especially with everything that’s going on right now in social media and elections and all that stuff and global warming.”
Paz agreed. “What I really like about the movie is that it’s a thriller; it’s an action movie. It could sound very commercial and empty, but it is not because it has this topic; it has a lot of topics that can make you ask a lot of questions, like relationships in marriages and between mothers and sons, and about immigration, about what is real and what is not, about who has the power, what lives are worth the most? So, it’s great that it’s entertaining, and it’s going to create conversations that we need to have.”
Animals will be released on Netflix on October 9.