After Babylon, Diego Calva worried he could have been a flash-in-the-pan success. However, the roll-call of legendary directors and stories he’s stepped into in the three years since would appear to decisively prove him wrong. Not least his January appearance as the achingly complex arms dealer Teddy dos Santos in electrifying espionage epic, The Night Manager. Sitting down, for the first time, with new friend Édgar Ramirez, they uncover the power of telling Latino stories that defy cliché.
“I’m going to act with you one day,” Diego Calva tells Édgar Ramirez. He outlines it with a conviction that sees the sentiment supersede ambition, simply become a statement of fact. Anyone keeping tabs on IMDb could be forgiven for thinking the pair have already ticked off that particular collaborative milestone. Later in the year, they’ll both star in Danny Ramirez’s upcoming sports drama, Baton. However, we won’t technically witness them sharing the screen. “What character do you play?” Ramirez asks. “I’m Pedro, the funny friend,” Calva replies.
As they sit down for Man About Town, a real-life friendship, rooted in mutual reverence for each other’s craft, is crystallising. They did meet briefly at the 2024 Toronto Film Festival – Ramirez touring Oscar-winning musical crime drama Emilia Pérez, Calva with Daniel Minahan’s tender post-war queer romance, On Swift Horses. But away from festival theatrics, this is their opportunity to feel through the contours of their shared occupation in earnest. “What a beautiful way to start getting to know each other,” Ramirez beams. He’s been playing the On Swift Horses soundtrack ahead of the call – “You don’t know how much I love [that movie].”
Primarily, today, they sit before each other to dissect Calva’s most recent head-turning appearance in the ten-year-in-the-making second season of perilously addictive espionage thriller, The Night Manager. Calva wasn’t in on the action when the John le Carré adaptation hit screens the first time around – his appearance on acting’s international map came with his Golden Globe-nominated turn as Manny Torres in Damien Chazelle’s 2023 dizzying look at Tinseltown’s early days, Babylon. In The Night Manager’s Season 2, Calva’s Teddy dos Santos becomes the latest object of scrutiny for assiduous British intelligence agent, Jonathan Pine (played by fellow Man About Town cover star Tom Hiddleston). If you’ve seen merely the season’s most viral clip – a moonlit three-way dancefloor embrace between Jonathan, Teddy and Camila Morone’s Roxana Bolaños, that seems to set a new record for wattage of sensual charge – you could be forgiven for thinking there was some latent desire between Jonathan and Teddy also at play.
The reality is, it is all a little bit complicated. Not least as a vital link comes to light, tethering Calva to Jonathan’s Season 1 target: the officially deceased, most callous of them all, Richard Roper. The challenge of entering the intricate psyche of tormented, impenetrable Teddy prompted the kind of character inquiry that a performer like Calva craves. “I tried to find his child,” he explains to Ramirez. “The director [Georgi Banks-Davies] told me, ‘But we have to do scenes.’ And I told her, ‘I haven’t found the child yet.’”
However, with that job now complete, Calva – off the clock, an ardent lover and excavator of poetry, music and film – hasn’t been short of new material to study. As he tells Ramirez below, he recently wrapped on Jordan Firstman’s directorial debut, Club Kid, he is currently shooting an undisclosed project in his native Mexico, and has ticked off upcoming Nicolas Winding Refn thriller, Her Private Hell. Thankfully, Ramirez is double-parked, with a water and coffee by his side, as they dive into the defining essence of their craft, Calva’s work to make Teddy an atypical, sexually-ambiguous “narcos”, his love of Ramirez’s lead performance in The Assassination of Gianni Versace, and how he finally lost his “impostor syndrome” following Babylon. It’s thirsty work.
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Diego Calva: Thank you so much, Édgar, for doing this. I’m excited.
Édgar Ramirez: How nice is this? What a beautiful surprise. I was so happy when the invitation arrived because, obviously, we only saw each other once, in Toronto, a little over a year ago. And we hadn’t seen each other again since.
DC: And, first of all, I just want to say, man, your work is something… Two weeks ago, I was in Miami, passing in front of Versace’s house on that drive. And wow, I was thinking about that scene [in The Assassination of Gianni Versace].
ÉR: Thank you so much. How beautiful. Honestly, I’m really happy to be able to talk. I had on the soundtrack of On Swift Horses. I love that movie. Also, speaking of Versace, Dan Minahan directed me in Versace.
DC: Of course, we talked about it.
ÉR: I’m very close to Dan. I really care about him and, honestly, I was really moved when I saw [On Swift Horses] – how beautiful, and what a level of elegance, and at the same time, subtlety. It lives in everything that’s unsaid, right?
DC: Exactly.
ÉR: How was the experience? I loved your character, I loved all of you. Everyone is wonderful in the film. You watch it, and it calms you down; it travels with you. The soundtrack is beautiful. How was the experience of working with Dan? I am pretty sure that the Versace episode that Dan directed with me and Penélope [Cruz] was the episode that guaranteed or increased the chances of a Golden Globe nomination.
DC: Wow. Well, you know Dan. Dan is a true gentleman. And I had just finished the press tour for Babylon. I had never done anything so big. And I learned something, which is that the whole press process can be even more exhausting than the actual shooting, right? At the press tour, I got tired. And, honestly, I was a little scared. I didn’t study acting. My entrance into cinema was a little unusual. I came more from behind the camera.
ÉR: Yes, I want to talk about that, too, because our stories are similar. I also didn’t study acting and worked behind the camera.
DC: Babylon kind of opened a door for me into this world. Or, at least, this world at this scale, in these dimensions. And at the press tour, I was really exhausted. I wrote to Dan and told him honestly, “I don’t think I’m your actor because I’mtired, I don’t feel physically well.” And Dan called me, I’ll never forget it, and basically, he didn’t leave me an option. He said, “It’s you, it’s you, it’s you.” And, today, I’m very grateful to him, because On Swift Horses, for me, is in some way a confirmation. I felt like I was a one-hit wonder after Babylon, and maybe this [career would] end, and I would go back to trying directing, back to Mexico, and continue what I was previously doing. But no, Dan’s call sealed the deal. It was like,“No! Act! This is your thing.” So my experience was of one of the most elegant and loving directors. Dan still talks to my mum; they became friends.
ÉR: I don’t want to go too deep into things you’ve talked about a lot because sometimes people ask the same things all the time. I want this conversation…
DC: But I’m talking with you. It’s different.
ÉR: You know, I was a journalist?
DC: Oh, wow.
ÉR: That’s what I did before being an actor. So that’s where I come from – political journalism. But I also know sometimes people get asked things repeatedly that maybe they don’t want to repeat. But I’m really interested in the part about you not studying acting. Tell me a bit about that. Did you want to be a director?
DC: Look, what happened to me, summarised a bit – and I think it’s also a very Latin American story – is, I’m an only child of a single mum. So my mum had no one to leave me with while she was working, and there were still VHS tapes. Imagine. And we had three: The Aristocats, Power Rangers, and Peter and the Wolf. And Peter and the Wolf was my first cinematic addiction. The fear the wolf’s music generated in me made me watch the movie again and again. So cinema was like my first babysitter, and from a very young age, I decided I wanted to dedicate myself to anything as long as it was in cinema. I didn’t truly know what. I’ve always loved painting and writing poetry. But in cinema, I didn’t [see] myself. So I worked in everything from delivering coffee, driving, building props, and assistant directing. And one day it happened. I got to hold a lighting stand, and an actor didn’t show up. And they told me, “Dress up and act.”
ÉR: Seriously? Wow!
DC: And I had a big problem with my nudity. So, for example, with my partners I would keep my shirt on, on the beach it was difficult, and suddenly I was on a set, I took off my shirt, and I was free, and I reached a feeling that only happens to me through reading or writing poetry. I lost Diego, and I became addicted and decided I was going to continue doing this.
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ÉR: What’s funny, I was also an assistant director, a costume assistant and also a production assistant. I really liked being an assistant director because it allowed me to be close to the actors, and they seemed the most interesting in the process, without knowing that I really wanted to be an actor later. So it caught my attention that we share that.
Look, I’ve been watching The Night Manager. I haven’t finished it yet, but I’m halfway, and I love it. I’m a big fan of the first season. I think this one is incredible, and I want you to tell me a bit about how it was – the process, how you got there. The first thing I heard about was the viral scene with Camila, which I thought was divine. How was it to play Teddy?
DC: Well, look, I think there’s something very interesting about ignorance. I think ignorance can be a gift. The gift or the possibility it gives you is to have few preconceptions. So, not having, in some way, an acting career or a method, for example, each character comes with different needs, like people. Acting is beautiful because it’s the closest thing to life, right? And Teddy came to me outside of the [standard] process – casting, callbacks, etc.
I think, as a Latino… I’d done Narcos: Mexico first, even before Babylon. And it was hard for me. I had an amazing time. I had the opportunity, for example, to be directed by Wagner Moura. But with Teddy, something new happened. With Babylon, when everything exploded, certain words or concepts started circulating in my mind, like representation, responsibility, and the Latino community. I am Mexican. So, for example, understanding a Latino community outside Mexico was new, in some ways, for me too. And, at first, when Teddy came, I was obviously very excited, and then I entered a kind of crossroads of how to act, being Mexican, as a Colombian character. That could be a cliché, right?
ÉR: Well, also, he’s a Mexican in Colombia, right?
DC: Yes, but that I added myself.
ÉR: I imagined that. It crossed my mind, because I’ve done those things too. Because you have to give specificity to the characters, otherwise, it’s very rough.
DC: Especially as Latinos. I don’t have any problem with a Colombian playing a Mexican because we’re brothers, or a Venezuelan playing a Mexican. There’s a lot of culture and similar baggage. However, out of respect for the character… I think sometimes you work for the character, you know? I’m the employee of the character.
ÉR: Yes, yes.
DC: So I decided the way to honour him was to give him my Mexican identity, too. So there’s a moment in the series where it’s understood he’s Mexican-Colombian. And without an acting technique, after a process like Babylon, where I did biography, method, worked with a wonderful acting coach, method, very strong, intense things, I also learned what works and what doesn’t. And, with Teddy, I realised I didn’t have to go outward, like figuring out his life ten years ago, but inward and build him from there. So what I decided, to avoid clichés, was to ask the director if I could make the character sexually ambiguous. It already breaks, at least in my country, the cliché of the narco, right? The macho. That was important for me.
ÉR: Yes, yes, yes.
DC: When I found his child, I could find Teddy and justify him. Teddy has been one of the few characters that came to me [when I had] enough maturity. When I did Narcos, I had to admit I also did a caricature. And when I understood Teddy’s pain and trauma, I could justify and defend him, and justify the terrible acts he could commit because I understood where the pain came from and all his aspirations. So, I went back to the basics. I went back to the Greeks, I went back to reading the great tragedies, and I delved a lot into Oedipus. Although Oedipus is in love with his mother, his enemy is his father. So I just flipped it, and then I read Oedipus again and looked for that feeling. I don’t know if that answers the question.
ÉR: No, totally. Obviously, there are many ways to approach characters, right? More than a method – or at least in my case – I have a “toolbox”. Like a backpack of tools, and I take out what I need at that moment, because the situation is never ideal. Sometimes you get an incredible character offered, and you have to quickly handle it with what you have. You don’t even have time to create a backstory, not even to rehearse. And the way you approached Teddy was largely from the inside out. Finding him first inside and then projecting everything that was inside you, the ingredients you suspected Teddy needed, and amplifying them in the proportions the character required. That’s also a very organic way of approaching characters, but there’s also the risk of becoming too involved with the character. Were there things in Teddy’s psychology that were easier or closer to you when you read it? What made you say, “Okay, I understand this guy”?
DC: Trauma. I think humans are like a map. [In] the beginning, [things] can be very simple – Lorena, my mum, met Juan Arturo, my dad, and I was born, right? Very simple. But then the map becomes rhizomatic. There are many possibilities. Where the Greeks talk about tragedy or a character flaw, they talk about archetypes and vices that end up delimiting, naming, justifying, or creating certain attitudes. And I shared with Teddy a pain that isn’t necessarily the same, but sometimes that’s very beautiful in acting, you don’t have to mirror.
ÉR: Exactly. Yes. I mean, it doesn’t have to be… apple to apple, right? But there’s an approximation.
DC: Abandonment is still abandonment. Sure. Give it 700 different characteristics, but abandonment is abandonment. And the idea of having a hole you can’t fill and trying to fill it instead of learning to live with it, that’s how I understood Teddy. I asked them to make Teddy’s room very ostentatious. I told them, “He has a bed and a chair only.” Because his hole isn’t there, it’s somewhere else. Teddy’s room is like a monk’s, and I asked for that.
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ÉR: Well, because… he grew up in a monastery, right?
DC: And he also feels guilty in some way. But I think there are certain [emotional] forces that, whether you’re an actor or not, are tragically beautiful. Like the mother and father. Or betrayal. Or violence. And, in this case, for Teddy, it’s his dad. I didn’t know my father. And the love Teddy has for his father, I could invent a mirror to understand all the justified aspirations. I always talk a lot about Michael Corleone. Michael Corleone seems to me one of the most interesting character arcs, because it’s strangely interesting to see a character who starts in a place like a straight, ethical, congruent military man and loses his soul and ideology through protecting his family. For me, Teddy is the opposite. He’s a character who has no soul because of his family and gradually gains it. So it’s like the inverse of The Godfather, in my head.
ÉR: And also, I remember years ago, I did a film [An Open Heart] with Juliette Binoche…
DC: Wow, you worked with Juliette?
ÉR: An incredible woman. A wonderful actress and very intelligent. It was a very intense film. We were a couple. And in the conversations we had, between scenes, she told me something I never forgot. While I was listening to you, I remembered that comment she made. She said that actors “somehow do nothing but save our parents or rewrite our parents’ story.” It allows you to understand that, “This guy has nothing to do with me, but there’s a wound, and something of him I understand, and maybe through this character I can pay a debt, fill a gap, rewrite a story that usually involves mum or dad, or the absence of mum or dad. The phrase “save our parents” stuck with me. Look, what are you filming right now? Because you were coming from shooting. In Mexico?
DC: Yes. Now I’m filming in Mexico, which I think is very important. I’m doing a movie that’s giving me the chance to make fun of myself now that I’m an actor. After Babylon, I could finally call myself an actor. I lost the famous impostor syndrome. It’s a dark comedy, in a way. It’s beautiful to say the actor seeks the truth, right? And romanticise it. But being able to mock what happens a little and make comments about it [is also important]. And interestingly, it’s a film that, in the end, you realise talks about trauma. It’s about something that, at least, didn’t affect me, but once, when I went to Spain, I spoke with Benicio del Toro, and he has always said that the first thing they tell him is that he has to change his name. I come from a generation where that wasn’t so important.
ÉR: Neither for me.
DC: And my character has to. So it has all these connotations – how much you give to get what you want, and what’s the price you pay? And this character is a completely different actor than me in real life; this character is chasing followers. I mean, it’s not that I don’t guide myself by that, but my nature is just different. But it gives me the chance to explore, for example, the relationship with managers, all these things that are strange, weird, sometimes beautiful. But money is always involved.
ÉR: Of course, because it’s show business. I mean, the fun part is the show, and the business is always more boring, right?
DC: And alongside it, there can be beautiful relationships. I get along amazingly with my manager. However, there’s always a tacit contract with 10 per cent, etc.
ÉR: And whose film is it? Is it Mexican?
DC: It is Mexican, it’s Amazon, Pimienta [Films] and Nicolas Celis, who did Roma.
ÉR: And when do you finish filming?
DC: I just started week three of five.
ÉR: Ay, ay, ay! You already did the film with Firstman?
DC: With Jordan? Yes, already.
ÉR: In New York?
DC: Yes.
ÉR: And how was it? It’s kind of a comedy, right?
DC: It’s this American, New York-style comedy, but dark. Very intelligent.
ÉR: You’re playing the party promoter, right?
DC: No, I’m [Jordan’s character’s] partner. My character is the child therapist, who he falls in love with, etc.
ÉR: Wow, that’s awesome, really.
DC: Until last year, I hadn’t done a supporting role yet. And I was very scared. But the other day, I thought about Pedro Pascal, who spent many years doing supporting roles. And last year, I did only supporting roles, and I loved it.
ÉR: It’s because characters are characters. Supporting roles are still characters.
DC: Exactly. There is no small role.
ÉR: And we should not fall into that trap of thinking otherwise. Obviously, it’s a system. As long as the character is interesting, one thing will lead to another. It’s great that you see it that way, because you won’t get stuck in that mess. For me, it’s irrelevant, and shouldn’t even be part of the conversation. I think we should look for actors with unique characters, and especially those like us, us international actors, people can often get trapped in those clichés – leading actor, supporting actor. That language has little to do with how an actor should approach their career.
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DC: Do you know what I call it? I call it “lawyer talk”.
ÉR: It’s true. It’s about bureaucracy. About other people. Not you.
DC: But I do think there is something beautiful in the fact that one has a function. For example, in the film by Jordan, I understood my character’s role and had a calm, beautiful experience. I had a great time in that movie because I rediscovered comedy, and the difficult part was the challenge.
ÉR: You have a very good comedic instinct. The first scene in Babylon is like… chaotic. You have a natural vein for comedy. Right from the start, your reactions were hilarious, because it was absurd – landing in a place and having to solve something immediately invites laughter.
DC: It’s theatre-like, absurdist. I went back to Chaplin, again and again. How do they manage innocence, sadness, and solve troubles all at once?
ÉR: Yes.
DC: It was all about the absurd.
ÉR: Diego, you’re going to work with Nicolas Winding Refn [in upcoming thriller, Her Private Hell]. Tell me about that, because I love him. He’s one of the most interesting directors in the world.
DC: Totally. We already recorded. I felt like Tom Cruise in Mission Impossible. He called me and said, “You’re going to be in my movie.” He didn’t even ask me. He said, “Where are you? My assistant will fly today and will arrive in the morning. You have two hours to read the script, if you accept this mission.” The next day, she arrived, and they gave me two hours to read it. I didn’t understand anything in the script, but I said yes.
ÉR: Wow.
DC: I was going to Copenhagen for three days. I ended up staying a month. We connected through music. We listened to Suicide, Velvet Underground, and New York music from the ’70s. It went from two scenes to almost 17. To this day, I still don’t know what the film is about.
ÉR: If there’s a director I respect deeply, a filmography that touched me, I don’t even need to read a script. Send me whatever, and I will jump into it and do it. So I perfectly understand you. Let’s talk about directing. You were saying at the beginning of this interview that you first wanted to be a director. Tell me about that?
DC: Yes, for the past three years, I have been working on a script about my mum’s life, who is my superhero. The reason why I like to direct, or want to do it, is similar to the reason why I like writing poetry. It’s about an idea of translating what I feel in a way people may not necessarily fully understand, but hopefully, they will be able to feel.
The most interesting thing I’ve experienced as an actor, or that I have felt in the moment when someone says “Action”, is that I feel free and things happen. But also, what is most interesting is to see how people work. Damien Chazelle works one way, Nicolas another. As an actor, I stopped trying to fully understand it, but instead, I just gave myself to it. In that way, I’ve been a thief. I like what you say about a “toolbox.” I have two toolboxes, one is everything I learn as an actor, and the other one has everything I learn from observing these great directors I’ve been privileged to work with.
ÉR: I was about to say, you’ve worked with incredible directors.
DC: The sweetness of Dan, and rigour of Damien. The cryptic approach of Nicolas. I keep it for me, and in time, maybe it will be useful. But for me, love is time. Right now, I love acting, and so my time is for acting. I don’t think I’ll combine both directing and acting yet, not at the same time. For now, acting has been my focus. I used to stutter when I was 12, and through acting, I stopped. Acting has even given me roots, where today, I write and maybe one day will direct, but if I am super honest, right now I want to act.
ÉR: And obviously, for all our benefit, you have to keep acting. And we have to do something together.
DC: Please. I really appreciate this conversation. When they told me you had agreed to this, I called my mum and told her.
ÉR: How beautiful. I’d love to meet your mum next time I visit [Mexico]. I’m very close to mine, too. I lost my dad last year. When we met in Toronto, he was dying. You were there with On Swift Horses, I was there with Emilia Pérez, and then my dad died like a month and a half later.
DC: Strangely, that means there’s new pain to bring to characters. That’s what’s nice about acting: all the terrible things can become part of it.
ÉR: Actually, the days after my dad passed, I started filming a movie immediately. We never imagined he would go so soon. I had already said yes to a movie. My dad wanted me to do it, with American director Drake Doremus and Emilia Clarke [called Next Life]. It’s a love story about jazz in underground London. Art accompanies you and heals you. Art helped me through mourning; it was incredible.
DC: In the end, it’s a job, too. A dentist also has to go to work and fix your teeth in the morning, whatever happens, they continue too.
ÉR: Okay. Diego, now I want to ask you, when I am fascinated by someone or connect with someone, I always ask these questions: can you give me recommendations for three films and three songs, and in your case, one or two poets too?
DC: Poets – Alejandra Pizarnik. He’s Argentinian, one of my favourites. And Guillaume Apollinaire, he’s French. He is brutal. Three songs: “Cotidiano” by Chico Buarque, he‘s Brazilian. “After Hours” by Velvet Underground – for me, the crown jewel. And “Drums” by Charles Mingus, an American. Three movies: 3-Iron by Kim Ki-duk, Taxidermia, and Pedro and the Wolf.
ÉR: I love how we started with and are closing the conversation with Pedro and the Wolf.
DC: Before we say goodbye, Edgar, I want to tell you, when I saw Carlos, I noticed your body a lot. At that moment, I was writing something, and something very beautiful happened. I continued writing it with your face in mind. It wasn’t a script, just a story. I didn’t know who you were yet, but something happened when I saw Carlos. What I was writing didn’t involve spies or anything, but for three months, out of admiration, I wrote a story with your face in mind. So weird.
ÉR: Wow, how beautiful, really. I would love to read it.
DC: It has nothing to do with spies, but I can share it.
ÉR: How nice, how generous. Thank you so much.
DC: No, man. Thank you for having me. I’m the lucky one in this conversation.
The Night Manager Season 2 is available to watch on BBC iPlayer (UK) and Prime Video (US) now
Photography
Jacques BurgaStyling
Luke DayGrooming
Itzel PachecoProducer
Ximena MorfínProducer
Giancarlo CialonaVideographer
Francisco G MarrónSpecial Thanks to
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