Diego Luna says he was only offered drug dealer roles before ‘Star Wars’

Diego Luna opened up about being typecast in Hollywood before he arrived in a galaxy far, far away, revealing during a recent roundtable that he was only offered drug dealer projects prior to Star Wars.

“Before Star Wars, the only projects I’d get offered would be drug dealers,” the Andor star said in The Hollywood Reporter‘s drama actors roundtable alongside Jeffrey Wright, Walton Goggins, Adam Scott, Cooper Koch, and Eddie Redmayne. “And then I could be the nice drug dealer and not the vicious one but still a drug dealer.”

“Because the system wasn’t even sending messages of, like, ‘Yes, you could find a way to be yourself and still work in those projects that you’re looking at and hoping to see yourself reflected in,'” Luna continued. “But I do think that’s changed, and the middleman between the audience and us is not there anymore. There’s no guy with a cigar saying, ‘You! You’re gonna be a star, boy.'”

Luna added, “People just click now, and suddenly it’s like, ‘Shit, they’re watching a Mexican show.’ You can be as far away as you can from the system, and the system will go and search for you if there’s a need to hear your story.”

When asked about the type of roles he got now, post-Star Wars, Luna quipped with a laugh, “Oh, I still get a lot of drug dealers,” adding, “It’s just I’m not looking for what they want me to play. I can look for the stuff I want to do. It’s that freedom that comes with understanding that people today care about specificity.”

He recalled once being asked if he was “going to clean up” his accent, adding, “That’s not part of the conversation anymore.” Luna said, “But when I was 20, it was like, ‘Man, you’re great, and if you work with your accent, you’ll be doing what this person or that person is doing.’ And you go, ‘Why would I like to do that? This is what makes me unique.'”

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Luna made his Star Wars debut in the 2016 film Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, starring as Alliance intelligence officer Cassian Andor opposite Felicity Jones’ Jyn Erso. He reprised the role for Tony Gilroy’s acclaimed series Andor, centered on the character’s formative years and the formation of the Rebellion.

The star, who broke out with his role in Alfonso Cuarón’s Y tu mamá también, last starred as a drug lord on the 2018 drama series Narcos: Mexico, playing Guadalajara Cartel co-founder Miguel Ángel Félix Gallardo, one of the most infamous drug kingpins of the 1980s. He has since diversified his portfolio with Hulu’s boxing miniseries La Máquina and the upcoming musical drama Kiss of the Spider Woman.