No, Arturo Castro Hasn’t Done Ayahuasca, But He Does Love Matcha
Arturo Castro finally did it: he made it into a trailer.
Yes, he knows having his own show— Comedy Central’s newest sketch series Alternatino with Arturo Castro— is technically cooler than being prominently featured in a trailer for his own show. But, as Castro tells it, he wasn’t really in the promos for the third season of Netflix’s Narcos, where he plays the resident villain in a show about actual drug lords, and he can’t be seen in the trailer for Ang Lee’s 2016 film Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk, despite his very respectable third billing. So for him, a two minute and ten second spot feels, deservedly, like a big deal.
Castro, the son of a psychiatrist and a perfumist, grew up as the only brother to three older sisters in Guatemala City. After a year of law school in Guatemala, the 19-year-old moved to New York, where he attended the American Academy of Dramatic Arts.
He appeared in a number of Off-Off Broadway shows, then booked the role he’s best known for to date: Ilana’s earnest, gay, weed-dealing onscreen roommate on Comedy Central’s much-beloved Broad City. Now, Castro is returning to the network as the star, writer and creator of his own new sketch series.
Alternatino is being positioned as the millennial Latinx Key & Peele or Inside Amy Schumer, all programs that successfully mined identity for comedy. Sketches from Alternatino’s first season tackle heavy topics like the detainment of immigrant children, and the Trump administration's response to Hurricane Maria. (The latter includes an elaborate choreographed dance routine with a paper towel roll. You have to see it to really get what I’m saying, but trust me when I say that it lands.) Each episode is tethered by interstitials in which Arturo plays versions of himself dealing with awkward first dates, house parties and break-ups.
Last month, Castro spoke to GQ about Broad City—including playing a gay character as a straight man—and also discussed Alternatino and candle-making, in that exact order.
GQ: What do you consider your first professional acting job?
Arturo Castro: My first bigger play after school was Elliot, A Soldier's Fugue, which was written by Quiara Alegría Hudes, who wrote the book for In the Heights. I booked it and got my equity card right away. And then I played a tastebud.
Like, on a tongue?
Yeah. It was my first commercial. They paid me $2,000 and I thought I was rich. I refused to take any job that wasn't acting, because I knew money was addictive, so [that] if I had a side gig that would give me $200, I wouldn’t do a shity Off-Off Broadway play. So yeah, my first commercial was as a taste bud on a giant tongue for Wazoo taffy. The description for my character was ridiculous, like, “Foreign. Sultry. Sad.” And me, just out of acting school, was like, “Oh, I got it.” I was the saddest, sultriest taste bud that ever existed.
After being trained as a dramatic actor, what got you into comedy?
Broad City was the first pilot I ever shot. When I first started, there weren’t a lot of roles for people who looked like me. I don’t look like the “typical” tough Latino. It’s a hard pitch, me playing a gang member, when my face says I watch Gilmore Girls.
Are you a fan of Gilmore Girls?
Yeah, I love brunch and matcha.
What was the Broad City audition like?
The call-back was in the Comedy Central offices, with big windows and so much natural light. I lived in a basement at the time, so I was like, “This is too much. Calm down.” But then I met Abbi and Ilana, and it was like that feeling where you are sure you had met someone before. It’s a huge blessing and stroke of luck that the first pilot I got was an actual role, and it got picked up to series. And then it happened to be a show as amazing as Broad City, but I didn’t know any better at the time. Meanwhile, all of my fellow taste buds are like, “Fuck you!”
As a straight identifying actor, how did you approach your performance as a queer character?
I didn’t want to play a cartoon. The girls were very specific that we were never making fun of anyone. It’s a big responsibility when you play a queer character. I don’t want to appropriate any culture. And what was really cool about Jaime was that we hadn’t seen a character like him before—Latino and gay, who could dress however he wanted and be however he wanted—and we didn’t make a big deal about any of it. A lot of Latino people come up to me being like, “Papi, I didn’t see myself on TV before.” There is a big Latino contingency in the LGBTQ+ community, and they found themselves represented and endeared. That was the first time where I thought there was something more transcendental to being on television than just making people laugh.
There is a larger conversation happening in Hollywood about who can play which parts and when. As a performer and now as a show creator, what do you think about that?
I think the people that should lead that conversation are the communities that are being represented. There are so many great roles that I would like to play, but never at the expense of harming or disappointing the communities where the stories are coming from. I would want to treat other communities with the same respect that I think the Latino community deserves. I wouldn’t want a group of white people writing a character that I thought was cartoonish, and with a darker white dude playing my role. As actors, we have to be careful. You have to make sure you are playing a part for the right reasons.
Do certain people recognize you from Narcos that don’t know you from Broad City?
The fans of Broad City have no boundaries and will be like, “Can you kiss me?” And the Narcos fans will approach me, like, “Excuse me, Mr. Castro.” The Narcos response was insane because the Internet was like, “Fuck this fucking psychopath with the most punchable face in the fucking world.” And then they make you self-conscious about shit you didn’t know you had to be self-conscious about. They called me a “lipless bastard.” I was like, “Do I really have no lips?” And my girlfriend at the time was like, “Yeah, I just didn’t know how to tell you.” And a lot of finance bros like Narcos.
Why made you want to get into sketch comedy?
I was doing Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk and I went through bootcamp training with Navy SEALs, and it almost wrecked my soul. I felt this need to laugh, and I thought, I’ve never seen a Latino sketch show.
How autobiographical are your sketches?
A lot of it was either my experience or the writers’ experience. “Play and Pivot” is the interstitial in the second episode, and it was me and the other Latinx writers in the room talking about being the only Latino in a group of white people—but, like, uber-woke white people. Everyone always wants to tell me about the time they did ayahuasca in Bolivia or whatever, and I am there like, “That’s great! I’ve never been, but cool!”
Your sketches directly tackle politicized topics that are still front-and-center in the news. Were you ever worried about pushback from the network or viewers?
I am really lucky, and this is not a plug for the network, but Comedy Central was like, “If you feel passionate about it, let’s do it.” We would walk them through it and they’d go, “That makes sense.”
I was at a Cumbia concert the other day for the first time in my life, and a lot of hipster Latinx first- and second-generation people were coming up to me about the show. And I was like, this is really cool. We have a show. I can take whatever heat from the right. I can take it on the chest. Also, I really like wearing wigs.
Needlepoint was brought up several times in sketches. Do you needlepoint?
I am actually a fan of candle-making, but with candle-making, there is only so much comedy you can do. My writers thought candle-making was too niche, but one of them was like, “Dude, needlepoint is fucking hilarious.”
If you had a candle line, what would call it?
Something super self-serious like El Destino. But I really do love vanilla scents and wooden notes and earthy tones.
This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.
Originally Appeared on GQ
