‘Narcos: Mexico’ Star Alejandro Edda on Playing El Chapo

When Alejandro Edda showed up at the federal courthouse in downtown Brooklyn on Jan. 28, 2019, he didn’t turn heads — not at first. The 37-year-old actor is not a household name, and in real life he doesn’t much look like the man he depicts in his best-known role to date, the man he was there to see in the flesh: Joaquín Guzmán Loera, the notorious Mexican drug trafficker better known as El Chapo.

Edda appeared in the Netflix series’ first season. Narcos in MexicoPart of the second had been filmed. As prosecutors made their final arguments in court, Blockbuster criminal trial for El ChapoEdda wanted to be able to observe El Chapo in person.

We were covering the trial day in and day out. The days began to blur. There was no stopping the freezing early mornings and endless hours of witness testimony. These alternated between bombshell claims and the tedious technical minutiae of expert witnesses. So when word of Edda’s arrival started to spread, it was as if an electrical current zapped through the crowd of reporters.

We weren’t the only people excited at Edda’s arrival. El Chapo entered courtroom that morning. After he gave his wife a kiss in the gallery, and glad-handing with his attorneys, one of the lawyers whispered to him something. It was clear what news he’d delivered to the imprisoned drug lord: El Chapo broke into a wide, excited grin and whipped his head around to get a glimpse of Edda. El Chapo smiled at the actor and waved with boyish excitement. El Chapo’s desire to make a movie out of the story of his own life was by then well known, and he seemed thrilled to see the guy tasked with bringing his story to life.

It’s been nearly two years since a jury found El Chapo guilty on all charges, and a year and a half since a judge sentenced him to the mandatory life in prison, after which he was whisked away to a supermax black hole in the high desert of Colorado. He spends 23 hours per day in a single cell and is subject to strict supervision. “communications management”Rules that restrict visitation to his lawyers and his daughters are in place. But the spectacle of El Chapo continues: In a few weeks, his wife, Emma Coronel Aispuro, is scheduled to be sentenced after pleading guilty to aiding in her husband’s cocaine empire; his sons remain at large in Sinaloa, including 31-year-old Ovidio Guzmán López, who was briefly captured and, after a botched raid in his hometown of Culiacán led to all-out urban warfare, released by President Andres Manuel López Obrador; and El Chapo continues to appeal his sentence, likely his last shot at ever seeing the outside world again.

On Nov. 5, the finale and third season will be shown on the premier of The CW. Narcos in MexicoEdda will reprise his role in this film. The story is more focused on El Chapo.

More than two years of reporting on El Chapo’s life, times and achievements culminated in the book. El Chapo: The Untold Story of the World’s Most Infamous Drug Lord (Atria Books, 2021). It’s a piece of journalistic nonfiction, which explores the links between organized crime and the governments in Mexico and the United States. But at the heart of the book, as in Edda’s work, is a character study of a man who, despite his notoriety, had until recently been something of a shadow. In preparation for the new season, I interviewed the Edda about the role, his visit to Brooklyn federal Court that day in 2019, as well as his favorite drug-war songs. narcocorridosHe played the repeat on repeat so he could get into the zone on set.

How did you get the El Chapo role?
It was quite a surprise as I never auditioned to play this role. Since the very beginning Narcos — like, Narcos Colombia — I auditioned, and it was one line, one episode, a guerrilla character. I never heard back. I kept coming back — 2015, ’16, ’17, ’18 and nothing, man. I was there for four years, and read for over 20 different roles. But, nothing. And I don’t know what it is, man, I don’t know if it’s God scheming or the universe, the cosmos, the stars, but the last audition, I believe I auditioned for [DEA agent]Kiki Camarena is also known as for [drug lord Rafael] Caro Quintero. Then I remember walking to my car, and when I opened the doors, I felt like I was throwing up so I had to bend down a bit. Then I start to cry. It was a divorce that I was going through in my personal life. My children were living in another country. It was chaotic. I just turned, looked in the mirror, and I cried. “You know what? Fuck this! I’m done! This is it. I’m done. This is hurting me in every level.”I was a little bit let go. Two weeks later, my team called me. They said: “Netflix called us and they want to offer you the role of El Chapo for a four-year deal.”

What preparation did you make for the job?
I didn’t know how I was going to portray this. I don’t think I look like the guy. Only problem is that I am small. I’m five-foot-seven, he’s five-foot-six. I’m like, “OK that’s cool.” You know, in Hollywood you’re pretty much alone. You’ve got to figure things your own way. So, I put myself forward as the guy I thought he was. Then, I did my research. And then, I just said. “OK, God, help me, and let’s do it.”

What type of research did your do? What was your method of finding out about El Chapo, his life, and how he spoke?
If you’re from Mexico, like myself, you know the man, but I’ve never been interested in the subject, per se. I’m from [the central Mexican state of] Puebla. Puebla and I were not interested in the narcoculture. I was not also a politics kind of guy who’s interested in those things.

Do what you can, and do your own research. The Chapo [meeting]Kate del Castillo is the actress. Sean Penn interviews Rolling StoneI began to collect things that were available for me to see. The Rolling Stone interview, the video, he’s 58 years old, so his voice is not the way that I was portraying him, at 31. Luckily there’s this little clip after he gets arrested in Guatemala and then [extradited] into Mexico. It was here that I could hear his voice at that young age. And I’m like, “There we go.”I already have the little clip, so I just practice it. I look at myself in the mirror and I’m going over and over the scenes.

I then go through the entire book class. Los Señores del Narco by Anabel Hernández, she described El Chapo perfectly for me. She will write a page of the traits that he had — the charisma, the love for music, the way he reacted upon his family, friends, women, his physicality, his sense of humor. And then you have Rafael Rodríguez Castañeda, he wrote, El imperio del Chapo. Those were my bibles in the first season.

Do you follow the scripts exactly or do you improvise?
The episodes are written by Americans, according to my knowledge. They are translated from Mexico by someone else. But when you see what I’m saying on the screen, it’s pretty far from what the American writer had in mind. So I don’t know if they hated me or loved me on that, but I said, “Hey, guys, listen, you know, with all due respect, nobody is from Sinaloa in that Netflix room or wherever you are.”

You need to Sinaloa-ize it.
Are you serious? Yes. I have my own kind research that I called — it’s music, it’s corridos [a style of narrative ballads popular in Northern Mexico]. My friends from Sinaloa, also from the region. Talking to the real people and listening to this, to their rhythm of voice, to the bad words they say — and you’ve got to talk to people that lived during the Eighties or Nineties, because otherwise it doesn’t work to talk to, you know, new people.

Because they speak the same way you did back then.
Exactly. They used terrible words.

“¡A la verga!” [a profanity used in Mexico to express excitement, anger, disdain, or pretty much any strong emotion]
Yeah, exactly. However, you must use the old bad words and not the ones that the children use these days. “¡A la verga!”All that shit.

After spending a lot of time in Sinaloa myself, I can attest to the fact that the area is beautiful.Characters on the show talk a lot like the real-life Sinaloa Narcos, especially the older ones I met.
It’s a very rich language. The accent is my favorite part.

It’s almost like a different dialect of Spanish.
One hundred percent, man. That’s why I like them. Then they come up with these rhymes, and these, like very philosophical expressions. They are very sexualized, too, and I’m just like, “Wow, these guys are just a genius of the vocabulary.”I listened to ranchero, corridos and other music every day in my trailer, my makeup room, and in my hotel room.

Which artists are your favorites?
Well, you have Tucanes de Tijuana. Los Tigres del Norte are like corrido big bands. You can learn a lot from them if they tell the story. And then you have Chalino Sánchez, which is a classic. They write not because they feel inspired. They are familiar with the stories and they are now assembling them into a musical piece.

It’s like an oral tradition, an oral history.
Exactly! If there’s a actor who is interested in playing a narco, I recommend they choose the music.

Did you catch the drama? El ChapoNetflix? Or maybe you didn’t want to.
I didn’t. I’ve heard great things about the show, about the performance of Marco [de la O]The actor. Marco and I met at a film festival. “Man, actually, you do look like that guy. You’re exactly like him!”

And you don’t as much, in your normal life.
I definitely don’t look like him. I don’t even talk like him, anything. It’s funny. It’s funny. [I’m] walking in Mexico City with Gorka Lasaosa, who’s a Spaniard playing El Guero Palma [in Narcos: Mexico]People will stop him and tell him: “Oh, can I have a photo with you?”And then, the person who is interested in the photo gives me their phone. “Can you take it for us?”

They won’t recognize you.
Never! But as soon as I get out of that trailer room, then the voice comes out and…

How long does it take for you to look like El Chapo. What are they supposed to do?
Hours, hours. Man, in the first series, the first [task]was to find the look, like “OK, what kind of wigs [do] we put on him and how much weight are you going to put on Alejandro, what are your ideas?” Everybody’s sending pictures. This took some time. However, El Chapo began to change. So he has a different kind of hairline and…

He does get a little bit of a belly.
I have the belly. That’s all for real. The famous mustache was also finally mine in the third season.

A scene where you recreate shot for shot a famous El Chapo portrayal is one of my favorites parts of the season. It’s the same clip you used to get your accent right. June 1993 Press ConferenceAfter his first arrest.
Did you see that scene? What did it look like?

It was amazing.
I called when the scene was complete. [showrunner] Carlo [Bernard]And I shared the clip. I told him, “Listen, when you’re writing in this scene, it’s loosely based on that. Why don’t we just shoot it like that?”He was like “Alright, cool. I dig it.”

It was fantastic. It’s exactly the same as the press conference. It’s so cool.
Oh, man! That’s so good to hear. I didn’t even know if it was going to make the cut.

It was at the trial of El Chapo that I first met you. It was my job to cover it. Rolling StoneYou showed up on the day. Let me know what you thought about that decision and how it went for you.
I went two days. The second day, I ran after lunch because it was getting too messy. I was unfamiliar with this type of, umm, English. I mean, you guys were doing your job, which…

We were kind of robberizing you, reporters.
It was crazy! I was caught in the eye by the hurricane. I’m a naive person. I’m a happy-go-lucky kind of guy, so me going to New York, to the trial, [all about]My acting skills. I was just trying to find out more about the man. I didn’t want to be, you know, part of the whole media talking about, “Oh, this guy wants to make himself famous,”Because I heard all of these things.

I began by simply reading Twitter. [Vice News reporter]Keegan Hamilton and Alan [Feuer]From the New York Times were [live-tweeting the trial]. So I messaged them via Twitter. They replied very kindly. As we were talking, I asked: “Am I allowed to go?”So, can regular people go? They both said, “Yeah, man, you’ve just got to get in line very early, you know, bring a fat jacket because it’s cold.”

Was it thrilling to be able to view him from up close?
Sometimes, believe it or not, in Mexico, we used to think — not any more, but we used to think he was a myth, this sort of legend that nobody knew if he existed or not.

I don’t know if you could tell this, but he does seem like he has some plastic surgery in his face or nose. That is what some narcos do, they change their appearances. So, I thought: “Is this, like, a real human being?” And the moment that he walked into the room — I think it was my first time seeing him — a lot of things happened in my body. It never occurred to me that he might be a fraud or someone different from him. I remember thinking, “Oh, my God, that’s the real man.”He was in great shape for his age of 61. His hair was all black and he was wearing a suit. He seemed slim. I’ve never seen El Chapo in a suit with all these hundreds of photographs. All of this was very strange, and quite interesting. And the fact that he was just paying attention and very calm and thinking…

He was definitely alert. He saw everything.
Excellent patient and alert. Just had a 2-day experience. [in court]. However, it was enough for me to truly feel the character.

What did this teach you about the character? How can it help you to understand him better and how can that affect your ability to live with him?
It helped me a lot. It helped me a lot. [to]It was set shortly after I returned from Brooklyn and I feel more confident about my work. It could be extended now. I could see more clearly and have more tools. He was constantly writing, so his left knee was shaking. I felt more confident in my acting choices.

His lawyers said to him that you were there.
That’s right. That’s right. [makes whispering noises]. And then that’s when he stood up and smiled, remember? He waved.

He was very excited.
Superexcited. And that’s when I went, “Oh, shit! I did it!”

He’s looking right at you.
Yeah, man! The judge will then decide. “Hey guys, this isn’t Comedy Central,”Or something. And I didn’t even know the reporters behind me, but they were shaking my shoulder like, “Oh, my God! He waved at you! Oh, my God!” I’m like, “What’s going on?”

Was it strange to see this famous person look right at you and acknowledge you?
Well, it definitely wasn’t comfortable at, at all! I couldn’t hold him, I couldn’t hold my —

What is the eye contact?
Yeah, I had to look very slowly to the front, because, well, I’m not going to smile back at him, like, “Hey, what’s up!” No. No.

So the new season starts in the late 1980s, early 1990s, after the fall of Miguel Ángel Félix Gallardo and the old guard in Guadalajara. What can we expect from El Chapo this season?
El Chapo believes he can become a leader. He knows he is capable of leading. [him]. He knows he can be the next boss. We were interested in seeing his matured appearance in the scenes.

We wanted more to see inside his head, and inside the heart. [psyche]These people are right? These people are victims of their own circumstance by being born in the Golden Triangle, we’re talking about [the] Sixties, Seventies. Sell is all you can do. amapola [a regional colloquialism for opium]Work in the poppy fields. So that’s your only income, your father’s income. Then there’s this: [El Chapo’s]Father is not respectful, so you will have to work alone by selling weed.

For me, this is it. “OK, what was his mentality during the Seventies, and then what was his mentality in the Nineties and in the 2000s,”This is the entire Chapo era. I was curious to see if that clicked in him. Where did he have the nerve or the audacity or even the creativity of coming up with these ideas — the tunnels, the cans of jalapeños [to smuggle cocaine in]His nickname was El Rapido. I mean, El Chapo was just a normal nickname, because he’s short, but El Rapido because he was quite fast. If you were doing that, you must be good at what you’re doing.

Your performance on the show is full of energy. When you’re playing El Chapo, it’s almost like he’s constantly buzzing. He’s sort of bouncing on his feet and he seems like he can barely contain himself. How did you get that information?
It’s very cool that it is there. It is a part of my acting technique and preparation methods. Is this character active-minded or physically-minded? In Anabel’s book, Los Señores del Narco, some of the traits that he has, I’m like, “Oh, OK, I’m close to that.”I enjoy what they describe in him. Charismatic? Myself, I’m a charismatic guy. I’m energetic, love music and dancing. I’m thinking, “OK, this is right down my alley. The producers were right picking me.”

How do you manage the tension between a friendly guy who loves to laugh and has a lot of fun but is also willing to commit serious acts or violence?
I get the episodes one by one, so I don’t know what’s really in store for me. Because, as you mentioned, I can play the part of the good friend and dance and blah-blah-blah, blah. How do I approach the difficult stuff? The funny part is that there’s not that many moments when you see El Chapo, at least since Season One and Two, going through something dark. My! [approach]It was the question, “What do these people most love?” It’s their families and their friends.

In Season Two, you will experience some loss. El Chapo’s friend, El Cochiloco, is killed and it’s a very emotional scene.
Exactly. Even though that was a fictitious death, because that didn’t happen in that way, as part of the show that hit me. It also hit me the entire betrayal of killing the wife and children of [El Chapo’s friend Héctor Luis] “El Guero” Palma. That was crazy. I grabbed those moments just to be prepared. But there’s not that many dark moments. These are the beautiful, stunning scenes of El Chapo making tortillas from scratch with his mother. That’s amazing!

Yeah, he was sort of a mama’s boy, right?
Very much. He was a big-time mama’s boy. He viewed his mom as everything. And then his lovers — he had many wives, many kids, which I [was]They were actually surprised that they didn’t put on the show. This would have been fascinating because he had also lost his sons to the enemy. [drug] conflict. And that’s tough, doesn’t matter if you’re a bad guy or a good guy.

You might be surprised at the actual number of narcos you see. Narcos?
Many people from Guadalajara are the nephews, nieces, or daughters of Rafael Caro Quintero or all the other guys who have seen the show.

It was an amazing experience to report on the book. I was in northern Mexico interviewing an inmate in prison. He was the boss of his cell block. He was the one who controlled everything. He took me to his cell with him, which had air conditioning, a large bed, and a TV. He put on his television. Narcos in Mexico.
There is no way.

Yeah! Yes! Narcos in Mexicoand telling me which parts are correct and which are incorrect. It was crazy.
Who was that guy? What can you say?

I can’t say his name, but he’s a guy who is very much in that world and has a lot of power in that world. It was fascinating to hear his perspective on the TV series.
Oh, man!

It’s sort of like how there’s this stereotype of mafia guys in the U.S. watching The GodfatherAnd The SopranosIt was fascinating to watch their lives on film. And I think there’s a similar attitude among narcos in Mexico, of being curious how it’s portrayed.
I totally agree with you, and we didn’t want to glorify this, you know? It was an end goal for us all. They wanted to inform and entertain, which I believe is what they were trying to accomplish. Why? Because it’s a TV show. It’s not a documentary. We’re not going out there to interview, like Sean Penn did. I do my hair and make-up. I am able to learn my lines. This is a professionally produced show. Our glorification doesn’t include 20 girls in a Jacuzzi and narcos showing their abs. No, man, we’re showing them as people. And, and that’s what my goal was, to show El Chapo to audiences around the globe.