Adria Arjona | Variations on Punk

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Adria Arjona has got places to be. Case in point: the entirety of our interview takes place with her sat in the backseat of a taxi, pieces of New York disappearing over her shoulder in shimmering flashes as we talk.

We’re chatting over Zoom as she leaves yet another city behind, working her way through the press tour for her upcoming film Los Frikis. Her face is cloaked in partial darkness, white AirPods peeking out from under glossy dark beach waves. I’m half tempted to ask her to switch the light on in the car so I can see her better (a face like hers being obscured in any way feels criminal). Her phone seems to be propped up on a knee, the screen jolting from time to time with the car’s movements.

In truth, the whole setup feels less like an interview and more like a catch-up between friends—and it seems to suit Arjona just fine. Her voice is warm, her tone affectionate. In the midst of all the chaos that 2024 has brought to Arjona’s schedule, she seems wholly at ease. Maybe it’s because she’s spent so much of her life in transition: a busy Wednesday isn’t anything to sweat when even your childhood was filled with packed bags and last-minute moves (the actress was born in Puerto Rico, raised in Mexico City and lived in Miami until she turned 17, after which she moved to NYC to attend the illustrious Lee Strasberg institute).

If anything, the actor seems to be the most comfortable in motion—and the past few years have been nothing but forward motion for Adria Arjona. In the mid 2010s, she appeared in a myriad of titles: Season 2 of True Detective, Narcos, Emerald City, Pacific Rim: Uprising, to name a few.Then, in 2022, Arjona took starring roles in two major franchise productions: Lucasfilm’s series Andor and Marvel’s film, Morbius. This year, she was co-lead of Richard Linklater’s steamy thriller Hit Man opposite none other than white boy of the year Glen Powell, played Sarah in Zoë Kravitz’s buzzy directorial debut film Blink Twice, and was just honored as a TIME100 Next alum.

Arjona has appeared on our screens for over a decade. It is, however, the release of independent picture Los Frikis that seems to be what she considers the highlight of this stellar year. “This film is so special to me. It has changed my life,” she tells me, voice sincere.

Directed by Tyler Nilson & Mike Schwartz, Los Frikis is the story of a group of punk rockers in 90s Cuba who inject themselves with HIV in the hopes of finding freedom and independence in one of the treatment homes the government had set up to help monitor patients. It is a film that sheds light on a forgotten part of Cuban history, one that helps bring to the fore the story of a group that was vital to the cultural growth of the country’s music scene.

Arjona’s turn as Maria—a nurse who works in one of these facilities—grounds the piece in the somberness you’d expect from a modern audience. We—like herself—know how deadly diseases like HIV and AIDS are; the young men who decide to inject themselves in the hopes of escaping their home do not. As soon as she spoke to the directors, Arjona knew that she needed to be a part of telling their story.

“As a Latin American... I was really surprised that I didn’t know that this had happened in my own history. That this was what was happening in Cuba at that time... I was just so surprised that people were searching for freedom in their own country and they found it within a disease they didn’t even fully understand. [As a story], it was so full of joy and complex and had so many layers. It was hard for me to describe how I felt after I finished reading it. All I knew was that I had to be a part of it."

The film marks another career milestone for the actress, who is also credited as an executive producer for the first time. It’s not hard to see why; her enthusiasm as she talks about the making of this film is nothing short of infectious. Arjona projects none of that cool cynicism about the industry.

The actor understands that the opportunity to share stories like this one is a rarity. Los Frikis is shot entirely in Spanish—Arjona’s mother tongue—and features a cast made up of only Latin actors. She’s spoken Spanish in other roles (most notably as Helena in Narcos) but this time it was in service to a story that she felt ownership of. “Whenever I’ve spoken Spanish onscreen [before], it was always for American projects,” she shares. “This time, it felt like it was for us. And that’s very beautiful.” Artistically, it let her unlock a part of herself she didn’t usually have access to, changing her process.

“This is going to be very actor-y, but a lot of my memories are in Spanish. A lot of the stuff that I access as an actress, I’m translating it to English in a way because I mostly act in English... I’m in constant translation, which a lot of people don’t realize. I speak the language fine but I think in Spanish. I dream in Spanish. So, when it came to those bigger scenes it felt a little bit more fluid and seamless because it was easier for me to get there.”

Hollywood does not have the best track record when it comes to platforming stories that aren’t white-centric; recent reports have found that only 5.5% of speaking characters on the silver screen are Hispanic or Latin, with their projects also routinely receiving lower production and marketing budgets than their non-Latin counterparts despite receiving more acclaim and money at the box office.

When we do see Latin characters onscreen, the industry seems to be adamant in pushing the same tired drug dealer/ violent criminal trope, the likes of which Netflix’s Griselda have been accused of perpetrating. Stripped of autonomy and choice, most Latin actors are either forced to play into the tropes themselves to get work or simply do not work. Theirs is a culture and people we have not been allowed to know fully.

“This movie is as authentic as it can be and I’ll tell you why: instead of the directors wanting to put their fingerprints on it, they [Tyler and Mike] very much took a step back and gave complete freedom to the actors to step in and change the lines, to change the structure. We had table readings and meetings where people were like, ‘In Cuba, there’s this,’ or ‘We say things like that.’ They gave ownership of the script to every one of the actors. And they gave their lead a producing credit. Nobody does that! And nobody makes films like that except fucking Tyler and Michael.”

Arjona talks about being on that set the way one would describe their ideal home: safe, warm, devoid of judgement. If Arjona played a guardian in Los Frikis on screen, she played one off-screen too. The well-being of her co-stars, all young Cuban actors who bar one had never left their home country before—let alone act in a film—was Arjona’s main priority.

“With the kids—I call them kids but they’re grown ass men who are fully 18, 19, 20-year-olds—I took a really big responsibility for making sure they felt safe. We all lived on the same floor and I had access to them, they had access to me if they needed anything. I really wanted them to feel good because it was the first time they had left home. In some ways that became my process for finding Maria.”

It’s a sense of responsibility that every immigrant understands. Just as our elders held our hands when we moved to these unfamiliar countries, just as they translated for us at the corner stores and threw us welcome parties, we all know that one day it will be our turn to be the elders whose responsibility it is to help those who come after us. Los Frikis seems to have been that moment for Arjona.

“I understood that what they were experiencing was a big deal,” she remembers. “I didn’t want to make them feel like outcasts for feeling homesick. And that sort of melted into my process and ended up molding what Maria would be like, which was someone who was fiercely protective. She understands what might happen to them, but she doesn’t have the heart to tell them. She just wants them to enjoy every minute of that experience.”

Arjona gets visibly emotional as she talks, adding: “All I wanted was them to have the best time making their first American movie. They’ve been dreaming about this for so long. That’s all I wanted. Everyone is still very much a part of my life. All of the kids except one is out of Cuba. Eight of them are here and working and pursuing their dream.”

The parallels between her story and those of the people whose lives this film revolves around are not lost on Arjona, who moved from Miami to New York at 17 to study acting. Seeking out creative fulfillment, wherever that takes her, has been the story of her life.

“[Being young,] you want that freedom to be creative,” she continues. “To have an opinion since you are trying to form your identity. In this movie, these characters are trying to be free. They’re going through so much. The stakes were so much higher [for these characters] than what I had to deal with at their age, but they, like me, were looking for their freedom... And freedom means everything to us artists.”

At one point in our conversation, I ask Arjona if she ever identified as someone who was punk—if she shared in any way the fierce sensibility the musicians of which Los Frikis is paying homage. She laughs, self deprecating, “I don’t think that I’m very punk. I probably was as a kid...but now? I don’t know.”

After spending an hour talking to her, I’m going to have to respectfully disagree with Arjona. This is a woman who has carved out a space for herself in an industry that has seemed hellbent on shoving Latin actresses like her into whatever boxes felt convenient. Whether it be from the backseat of a taxi or onstage at a film festival, she’s fighting to help her people be seen on their own terms.

What could be more punk than that?