Carlos Diehz

0:13Hello and welcome to the Monocle Weekly. I'm Laura Kramer. Today I speak with the Mexican architect turned actor Carlos Diaz about his breakthrough role in Conclave. The award-winning political thriller and Oscar contender follows the selection of a new pope and features a stellar cast, including Ralph Fiennes, Stanley Tucci, and Isabella Rossellini. We discuss his remarkable career shift, what it's like working alongside Hollywood A-listers on his very first project, no less, and how he developed his mysterious character, Cardinal Benitez. Here is my conversation with Carlos Diaz.

1:00Carlos Diaz, thank you so much for joining me on the Monocle Weekly. Conclave is such a special and beautiful film. It's very cloak and dagger. Absolutely loved it, I have to say. Let's start at the beginning. What was the auditioning process like to land the role of the mysterious Cardinal Benitez? Well, the auditioning process was like any audition process. There was a casting call. Then we waited for about 10 days or so. And we got a message that I had a callback. But Edward Berger wanted to talk to me about the role. And I read the script. They sent me the whole script. I noticed how different it was from the book.

1:47Then I realized the relevance of the character. So I, doing my own research, I made this idea that this character had to be something, somehow, between St. Francis of Assisi, a deep spiritual, missionary, compassionate person, and St. Ignatius of Loyola, a leader, also deeply spiritual in a different way, more methodical, more committed to the organization, the church, and everything. So I thought Benitez is a mixture. So he's deeply spiritual, but he's also a leader. He knows how to play the game of politics and the ranks of the church and everything. That's why he's an archbishop. So I talked to Edward about this idea and he said, fine, run with it.

2:31And I said, well, do you have any comments, any ideas? He said, nope, I just wanted to know what you had in mind. I like it. Do your next self-tapes and let's see. So we did that. The second round of tapes was in mid-October. So then they told me by the end of the month, OK, you made it. We want to see you in Rome. So they flew me to Rome to do the last callback in front of Nina Gold, Edward Berger, Tessa Ross, and Danny Cohen, producers. It sounds like such a rigorous process with all the multiple rounds of the different auditions. What was it like when you first found out you had the callback and that Edward Berger, the director, wanted to speak with you directly.

3:13It wasn't usual since Nina Gold, she arrived one hour earlier and just wanted to talk to me. I thought she was going to ask me about my formation as an actor, my training, and what techniques did I use, my approach, et cetera. And she said, no, no, no, I just want to know you as a person. Talk to me, tell me where you're from, about your family, about your daily job and everything. so we spent about an hour talking about life and I also asked her some kind of personal questions right in order to get to know her a little bit more so we I think we clicked very nicely and by the time when Edward and the producers arrived I was more way more relaxed so we did the audition usually an audition is kind of fast a couple of minutes you just run your scenes and you're off and here we spent over an hour more than one hour just going through through the scenes in different moods different pace edward was playing with the camera doing some panning and like if we were on the set so that was that was very encouraging and then that was it that was November the 1st, 2022.

4:29And then we waited almost three weeks or more than three weeks until they said, okay, you got the role. Now get ready and see you here in Rome in early January. So that was the process. It was basically four months before we started shooting. And that gave me plenty of time to study the characters, study the co-stars, and to get over the excitement, over excitement. of being with Ray Fiennes in every single scene. Now, this is your breakthrough role. And of course, you were also an architect. How did that help you prepare for the character at all? Because it must have been truly incredible from that point of view to be in Rome and to film, but also on set for the first feature production with such well-known co-stars as well.

5:21I imagine you were a little bit intimidated at first. How did you manage all that? Oh, yeah. I was not a little intimidated. I was really intimidated by these people. As an architect, you know, since I was in high school, I had in my mind to become an architect since I was a kid. But when we had in high school art history and we covered Rome and then again in architecture school, we saw Roman architecture, Roman art and everything. It was one of my dreams to be in Rome. I had never had the chance. Even I talked to my wife that now that the kids were kids were leaving home and everything, we should start traveling.

6:00And Rome was our number one choice to travel to Europe. And then when this opportunity comes up, it's like, it's amazing. It's incredible. And it was just magical. Everything hard to believe being there after so many years of wondering, wishing to be there. But with these amazing actors, I studied, especially Rafe, I studied every single interview, lecture, video or whatever I could find on the internet. and I watched a lot of movies from him to get to know him, to get familiar with him. I would put them in the big screen and then pull my chair close to it to notice, to be more conscious of how he cues the other actor, the lines and everything, how he manifests these kind of emotions, how he moves on set, et cetera.

6:57So I did that over and over basically every single day. I studied also John, Isabella, Stanley. Lucian was a little bit harder because there's not much material online about him. But yeah, I got to see the name. So yeah, well, they're absolutely professionals. I hope I don't mess it up for them. And they don't see me with so much suspicions. I'm basically the Benitez of the cast. Nobody knows who's this guy, where's he coming from, why he's here and everything. So that was on purpose. That was by design to bring me to this production in the exact same way Benitzel writes to the concrete. So I say, OK, I have that factor on my side.

7:43Right. It's like in some scenes, some people say, you don't know who I am. Yeah. And you don't know either who I am. So we're even. Right. I know who they are, but they don't know me. So that would give me a little bit of advantage to surprise them. So I was hoping to do that. And getting familiar with them on video, that was good. That was a little bit reassuring. But being in front of them was a dream. Given that studying of Ralph Fiennes and the other actors to prepare, when you finally did meet them on set, what was that moment like? Did anything surprise you about them at all? The first day we did our preparation, I arrived first to Chinichitan for the wardrobe fitting.

8:30And then I walked into the Sistine Chapel set and I was the first one there. I was looking around and I saw that they started arriving. And then Edward comes for me and says, okay, come, I'm going to introduce you. He introduced me to Rafe, Stanley, then Lucien, and then John. And they were very, very kind, very polite. but there was something I had to tell John. I had thought about it and it was, I told John, I had something to tell you, but maybe later. And he said, oh, no, no, no, let's do it. Let's do it right now. Why not? I was like, okay, bring it on. It's good. Okay. Well, in the nineties, my mom had pancreatitis and she recovered really fast, really well with no sequels.

9:20And she's convinced that that happened thanks to humor. that humor made her recover that well. And her favorite series was The Rock from the Sun. And John was like, oh my God, that's so beautiful. Thank you, thank you very much. He hugged me and everything. He was like, oh my God, I disarmed him. It was not my intention. It was just to tell him, thank you. Thank you for the humor that you brought to my mother's life. And this is one of my favorite series. Every now and then I watch it again. and he's outrageous in that series. But Johnny is such a nice guy. Everyone. Rafe is more on the shy side, but Stanley has fantastic sense of humor.

10:06Lucian, oh my God, Lucian and I, we just like cousins going on high school trips and everything. We have so much fun. And Johnny is such a nice guy, such a sweet guy. So we talked with everyone. We walked around the set. uh they were starting to define the positions who's going to sit where and i noticed that rafe uh was watching me was observing me from afar and he was looking at me and i would just go like hey and then after a while he comes closer to me he says now i know why why they chose you you are benitez it's like i can see when it's in you it's your personality and okay well thank you that's all I need because he's the one I'm going to be bouncing the scenes and he's the most intimidating you know his his eyes are so so deep so penetrating and everything so uh I said as long as he's on board that I am Benitez that's fine with me that makes my my work a lot easier but still every time I was going to be on set especially because he was always with him I was really nervous.

11:17So I was doing these self-assurances, self-affirmations every single day. I belong here. I belong here. They want me here. And that's the advice that every acting coach has given me since the very beginning is when they invite you to audition, they like you. They like you. They just want to see how the character sounds in your voice. How does it look in your flesh, in your manners and everything, but they like you already. So that takes a lot of pressure off. And then if they invite you for a callback, they love you. And if they give you the role, you made it. Don't overthink it. Don't overdo it.

12:02Just keep doing the same. A lot of people get anxious and they try to go over the top and that messes things up so it's about uh overcoming a self-doubt and trust the process that you are here because you belong there and john told me that a couple of times don't worry you belong here you're here you're good you're good don't don't go overboard also edward that's exactly what he told me the first day we started shooting. He said, do the same you've done so far. That's it. Don't overthink it. Don't ever do it. So that was that was great. You know, as you speak about it, the whole story, it's almost serendipitous how it all worked out.

12:47How do you feel now about the film's success and awards recognition, including its numerous BAFTA nominations? Well, I knew that the film was going to be successful. I mean, just the cast and the story is so gripping, so engaging that we all knew this was going to be a hit. But I'm surprised at how much of a hit it's been so far. I thought it's amazing that every couple of days you check online and there's new nominations and new awards and everything. And it's really, it's rewarding to see that as a cast, as an ensemble, we have so many accolades and so many nominations. That's great. And that's basically a reflection of what happened in Rome.

13:39And I think Rafe has mentioned a couple of times that we were a company. We were so close together. We were, it was like a family working together. And that's why I always say that John Lidgo is my uncle and Isabella is my aunt and Lucian is my cousin. And I introduced them like that in Palm Springs. I introduced them like that to Ariana Grande, who was nearby. She was such a nice person. I introduced them as my family. Ariana asked me also, are you here? How are you feeling about all this? And I said, well, this is kind of overwhelming, but I'm assimilating it. And she asked me, are you here with someone you love?

14:19Well, my wife is not here, but you have some friends or some people that you love and love you? Are you here with me? Oh, yes, absolutely. So this is my cousin, Lucien, my aunt Isabella, and I introduced them. And she was really surprised about that. But that's how I feel about all of them. This closeness, this not just comradeship, but like genuine caring for each other. and that made a, I mean, the result is obvious on the screen, is that this rhythm we got, this compenetration we emotionally built on set, that's something difficult to achieve. And it's the best. I've been working in architecture for over 30 years.

15:06I have worked with some really amazing teams, with other teams that have been a little bit challenging, but always there's a group that you can trust always and we have our backs for each other. But here in this production, it was such a nice, easygoing, lovely environment that I think Tessa Ross and Edward Berger and Mike Jackman created from the top down. So it was a beautiful environment to work in. Well, looking ahead, you've made this incredible film. What are your plans for the future? What can we expect from you going forward? Well, my agent has received some shows of interest that obviously I cannot talk about.

15:50And she's very, very discreet about it. So once something is kind of in progress, she lets me know. But right now we have some shows of interest. We are just surfing this award season and trying to strategize what's next. but so far everything is calm. Let's see what happens after the Oscars and once everything is settled, we'll see.

16:26Thank you very much to Carlos Diaz. Conclave is in cinemas now and available to stream on a number of premium video on-demand platforms. The Monocle Weekly was edited by Hunter Wang and presented by me, Laura Kramer. Thank you for listening.