Diego Calva has been singing the praises of the new season of “The Night Manager,” but why take his word for it when you have the endorsement of Kate Moss?
While in Paris last week for the Saint Laurent men’s show, Calva was feeling a bit nervous about sitting with people he didn’t know — until none other than Moss breezed in, took her seat next to him and proceeded to rave about the show.
“She introduced me to thousands of people, like, ‘oh, Diego, he’s in ‘The Night Manager,’” Calva says. “She literally was my PR, and made everything more relaxing.”
Diego Calva
Lexie Moreland/WWD
A decade after the first season of “The Night Manager” was released, the show returned for a second season this January. Season One star Tom Hiddleston is back and is joined by Calva and Camila Morrone in another installment of the crime drama, set mostly this season in Colombia.
“When you are the guy being cast, you are the guy that has to prove himself. You never know,” Calva says over Zoom from a “frozen” Atlanta of his audition process. “And honestly, I learned during my career that expecting is too much. Asking is too much. I send the tape, I do the callback, I do the chemistry reading, and then I try to forget about it because if not, I’m going to torture myself and I’m going to think for the next three months, like, ‘oh, I should have said this line this way, or I should have tried this.’”
He did two takes for his audition before asking for a third, to “try something else,” and would learn after that it was that third take that immediately landed him the role of Teddy, this season’s villain.
Diego Calva
Lexie Moreland/WWD
Calva, who is 33, was drawn to “everything” about Teddy, but approached him cautiously.
“It’s hard to explain it, but to play a Colombian bad guy is something that could be really tricky for a Mexican actor, could be really misrepresented in a way or also really easily go into a cliché, like macho,” the Mexican-born actor says. “But I kept reading and I went to the chemistry reading in London, and I talked with Georgi [Banks-Davies, the director], and I realized they wanted to create something different with Teddy. They wanted to create something more soulful. And then I realized that my journey with Teddy had to be more from the inside to the outside. I tried to find first his inner child, all that pain, put a face to it, put some story into it, even if I knew that it was going to be an untold story. And the moment I felt that pain, I found Teddy”.
Calva broke out on the third and final season of “Narcos: Mexico” before starring alongside Margot Robbie and Brad Pitt in Damien Chazelle’s “Babylon” in 2022. While the film didn’t land the critical success it was expected to, it was life-changing for Calva.
“‘Babylon’ came and knocked on my door and put me in a different stage,” he says. “‘Babylon’ was the most challenging, rich and wild experience. [Damien] is such a perfectionist. He’s such an interesting and loving guy, and the two things he loves the most are music and cinema. I literally learned how to act with Olivia Hamilton, Damien’s wife, as kind of my coach, and Damien Chazelle. They created the actor inside me, or at least they let him free.”
Diego Calva
Lexie Moreland/WWD
When he wraps shooting his newest movie in Atlanta, Calva is due back in Mexico, where he is shooting a Mexican film he can’t yet discuss. “I’ve been waiting and waiting and waiting for the right movie to come back to Mexico,” he says. “And I think this is going to be, this is it. This is a movie I want to do in my country.”
