Watch Bad Bunny and Gael García Bernal Get Steamy in ‘Cassandro’
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One of the more wonderful surprises out of this year’s Sundance Film Festival was Cassandro, director Roger Ross Williams’ tender and poignant portrait of Saúl Armendáriz (Gael García Bernal), a gay lucha libre wrestler from El Paso (who spent much of his youth across the border in Juárez) who rose to fame as a so-called exótico — a male wrestler in drag.
After trying to take his own life, Armendáriz overcame his demons and became the first exótico to win a Universal Wrestling Association (UWA) championship, opening a number of wrestling-world minds in the process.
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“I was inspired to explore the life of Cassandro to showcase the dichotomy of macho Mexican culture along with Armendariz’s fandom,” Williams tells Rolling Stone. “While Cassandro certainly faced his fair share of adversity as a gay luchador, I wanted to explore a positive story about a queer person — where a lot of stories we see about queer people are depressing and sad. This is about triumph and overcoming adversity and just believing in who you are, finding acceptance.”
Williams’ based-on-a-true-story tale about the “Liberace of Lucha Libre” also features Benito Antonio Martinez Ocasio — aka Bad Bunny — as Felipe, a handsome young fella who’s tasked by a shady promoter with getting close to Armendáriz. Some serious flirting ensues.
Of course, Bad Bunny is no stranger to wrestling. The Puerto Rican music superstar has made a number of appearances in WWE events, even tag-teaming to win the WWE 24/7 Championship during an episode of Raw. He’s also a character in the video game WWE 2K23, and was set to play Spider-Man villain El Muerto, a wrestler with otherworldly strength, in a feature film until the project was derailed by the ongoing Hollywood strikes. While he’s made appearances in the action blockbusters F9 and Bullet Train, his role in Cassandro marks Bad Bunny’s most prominent acting role to date.
According to Williams, Bad Bunny was “awesome” to work with, and the scene you’re about to watch between Cassandro and Felipe “speaks to the idea in the film of living life ‘sin másacra,’ or without a mask. That’s an integral message in Cassandro’s story. He was able to find love, community, support and most importantly self-acceptance by living in his truth courageously, without a mask.”
In this exclusive clip from Cassandro, watch Bad Bunny and Bernal get to know each other a little better.
Cassandro will play in select theaters on Sept. 15 and stream globally on Prime Video Sept. 22.
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