Raúl Castillo Bridges the Divide

Raúl Castillo has always straddled disparate sides: writer or actor, stage or screen, Mexican or American, gay or straight. The answers, in order: both, both, both, straight (sorry, boys). But his life and career have found ways to keep these differences fluid. Born in the Texan border town of McAllen—he once said in an interview that he felt "too Mexican for the US, too American for Mexico"—he quickly fell in love with the theater, leading to a prolific, if lowkey, career as a playwright and actor Off-Broadway before landing the role that would broadcast his charm and ability globally. In HBO's short-lived, high-impact series Looking, about a group of gay men searching for connection in San Francisco, he imbued the character of Richie Maldonado—a flirty hairdresser who wins the heart of the show's lead—with the self-respect, melancholy, and irresistible good looks that bumped him from featured to regular player in its second season, and which he has gone on to demonstrate in the years since.

2022 is a watershed year for Castillo, acclaimed for his work earlier this fall in American (Tele)visions, a new multimedia play about an undocumented Mexican family set at a Walmart in the nineties, at New York Theatre Workshop and already garnering awards buzz for his performance in Elegance Bratton's film The Inspection. He appeared in the play's final shows between the red carpets and Q&As of the movie's sold-out New York Film Festival screenings, a remarkable testament to his commitment to the craft.

But the play almost didn't happen. Relaxed into his signature blend of laidback grace and almost narrow-eyed caution on a couch in East Williamsburg, Castillo says that he felt his character as the father of a family confronted with loss, a malleable sense of identity, and the pulsing thrum of American capitalism echoed his earlier work on We the Animals, for which he nabbed an Independent Spirit nomination, too strongly. Meeting with the director Rubén Polendo and playwright Victor I. Cazares changed his mind—"I'd never come across two border artists working at this level, it was absolutely stunning"—and brought him back to the stage after an eight-year absence. "No one's really producing plays that I could be in, and I didn't feel like anyone needed to see my Stanley Kowalski," he says.

Booking The Inspection was a smoother process, though not without its own bumpy connection to that earlier film. Writer-director Bratton's second feature is a semi-autobiographical drama set in the days of "Don't Ask, Don't Tell," about a young gay man, portrayed by Jeremy Pope, who enlists in the Marine Corps and finds relief from the violent hazing and homophobic ostracization he receives from his fellow recruits in the guardian angel-like training instructor, Rosales, played by Castillo.

He loved the script as soon as he read it, and thought the writer's name sounded familiar: "Elegance is not a name you come across every day," he quips. He searched for it in his emails; nothing. He went through his texts, and messages from 2018 popped up, none of which he'd answered. A slight embarrassment went through him: He'd already met Bratton, who cornered him at the Tribeca Film Festival while he was promoting Animals. Castillo gave him his number but, spread thin by other commitments, never replied to his future director's overtures. Fascinated by the material and eager to work with indie juggernaut A24, he got over his sheepishness and submitted an audition tape. "I've gotten better at trusting my gut the further along in my career I've gone," Castillo says. "I know when I read something and it clicks, I don't have to reach too far to capture it. When I read Rosales, I was like, 'I can play this guy, I can do something with this character.' He makes sense to me. And from the first Zoom I had with Elegance, there was a real ease in the way that we communicated; it felt like we'd known each other in a past life."

The role, a composite of key figures from the writer-director's time in the Marine Corps, appealed to what Castillo calls his "affinity for the underdog." His character is every bit as curt and manly as you'd imagine a War on Terror-era drill instructor to be, but keeps a nurturing eye on the young recruit, helping him through some of the more stressful hazing he's made to endure. Rosales is the only one to whom the Bratton stand-in can turn, creating some of the film's most delicate moments, compassionately realized by Castillo's performance and physical demeanor—as always, his puppy dog eyes betray the toughness you'd expect from his raspy voice and muscular physique.

This sympathy for outsiders and rejection of machismo dates back to Castillo's childhood. Though he remembers that, as a boy (he stresses the youth in 'boy'), he had a fascination with guns and G.I. Joe, Castillo found himself increasingly at odds with the standard performance of masculinity, instead gravitating towards the company of women. "I was a sensitive kid, so I wasn't part of the normal, straight male rituals of chest-thumping and ego-checking," he explains. Being around the "real testosterone-y male energy" while shooting The Inspection proved to be an education for the actor, and he credits Bratton and Pope for setting a respectful tone on set, with the director's openness and vulnerability helping to dissipate some of the younger cast members' more ego-driven personalities.

At this point, I can't help but ask about his relationship to the queer community. If Looking earned him high visibility (and endless swoons) among gays, roles in well-received projects like Animals and (Tele)visions—both of which saw him playing homophobic fathers to questioning sons with sorrow and sympathy—have further cemented him as a beloved regular in the contemporary gay media landscape. After a pensive beat, he reflects that the association started out while he was doing theater in high school, where discovering queer playwrights like Charles Ludlam, Charles Busch, Martin Sherman, and Tennessee Williams (his hero) allowed him a glimpse into worlds beyond his machista hometown. "I'm a middle child, and there was a part of me that always felt unseen," he goes on. "I think that's why theater and film became an addiction for me, because it was a way to be seen. Queer artists, throughout my career, have seen and made space for me. It's not surprising to hear that I am with this devoted audience, I feel really lucky to be included."

When I tell him that, though the endless debates over whether straight actors should play gay characters is ultimately pretty boring, he and Ewan McGregor are allowed to do whatever they want, he (correctly) adds Gael García Bernal to that shortlist. What's more: Castillo and the Mexican acting legend recently wrapped filming on Cassandro, about the real-life Saúl Armendáriz, a Texas native who rose to fame playing exótico characters (flamboyant, drag-adjacent personas) in the world of lucha libre.

Whether Bernal sticks around to join Castillo's close coterie of fellow artists is to be determined, but the members of his tight-knit group are already a treat for fans of the actor. He and Looking co-stars Jonathan Groff and Murray Bartlett (who earlier this year won an Emmy for The White Lotus) gather regularly, often with Castillo's long-time girlfriend, costume designer Alexis Forte. Also hanging around: Groff's bestie Lea Michele, whom Castillo first met at the HBO show's premiere party, and Dre Torres, his baby cousin who works as an assistant choreographer on Broadway's Funny Girl, currently starring Michele.

Until then, the self-described "recovering playwright" (he prefers acting to the loneliness of writing) is waiting for his friend to deliver the second half of a film script of a story Castillo developed and would potentially direct. "It's a story that I've had for a while," he smiles. "I tried to write it for many years, but I couldn't crack it so I outsourced it to a novelist friend of mine." As praise for The Inspection rolls in, Castillo already beams as he approaches the different projects and new challenges on the horizon, the borders of his career shrinking behind him.

The Inspection is out now.

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