• Diego Luna has made 2025 the yr of the insurgent with regards to his largest roles.
• The Mexican actor performs revolutionaries in each season 2 of Star Wars sequence Andor and new film musical, Kiss of the Spider Girl.
• Luna sees clear parallels between the characters, significantly within the classes they need to study on their paths to constructing a greater world.

Rebellions are constructed on hope.

That catchphrase belongs to Cassian Andor (Diego Luna), who handed it on to Jyn Erso (Felicity Jones) in Rogue One: A Star Wars Story. But it surely may simply as simply be spoken by Luna's character, Valentin Arregui, in Kiss of the Spider Woman.

The movie, in theaters Oct. 10, is an adaptation of the 1993 Broadway musical of the identical identify, itself an iteration of the 1976 novel by Manuel Puig. It stars Luna as Valentin, an imprisoned insurgent below the Eighties Argentinian dictatorship, whose life is modified when he’s assigned to share a cell with the flamboyant Luis Molina (Tonatiuh), a window dresser arrested for public indecency.

The 2 males couldn't be extra completely different, however they bond as Molina tells Valentin tales of basic film star Ingrid Luna (Jennifer Lopez) and her best position as Aurora/the Spider Girl within the fictional film musical Kiss of the Spider Girl.

Although Valentin is initially mistrustful of Molina and the favors he does for the jail guards, the 2 grow to be confidantes, with Molina even consuming poisoned meals meant for Valentin and vice versa. Valentin is a Marxist who at first believes that Molina doesn't perceive or assist his revolutionary beliefs — solely to finally discover an ally in his struggle for freedom.

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That sounds so much like Cassian Andor, the mercenary orphan turned galactic hero on the coronary heart of two seasons of Andor on Disney+. For his half, Luna sees a powerful connection between his two roles.

"There’s something in widespread that’s fairly clear," he tells Leisure Weekly. "It's the journey that they expertise. After we discover Valentin, he's remoted. He's dropping the battle. He's been trapped in jail, and he’s alienating himself from each doable thought of change and revolution as a result of he's defending himself. He's wounded. That's just about how we discover Cassian within the first season of Andor."

Luna stresses that Valentin and Cassian are nonetheless very completely different individuals — and the necessities of his Star Wars position and his sojourn into musical filmmaking are actually fairly completely different.

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"However there’s a connection," he provides. "The great thing about this story, which is unfortunately related immediately, is that it's a easy reminder of constructing certain we don't overlook the flexibility we’ve got to attach with others. That this difficult actuality we’re all experiencing doesn't find yourself alienating us as a result of then there's no probability to like."

Ultimately, it’s love that drives each Cassian and Valentin. In Valentin's case, his love for Molina, and in Cassian's, his love for adoptive mom, Maarva (Fiona Shaw), girlfriend Bix (Adria Arjona), and the opposite rebels with whom he's aligned himself.

"When there's no probability to like, there's no probability to alter," Luna displays. "Due to this fact, there's no probability for revolution to occur or exist. These characters are actually hoping change comes, however they need to undergo their very own course of to study that change is definitely doable."

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