Trivia / Narcos

• Actor-Inspired Element: Pedro Pascal suggested that Javier Peña wear '70s-inspired outfits, after Pascal decided that '80s fashion didn't look flattering on himself.
  "I looked like I was playing dress-up, like a kid, I looked like a child, like I just got lost. And, um... I looked like a dork. And so I came up with this idea, I was like, y'know, let's just say Javier Peña is like Don Draper. In that, like, the seventies is his- like, that was where he really found himself. And so he can't really- and so he's stuck there. He's not throwing those pants out, he's not changing his hair, he's not changing his shoes; it's his time, and he's gonna look like that until the day he dies."
• Actor-Shared Background: Pedro Pascal grew up in Texas, the same state in which the real Javier Peña was born and raised.
• Better Export for You: Season 3 and Narcos: Mexico only received DVD sets in the US, with Mexico not even going beyond its first season. However, these series did receive Blu-ray releases in Canada, Europe, and Australia.
• Disowned Adaptation: Sebastián Marroquín, Pablo Escobar's son, is very critical of the show for glorifying drug lords as he explains that his father did a lot of worse things in real life than what's shown in the series. After the show's location scout was gunned down in a town in Mexico, he warned Netflix to be careful of their portrayal of real-life drug personalities.
• Dueling Works: With The Naked Director, another Netflix show. Both are Fanservicy foreign crime dramas set in the 80s based on a real story. Narcos is about the Colombian cocaine epidemic, while The Naked Director is about the illegal pornographic market in Japan.
• Dyeing for Your Art: Wagner Moura gained 40 pounds and enrolled with a college course in Colombia for the role. He lampshades this in The Tonight Show, calling it the worst mistake of casting in his TV/Film career. Averted with his cameo in Season 4. Moura has visibly lost his weight ever since retiring from the series, making him barely resemble Escobar.
• Fake Nationality: Most of the Colombian characters are played by actors of other nationalities, mostly Hispanic and Latino Americans actors.
  • Medellín Cartel: Pablo Escobar is played by a Brazilian (Wagner Moura actually didn't speak a word of Spanish before getting the part, and he speaks it with a noticeable Brazilian accent according to Spanish-speaking viewers), Gacha is played by Puerto Rican Luis Guzmán, and Jorge Luis Ochoa Vásquez is played by the Brazilian André Mattos. The Lion is played by Brazilian-American Jon-Michael Ecker, and Carlos Lehder is played by Canadian Juan Riedinger. Even Pablo's top sicarios are played by non-Colombians; Poison, La Quica and Limón were played by Mexicans Jorge A. Jimenez and Diego Cataño and Costa Rican Leynar Gómez respectively.
  • Cali Cartel: Mexican Damián Alcázar plays Gilberto Rodríguez, his brother Miguel is played by Francisco Denis, from Venezuela (Guatemalan Arturo Castro plays his son David). Pacho Herrera is played by Spaniard-Argentinian Alberto Ammann. Chepe Santacruz is played by Portuguese Pêpê Rapazote. And then there are Spaniards Javier Cámara as Guillermo Pallomari, Miguel Ángel Silvestre as Franklin Jurado and Tristán Ulloa as Ernesto Samper. Spanish-Swedish Matias Varela plays Jorge Salcedo.
  • Law enforcement and others: Agent Javier Peña, an American from Laredo (Mexican roots) is played by Chilean Pedro Pascal. Connie Murphy's actress, Joanna Christie, is British. Colombian President César Gaviria is played by Mexican Raúl Méndez. Colonel Carrillo is played by Cuban-American Maurice Compte. Agent Van Ness is played by New Zealander Matt Whelan.
  • Narcos: Mexico actually averts this to a large degree, at least for the Mexican characters, to the point that the show is almost a who's-who of Mexican showbusiness. Non-Mexican actors include Chilean Fernanda Urrejola, who plays María Elvira, Spanish Gorka Lasaosa as Héctor Luis Palma, Argentine-Spanish Ernesto Alterio as Salvador Osuna Nava, and Bolivian Milton Cortés as Rubén Zuno Arce.
  • On the other hand, this is still played painfully straight with the Latin American Spanish dubs with regards on the Colombian characters, as the dubs of both Narcos and Narcos: Mexico were done in Mexico with Mexican voice actors, despite Colombia having a voice acting industry, and Netflix also tend to dub their series in that country. The only odd exception is on the voice actor of the Mexican cartel boss, Miguel Ángel Félix Gallardo, which is voiced by Jhonny Torres, since he hails from Venezuela.
• Method Acting:
  • Some of the historical figures portrayed in the show met with their respective actors to help prepare their performances. In particular, Boyd Holbrook enrolled himself and Pedro Pascal for a week of DEA training, taught by the real Steve Murphy and Javier Peña.
  • For Mexico, Michael Peña met with the actual Mika Camarena, Kiki Camarena's widow, to talk about portraying her late husband. Peña and Luna, who are both good friends and past collaborators in real life, also did not meet with each other between shooting the opening scene of the series and the scene where Félix has Kiki tortured, to enforce the distance between the two characters. Finally, Diego Luna insisted on smoking actual cigarettes onscreen, because he dislikes the nicotine-free herbals he otherwise would've been given and also because he thinks he can tell when an actor is smoking herbals onscreen, an artistic decision that led to him going through at least a pack a day as his character is smoking in nearly every scene.
• Real-Life Relative: Pedro Pascal's youngest sibling, Lux Pascal, played Elias in season three.^note credited as Lucas Balmaceda Pascal
• Reality Subtext: In 2017, location scout Carlos Muñoz Portal was shot and killed while scouting in a particularly dangerous region of Mexico that he'd been to before and that had been used as a filming location on his advice in the past without incident. Narcos: Mexico is about the genesis of the ongoing US-Mexico drug wars, which led to Mexico being in the state that it's in today.
• Throw It In!: Pedro Pascal improvised the capper of Peña's response to Murphy asking if he's ever gone duck hunting, specifically the inexperienced and embarrassed Peña calling Murphy, "...you fucking hillbilly."
• What Could Have Been:
  • The pilot originally began with the Avianca exploding, until producer José Padilha admitted that he didn't learn much about Pablo Escobar while growing up in Brazil, necessitating multiple episodes covering his rise to infamy.
  • Even though Pedro Pascal's audition for Javier Peña marked one of the first shown to the casting director and show runners, they only chose him after their first choice turned down Narcos to work on a Will Smith movie instead.
  • After Pascal learned that Javier Peña wouldn't star in Narcos: Mexico, the Chronically Killed Actor apparently alternated between asking the show runners to kill off Javi in season three, and suggesting them to leave open the chance that he'd return. Ultimately, Javi survives his fights against the Cali Cartel.

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