Ben Affleck could have easily written the Mexican characters in his upcoming thriller Animals himself and called it a day. As the director, co-writer, and one of the stars of the Netflix feature premiering on October 9, he held absolute creative control. In the standard machinery of Hollywood, nobody would have batted an eye if he had simply handed Adriana Paz and Luis Gerardo Méndez their completed dialogue, asked them to deliver it on set, and moved on to the next scene. Instead, Affleck chose a path that the film industry rarely takes when it comes to Latino representation: he asked the people living closest to that lived experience to help him get it right, and then he actually listened to what they had to say.
Affleck explained that he asked both actors to write their own parts completely. In doing so, he acknowledged that he was placing a heavy responsibility on their shoulders—one that goes well beyond the traditional duties of an actor on a major studio production. He told them he needed their help shaping the film because they were representing millions of people around the world who would eventually watch the story and look for reflections of themselves on screen. He admitted that the weight of that representation was not something he felt entitled to handle alone. Rather than merely asking them to flag dialogue that felt inauthentic, he invited them to help build characters that felt genuinely true. To Affleck, the story belonged to the community they were representing just as much as it belonged to anyone else involved in the creative process.
What It Meant to Paz and Méndez to Be Asked
Adriana Paz described the collaborative experience with a warmth that highlights how rare this level of artistic partnership actually is in practice. During production, Affleck would routinely check in with her and Méndez, asking whether the dialogue felt authentic, whether their characters were saying things they would genuinely utter in real life, and whether they wanted to introduce elements that might be missing from the page. Paz noted that she never felt like she was performing extra, uncompensated labor. Instead, she felt she was being granted a profound privilege that most actors in her position are almost never given.
She described the process of sitting down with Méndez and working through their roles together as a refreshing reminder of why they chose their profession in the first place. It offered that rare, rewarding feeling of building a living, breathing person with another artist, rather than simply executing someone else’s prepackaged, outside vision of who a marginalized individual is supposed to be.
Luis Gerardo Méndez, internationally recognized for his standout work in Club de Cuervos, spoke about the gravity of the work he and Paz were undertaking in terms that extended far beyond the confines of the film itself. He emphasized that in this particular project, it was abundantly clear that the two of them were carrying the weight of a community of millions of people—not only inside the United States, but globally. This included migrants and refugees living in countries where they frequently do not feel welcomed or seen. Méndez explained that the stark clarity of that responsibility shaped virtually every creative decision he made regarding his character. Reflecting on his career, he noted that while some projects are designed purely for entertainment, some are prioritized for their cultural importance, and others fall into entirely different categories altogether, Animals demanded that he bring every ounce of his talent and dedication to the table.
Why This Matters for How Latino Migrants Are Depicted on Screen
The characters that Paz and Méndez portray in Animals deliberately break away from tired, harmful tropes. They are neither criminals, nor flat threats, nor simple cautionary tales designed to advance a thriller plot. Paz plays Cecilia, a housekeeper working inside the Los Angeles home where Affleck’s character is running a high-stakes political campaign—a woman who is frequently rendered invisible by the people around her, despite being the person who cares for what they value most. Méndez plays a man striving to support his family without legal documentation, trying to do everything right within an administrative and social system that offers him zero legal protection and zero recognition for the daily risks he takes. Both actors have emphasized the deliberate choice to depict migrants with profound dignity at a historical moment when public discourse and mainstream Hollywood productions continue to reduce complex human beings to single, threatening images.
Affleck took that critical perspective a step further, describing the pervasive political narrative that frames migrants as criminals as an absurd lie with a long, troubled history. He noted that such myths are routinely deployed whenever a society is under pressure and political figures need a convenient scapegoat. In his view, narrative fiction possesses a unique, disruptive power to challenge that logic because it forces an audience to genuinely recognize a human being in all their complexity before that person can be reduced to a flat category. Once an audience member truly identifies with someone’s shared humanity, Affleck argued, it becomes remarkably difficult to regress to a dehumanized version of what they represent.
What the Film Is Actually About
Animals centers on the harrowing kidnapping of the young son of Mark and Abigail Kimball, characters played by Ben Affleck and Kerry Washington. The film uses that high-tension premise to explore the difficult moral choices and murky gray areas that every character must navigate when the institutional systems surrounding them fail to provide easy answers. The star-studded ensemble cast also features acclaimed performances from Gillian Anderson, Steven Yeun, Ray Fisher, and others.
The thriller was produced in association with Artists Equity, the modern production studio that Affleck co-founded alongside longtime collaborator Matt Damon. Reflecting on the final product, Paz summarized what she hopes audiences take away from the viewing experience, describing a film that provokes a deep, lingering discomfort that does not simply fade when the credits roll, while remaining utterly gripping from start to finish. Animals is scheduled to premiere globally on Netflix on October 9.
