Diego Luna & Gael García Bernal on Secret to Decades-Long Friendship (Exclusive)

Diego Luna and Gael García Bernal are dishing on their new miniseries “La Máquina,” which follows an aging boxer whose crafty manager secures one last shot at a title.

“Extra’s” Melvin Robert spoke to Diego and Gael about their bond, which goes all the way back to childhood, when they used to play Nerf basketball together.

When asked who won, Gael recalled, “It was very tight. It was like a saga.”

Diego noted, “The way I remember it is, I lost at the end… I remember we were very competitive.” He recalled Gael getting an upgraded game, “But then you got one that was even high tech, you know, that counted and it told you the score. I think that’s the moment where he just took over.”

Diego laughed, “I found, you know, partying and other stuff in life and I got distracted.”

The two have maintained a long friendship throughout the years, so what’s their secret?

Diego said, “I think it’s that we care about each other more than anything we do and that allows us to do great stuff together.”

“Friendship allows us to do anything we want,” Diego emphasized. “We have a company, we do film, we do TV, we’ve done theater, but at the end, what really matters, what I’m really proud of is that friendship that we’ve cultivated all these years.”

Gael noted, “The fact that we’ve stayed working together, that we keep working together, it is part of an artistic journey that maybe comes a little bit not so conscious. It’s a little bit more like nature or like a first nature to us to do that, and it is a great privilege.”

While they were working on “La Máquina,” Diego’s hair and makeup transformation took two hours at the start of the day and then 45 minutes at the end of every day to take off.

He recalled getting agitated at times, saying, “I was just, like, so anxious and I could get angry easily, but suddenly when the full character was on, I was like, ‘This is it.’ It’s just a beautiful tool to bring everything out… It was so much fun to be this guy, but it was painful to get there and it was a process.”

Because the makeup involved his lips, Diego could only drink shakes through a straw while in costume. He said, “Every day was a shake day, yeah. Shakes all day long until night.” He added, “I became an expert on doing shakes. I had like the best machine, it was beautiful. I had everything you needed there. I because like a pharmacist, you know? Like, I could fix you with a shake. But yeah, I’m done with that. I’m done with shakes. I’m done with straws. That’s it.”