Jason Schwartzman and Gael García Bernal on the Many Masks of Acting

The minute Jason Schwartzman hops on the Zoom call with Gael García Bernal for this Reunited conversation, he tells García Bernal that he watched Cassandro—in which Bernal stars as a barrier-breaking gay Mexican wrestler—twice in one day. “What a character that you play,” he says. “He smiles so much. And he’s rarely sulking, which is almost more intense for me.”

In his 2023 film, Wes Anderson’s Asteroid City, Schwartzman’s character, Augie, does sulk a bit. A recently widowed war photojournalist, the character couldn’t seem more different from García Bernal’s. But as the pair of former collaborators soon learn, the work they put into exploring each of these characters will turn out to be surprisingly similar. Both stories play with the idea of performance within a performance, and both required the use of masks (of some sort, anyway)—a theme that weaves its way through acting in many ways for both of them.

García Bernal and Schwartzman first worked together on Amazon’s TV series Mozart in the Jungle, in which García Bernal played an eccentric music conductor and Schwartzman served as a cocreator, writer, and executive producer. The charming series, which lasted for four seasons, left a strong impression on both of them, as Schwartzman’s first experience in a major creator role and García Bernal’s first major lead role on an American TV series. Now, the pair reunite to look back on the joy of playing an uncensored genius on TV, and dive-deep into the tools and tricks they used to explore their characters in Asteroid City and Cassandro.

Vanity Fair: What do you remember about the first time you met?

Gael García Bernal: Maybe we had talked on the phone, but I think my first impression was you in a room with many, many people and you always with your smile and just charisma, I don’t know, you came up to me and you were the first one I said hello to in Mozart in the Jungle. I always had a feeling that we were from the same kind of postal code, even though we definitely didn’t grow up in the same cities or anything, but there was something that we have – when you look at someone performing and you see through the character, you see that person and you see that vitality and that losing of control as well, which is wonderful. And watching you, I was like, we could be friends. We could talk the same language.

Jason Schwartzman: I have the same feeling really. I just remember seeing you and feeling so honored that we were going to do this together. And I think also just excited because you are going to be the captain of this ship that we were going to be going out on. And your smile and who you were, I just felt like this is going to be a wonderful trip if this is who’s guiding us.

But not to make you uncomfortable, but there’s one time that we didn’t really meet before, but we were near each other. At the Toronto Film Festival, I was there with this movie called I Heart Huckabees and I don’t know what you were there with, but I was having dinner with David O. Russell and this group of people. You came in with, I forget who, and sat down across the table and started talking. And I remember thinking, I know you shouldn’t look at your career like this, but I was thinking this is a good sign for my career. Now, if he’s coming to the table and sitting with us, I’m on some kind of right track.