Diego Boneta on his book and his television series “Undoing AF Alejandro Velasco”

The most important career council that Diego Boneta has ever received came from none other than Tom Cruise – and it was not advice on how to skip planes.

“Tom Cruise said to me,” Listen to Diego, don't just be an actor, “recalls Boneta, 34, during a recent telephone conversation. The two met by doing the 2012 musical “Rock of Ages”. For the Mexican star of parentage, this film represented a turning point. He remains grateful that the film icon took the time to mentor him while he was trying to enter Hollywood.

It is not that Boneta had trouble diversifying her skills before. He had already played in many soap opera in Mexico and released two pop albums as a singer before trying his luck on the English -speaking market. But landing roles in American productions as a Mexican actor has been particularly difficult.

“In this company, you have very little control of any result, and it is not a meritocracy,” explains Boneta. “As an actor, you are stuck with what is thrown away. Tom's point was for me to try to create my own stories.”

And that he did. Thanks to three Amigos, the production company he created with his manager and friend Josh Glick in 2017, Boneta developed, produced and played in Netflix “Luis Miguel: The series“About the famous singer.

His first novel, “The Undoing of Alejandro Velasco”, a contemporary mystery ensemble in the middle of the Mexican upper crust in the picturesque city of San Miguel de Allende, released Thursday via Amazon Crossing.

The volume evolved from what Boneta was originally envisaged as a scenario inspired by some of the roles for which he had auditioned and lost. At that time, her sister, Natalia González Boneta, joined three Amigos and made a radical suggestion.

“She was like” instead of writing a script, why don't you try to write a novel? “I thought,” You are out of your mind.

Their business already had a global agreement with Amazon, and its publication and television weapons both showed interest. Over the past three years, Boneta and its partners have simultaneously developed the novel and a limited series adaptation.

“As a production company, you hear all the time you need (intellectual property),” he says. “And the idea was for us to create our own IP.” At this stage, he enlisted the development company of media and Glasstown Entertainment content to guide it throughout the process.

The initial concept of Boneta has invoked stories about attractive usurpers such as the protagonists of “The talented M. Ripley” by Patricia and the most recent black comedy “Saltburn”.

“In a bunch of these stories, the crook tends to be the more introverted, calm and shy guy,” he said. “We say to ourselves:” And if we return this and we have the stupid and the idiot is like Jude Law, this good and outgoing guy. It was one of the first things we thought of. »»

From the start, Boneta intended to play the main role of the Julian Villareal which upset in the adaptation to the later screen.

“I really wanted Julian to feel like a chameleon because, as an actor, it's so fun to play characters who are contradictory and complex,” he said.

Holder Alejandro Velasco died by suicide before the start of history. The novel follows Julian while visiting the rich Velasco family of San Miguel de Allende with ulterior motives to slowly infiltrate their managed life.

“Mexico has a kind of oligarchy, and these families, they care so much about their appearance in society,” explains Boneta. “This is something that I have never really seen elsewhere in the world. And it's difficult to explain unless you go to Mexico and live it. ”

The details of Alejandro's friendship with Julian, the two Mexican students in the United States with a shared passion for tennis, will end up entering the fore. Along the way, Julian must face an opposite force: Alejandro's clever sister, Sofia, a convincing character that Boneta says that her own sister helped him create.

For Boneta, who grew up bilingual – the son of a Mexican father and a mother of American origin – straddling the nuances of cultures and languages ​​came naturally. He recorded the audio version of the novel in English and Spanish.

At all levels, the novel reflects the aspects of Boneta's life. He grew up visiting parents in San Miguel de Allende – a city that is now strongly gentrified by American immigrants – one day wishing to film a project in its paved streets. Boneta describes him as “Florence of Mexico”.

As for tennis, Boneta thinks he would not be there if it was not for sport. His father played throughout the university and received a scholarship to attend the Texas A & M University, where he met Boneta's mother at the engineering school. Boneta has also played over the years.

“It is both a mental sport and a film sport,” he says. “I really wanted it to be woven in the story in a very metaphorical way, where how these characters play tennis, their technique, tells you who they are.”

Faced with the blank page disturbed Boneta at the start of his first foray into long writing, so he asked for advice from his writers friends. The collective recommendation was not to precipitate the plan, to concentrate on the solid base of the structure and the characters.

“We spent a lot of time on this part of the process,” says Boneta. “And it was incredible, once we really got it, writing came – I'm not going to say more easily – but in a more organic way.”

More deeply in the parallel crafts of the novel and the limited series, Boneta also received the contribution of one of his favorite filmmakers, Alfonso Cuarón, who recently adapted the novel by Renée Knight “Avis de liability” as a limited series for Apple TV +.

“A advice that Alfonso gave me that really helped was' Diego, that every format is its best version for this format. It will be impossible that the show is exactly like the book, and you should not try to do it,” recalls Boneta. “'You must be open to the way some things change in the version of the television show because it is a different format.'”

Boneta source of solutions to the professional obstacles of veterans of the industry which he admires a desire to admit that he learns as and when. One step at a time.

“I'm not going to sit here and call myself author,” says Boneta with detectable sincerity. “This is my first book, and it is something in which I put a lot of work and heart. But I am a storyteller, a man, and I realized that the only way I was going to be able to play my dream roles was to create my dream projects.”

When asked if there was more writing in his future, Boneta enthusiastically suggests that he is ready.

“We have already been approached about a suite, and I say to myself:” What? ” The book has not even been released yet, ”explains Boneta with a little laugh of his perspectives as an author.