We chat with AmericanCarnage star Allen Maldonado about mixing horror with comedy, laughter overcoming language barriers, and saying goodbye to Blackish:
The issue of immigration is getting the elevated horror treatment with American Carnage. The film centers on JP, the son of an undocumented immigrant who is rounded up with similar young adults by ICE and offered the opportunity to earn back their citizenship by working at an elder care facility with a dark secret.
A lot of people have talked about that balance of levity and horror in this story, a lot of which comes from your character. What was that like for you finding that right balance in those scenes of the dramatic and the comedy? What I do remember the most, being that we filmed it in Spain - and I do not hide the fact that I do not speak Spanish and this is a Spanish-speaking country - [is] a 50-60 member crew of people laughing in between takes at the things that I'm doing and saying that are in English, that they mostly have no clue what I'm saying, but they could just feel energetically what I'm doing.
Allen Maldonado: The challenge was always for me, again, if I can get a room full of people that don't speak my language to laugh, then I've done my job, that was the challenge. The character all was there, so it already spoke to me, but the execution of the comedy in a space where they don't speak the language, but you still have to get them to understand it's not what you say, it's how you say it. So taking that concept was the biggest challenge and the biggest reward.
Allen Maldonado: That was the cool part. That was like,"Oh, okay, I see what we're doing here." It was an"A-ha!" moment. It was like,"Okay, I see the message aside from just putting together a horror film for scares." When that turn happens, it represents something more than just what it is, so I hope that's what everyone else gets from it when they watch the film and see when this turn happens where there's a deeper message between within it all.
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