Have you had a chance to watch Hotel Cocaine on MGM+?
Source: Courtesy / MGM +
Hotel Cocaine is the story of Roman Compte, a Cuban exile and general manager of The Mutiny Hotel, the glamorous epicenter of the Miami cocaine scene of late ‘70s and early ‘80s. The Mutiny Hotel was Casablanca on cocaine. Businessmen, politicians, international narcos, CIA and FBI agents, models, sports stars, and musicians all frequented the hotel and its glitzy nightclub and restaurant. At the center of it all was Compte, who did his best to keep it all going and fulfill his own American dream.
Over the course of the season, Roman walks the tightrope between the DEA, who have his daughter’s fate in their hands, and his older brother Nestor, Miami’s biggest supplier of cocaine. Together, the pair face ruthless rival Colombian cocaine suppliers as the brothers ensure their drug domination in Miami and keep their families safe.
BOSSIP Sr. Content Director Janeé Bolden sat down with Hotel Cocaine star Danny Pino for a discussion that ranged on everything from Latino diversity to the possibility of a Season 2 for the series. Over the last decade or so narcotics related dramas have been all the rage in Hollywood, but what we particularly appreciated about Hotel Cocaine was not only the way that Spanish is spoken throughout the series, but also that the series reflected the diversity of Miami’s Latino community. The show has characters who are Mexican, Colombian, Cuban and so — on and even Pino’s character, Roman Compte brings attention to the differences in dialect depending which character is being featured.
Source: Courtesy / MGM +
“First off I tip my hat to MGM+ and I’m not just doing that because they’re our boss,” Pino told BOSSIP. “Not every network would encourage those subtitles — especially the subtitles in the middle of a sentence. The Spanglish that is spoken to this day in Miami is incredibly fluid and that was something that Yul Vasquez and I first started talking about with the show. The script was basically all written in English because our writers speak a little bit of Spanish, but they’re not Spanish dominant. They gave the cast the authority to shape the way that we wanted to say those words as long as the information was translated correctly and the emotion was consistent, they gave us the thumbs up to make it more authentic, whether Cuban or we have Colombians in our show, we have Mexicans in our show and the actors come from so many different countries, whether it’s Venezuela or the UK or Australia. Truly we are the Epcot Center of casts.”
“Chris Brancato, who is our showrunner, main writer, made it a point to cast authentically, so if the character is Mexican when they speak Spanish they have an authentic Mexican dialect. If they’re Colombian they have an authentic Colombian dialect, just like the Cubans in the cast. That was important because when you are representing or transporting an audience to 1978 Miami to the Mutiny Club and you are presenting it as authentic, then that authenticity has to follow through, not only with the wardrobe and the sets and the cars and the music but linguistically with the dialects, they also have to represent a certain authenticity.
Source: Courtesy / MGM +
In addition to the Latino diversity on the show there are also a number of strong, complex female characters. Pino’s character Roman has a live-in girlfriend, Marisol, who is helping him raise his teenage daughter Valeria, but at Mutiny Club he works closely with a woman named Janice, who has a checkered past of her own that makes it easy for him to trust and confide in her. He also finds himself challenged by a Colombian woman, Yolanda, and sparks fly between them despite their differences.
“I think Roman is still suffering from a lot of trauma,” Pino told BOSSIP about his character navigating multiple relationships with the opposite sex. “The loss of his wife, his belief that his wife was killed in Cuba, that trauma that he’s trying to suppress… I think that maybe he’s not even aware of it. Marisol is his safe space. I think that he reveals to Marisol who he is outside of the world of The Mutiny, certainly outside of the world of Nestor and Nestor’s business and organized crime. Marisol is his safe space.”
“Janice is as calculated, if not even more calculated than Roman, and she’s a person who, they sort of saved each other right?” Pino continued. “When two survivors get together and I don’t mean physically, but when two survivors get sort of connect emotionally, spiritually, intellectually, and they watch each other’s backs there’s almost more of a tie between those two characters than your romantic relationship.”
“Then when you bring in Yolanda into the mix and there’s an immediate connection right to to that person,” Pino added. “Mayra Hermosillo was fantastic in the role, just like Laura Gordon is fantastic as Janice and Tania Watson is ethereal as Marisol but there’s a certain challenge that Yolanda brings to Roman that attracts him to her. Having to one up that character, whether it’s a game of rock, paper, scissors or a very deadly game of cat and mouse. You see those relationships happening and I guess as a viewer you can’t help but be like, ‘What is going on in his mind?’ I tend to think of it as Roman is very good at compartmentalizing things. He’s intelligent and manipulative and strategic and in order to be those things all at once you have to be able to put this in a box over here and this in a box over there and be able to sort of shift it in order to live with yourself in a way that makes sense.”
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There’s a twist that happens in the season finale of Hotel Cocaine that leaves plenty of room for a second season. Pino, a Miami native, told us that the history of his hometown in the early 80’s could make for an incredible follow up.
“I really don’t know what to expect from that piece of information that’s given to us at the end of the season,” Pino told BOSSIP. “It brings up so many questions for me, just as somebody who knows what the geopolitics were back in the ’70’s between Cuba and the United States, but even more specifically between Cuba and Miami because Miami is like the only US city with its own foreign policy. More interesting to me or maybe as interesting to me, when it comes to the personal side of Roman and what is revealed at the end of Season 1, what Season 2 could be and I don’t know whether this is what is going to happen or not, but again understanding the history of Miami, we’re in 1978 when we start our season, we’re in 1979 once we finish. 1980 Miami everything changes. 1980 in Miami is potentially, arguably the most transformative year for a lot of different reasons. You have the Arthur McDuffie uprising, where an African American motorcyclist was murdered by police and there was a response to that that was similar to what we saw with George Floyd. This is 1980 in Miami, there’s there’s an opportunity for the show to be, not only culturally but socially relevant in exploring what that was in Miami in 1980 and how it reflects back to what we continue to have to push back against and to call out and to improve.”
“In addition to you know that impactful moment in the history of Miami we also have the Mariel boatlift that happens when you know tens of thousands of Cubans were were brought over by a flotilla of private ships out of the Port of Mariel and brought to Miami and how that impacted the community. The majority of those people were family, friends, relatives of people in Miami who really were seeking freedom away from the totalitarian regime that continues to strike fear and repression on the island to this day. Castro also opened up his jails and his asylum and there were hardened criminals who came. So 1980 with all of those elements involved make it an incredibly impactful, important, relevant dynamic — a powder keg of storytelling for what we could be. Just as much as I look forward to understanding what happens with Roman and his is now ties back to Cuba, I was born and raised in Miami and I love the city and I love and hate our history and I think there hasn’t been a show that I’ve seen, there hasn’t been a film that I’ve seen, who really addresses the history — the complex and complicated and traumatic, but transformative history of this particular American city.”
Hotel Cocaine is streaming now on MGM+
