Ben Affleck Handed His Mexican Actors the Pen and Let Them Write Their Own Lines in ‘Animals’

Ben Affleck could have written the Mexican characters in “Animals” himself and called it a day. He is the director, the co-writer and one of the stars of the Netflix thriller premiering October 9th, and nobody in Hollywood would have blinked if he had handed Adriana Paz and Luis Gerardo Méndez their lines and asked them to deliver them. Instead he did something that the film industry rarely does when it comes to Latino characters, he asked the people living closest to that experience to help him get it right, and then he actually listened to what they said.

Affleck explained that he asked both actors to write their own parts completely, acknowledging that he was asking them to take on a responsibility that goes well past what actors are typically asked to do. He told them he needed their help making the film because they were representing millions of people around the world who would watch it and recognize themselves in it, and that the weight of that representation was not something he felt entitled to handle alone. He was not asking them to flag what felt wrong. He was asking them to help build what felt true, because this story belonged to the community they were representing as much as it belonged to anyone else involved in making it.

What It Meant to Paz and Méndez to Be Asked

Paz described the experience with a warmth that makes clear how rare this kind of collaboration actually is in practice. Affleck would ask whether the dialogue felt authentic, whether their characters were saying things they would genuinely say, whether they wanted to add anything that was missing, and Paz said she never felt that she was doing extra work but rather that she was being given a privilege that most actors in her position never receive. She described the process of sitting with Méndez and working through their roles together as one of those experiences that reminds you of why you chose this profession in the first place, the feeling of building something real with another person rather than executing someone else’s vision of who you are supposed to be.

Méndez, known internationally for Club de Cuervos, spoke about the weight of what he and Paz were doing in terms that go well past the film itself. He said that in this particular project it was very clear that the two of them were representing a community of millions of people, not only in the United States but around the world, migrants and refugees living in countries where they do not feel welcomed, and that the clarity of that responsibility shaped every decision he made about his character. He said some projects are more fun, some are more important and some are something else entirely, and this one fell into a category that demanded he bring everything he had.

Why This Matters for How Latino Migrants Are Depicted on Screen

The characters Paz and Méndez play in “Animals” are not criminals or threats or cautionary tales. Paz plays Cecilia, a housekeeper working in the home where Affleck’s character is running a political campaign in Los Angeles, a woman who is often invisible to the people around her despite being the person caring for what they value most. Méndez plays a man trying to support his family without legal documentation, doing everything right within a system that offers him no protection and no recognition for the risks he takes every single day. Both actors spoke about the deliberate choice to depict migrants with dignity at a moment when so much of the public conversation and so many Hollywood productions continue to reduce them to a single threatening image.

Affleck took that argument further, describing the idea that migrants are criminals as an absurd political lie with a long history of being deployed whenever a society is under pressure and a politician needs someone to blame. He said fiction has a unique power to disrupt that logic because it forces an audience to recognize a person before it can reduce them to a category, and that once you have genuinely identified with someone’s humanity it becomes very hard to go back to a dehumanized version of what they represent.

What the Film Is Actually About

“Animals” centers on the kidnapping of the son of Mark and Abigail Kimball, played by Affleck and Kerry Washington, and uses that premise to explore the moral decisions and gray areas that every character must navigate when the systems around them offer no easy answers. The full cast also includes Gillian Anderson, Steven Yeun, Ray Fisher and others, with the film produced in association with Artists Equity, the studio Affleck co-founded with Matt Damon. Paz summed up what she hopes audiences leave with, describing it as a film that makes you deeply uncomfortable in ways that do not leave you when the credits roll, while also being one you genuinely cannot stop watching. “Animals” premieres on Netflix on October 9th.