[Editor's note: The following contains spoilers for Season 4 of Mayans M.C.]From co-creator Elgin James, the FX series Mayans M.C. is currently in its fourth season, with Miguel Galindo (Danny Pino) trying to figure out what comes next for him. Without his criminal empire or his family, there’s no telling what’s next for Miguel, but it’s only a matter of time before he’ll have to make a choice and decide what path he wants to travel down.
During this 1-on-1 interview with Collider, Pino talked about working with a showrunner that’s open to input, exploring such a different side to his character, not trying to make Miguel sympathetic, the complexity of human nature, and Miguel’s evolving endgame.
Collider: Miguel seems to be in a very different place than we’ve seen him before. What was your reaction to learning about where he would be this season?
DANNY PINO: It was actually something that I spoke to the writers and to (showrunner) Elgin [James] about last season. We were talking about, “Where do we think Miguel is?” We have a very fluid facile relationship on set, and Elgin loves input. He asks, “Where do you think your character goes?” He has very strong ideas and a very active imagination, as you can tell, in terms of where characters go, but he is also open to input, so it was something that we arrived at together.
It seemed like a natural point of entry for Season 4 that we hadn’t seen from Miguel, having lost it all. There’s a touch of poetry. I love that Elgin added Miguel maintaining the cemetery. He was back on the earth, grounded again, rather than on this lofty perch that he had, being the head of the cartel. He finds himself in charge of dealing with the dead and having to maintain the cemetery, and I thought that was incredibly poetic. It’s a microcosm of Season 4, across the board, the poetry that runs through the entire season.
What’s that like for you, as an actor, when you’re playing a character that you’ve played for a bit, to then play this version of him, where he doesn’t even know who he is and everything has been stripped away from him? What does that feel like, as far as your process and how you approach the character? Does he feel different?
PINO: Oh, absolutely. Just waking up in the morning and looking at myself, and not recognizing myself, with the beard I had to grow over the course of several months and my hair that I grew out. That doesn’t really lend itself to the conversation of how you build a character because you’re really just letting your hair grow, but that’s something, aesthetically and visually, every morning, when you look at yourself and you’re like, “Oh, right, I’m that guy. That’s how people see me.” My neighbors stopped talking to me. People stopped recognizing me. People just treat you different, and you start behaving a little differently.
Actors love to work, and I certainly do, from the inside out, but that was a way to go from the outside in. It was an interesting exploration for me. How do you do that? It real life, oftentimes adversity hits, and you don’t recognize the world you’re living in anymore. When something awful happens in your family or to you, or you get terrible news, your perspective and your worldview shifts a little bit. You’re a little bit more confused with what happened. How did you get here? How did this happen to me? Who am I, now that I have this news? I think that’s something Miguel has experience in. I just tried to tap into that part of living that I’ve lived through and suffered through, and come to the other end of, on several occasions in life. You look around, and you don’t recognize your life, and you don’t really know how anything is gonna get better, but it does.
Does it feel like an uphill battle to make him a sympathetic character, or is that not something you even think about at all?
PINO: No, I don’t really pay a lot of attention to making him sympathetic. The writing does some of that. Elgin does some of that. I think Elgin loves the color gray. He loves the different shades of gray. He’s not a black and white kind of guy. So, whenever you find yourself rooting for somebody, just know that soon enough, you’re gonna hate that character. Whenever you think somebody is just the most awful person you’ve ever seen on television, just know that the next moment you might actually like that person. It’s an exploration of the range of humanity. That’s what Elgin is really looking to investigate. Frankly, I think that he gets bored with characters that are one-sided. He’s always trying to figure out, how can I mess this character up, if the character is too clean. And if the character gets too dirty, how can I show that there’s some humanity that exists in this?
It’s such an interesting show because it could so easily not have any of those vulnerabilities. It’s a very male-heavy show, and the fact that there are so many moments of vulnerability or emotion continues to be surprising.
PINO: I think you have your finger right on the vein. It’s the complexity of human nature. It’s the inconsistencies that we all have. We’re not always good, and we’re not always evil. It’s the exploration of that, that not only interests Elgin, but that he knows this ensemble wants to tackle. We want that complexity. We want that inconsistency. We want that duality. That’s really what we’re interested in too.
And sometimes even manly men just need a hug and a good cry.
PINO: I think we all, at some point, need that. The vulnerability that some of the characters show, I think actually comes from courage and not from weakness. Most vulnerability comes from a person who is secure enough or strong enough to be able to show that. Not that that’s the message, because we don’t really have a message. We’re not a message show. But if there is a message, the way that our show is written and the way that we act it, we’re going for as authentic an experience with our characters as possible.
At this point, what does Miguel want? Does he know what he wants, or is he trying to figure out what he wants?
PINO: I would never ruin that for you. I would never tell you what Miguel wants. There were times when we were shooting, especially episodes four and five, where Elgin and I would sit on set and talk about what Miguel’s end game is. Oftentimes, we would have very concrete ideas as to what that could be, so I’d play a scene that way, and then the following scene, we’d be like, “Hmm, what if his end game is this?,” and I’d play that scene a different way. That just speaks to the range that we’re trying to find in all the characters. I’m not a hundred percent sure that, like you said, even Miguel truly knows what he wants, at the beginning of the season. But he’s gonna know what he wants towards the end.
It seems like some clarity could be on the horizon.
PINO: Yeah, he’s definitely in the chrysalis right now. There was a metamorphosis happening in the convent. I certainly was very interested to see what would happen to him, as the season went on, and I think fans will be too.
Mayans M.C. airs on Tuesday nights on FX.