Eugenio Derbez Talks About Making Apple TV’s ‘Acapulco’ A Fun, Family Series That Portrays Latinos In A Positive Light

Acapulco, starring superstar Eugenio Derbez, is Apple AAPL TV’s first Spanish bilingual comedy. It’s a coming-of-age story, brimming with nostalgia, dreams and love told through flashbacks, as the present-day billionaire Máximo Gallardo (Derbez), shares with his young nephew Hugo (Raphael Alejandro) his tale of rags to riches. Derbez narrates how it all started in 1984 when he landed a job as a young, naive pool boy (played by Enrique Arrizon) at Las Colinas, the hottest resort in Acapulco.

The 10-episode series has a lot going for it. It’s funny, sometimes heartwarming and even a little cheesy. You’ll be sure to chuckle at the hokey poolside duet singing overly exaggerated Spanish-language covers of some chart-topping hits of the 1980s.

Derbez, who is also executive producer, says he really wanted to create a show that was family friendly.

“I was tired of watching series that were always about violence. Lately, everything is about killing, kidnapping, murders. And I was like, what happened to those series in the 80s, like The Love Boat, Cheers … series that I watched with my family. I wanted to do something that felt good and that’s why we went back to the 80s,” says Derbez. “It’s like hey, remember that time where everyone was happier? I was a kid back then but I felt like it was my happy place and I wanted to portray that.”

The actor, who stars in his first English-language series, also wanted to portray Mexico in a positive way and break away from Latino stereotypes.

“During many years when I was trying to do a crossover in the US, they were always offering the same type of roles: the drug lord, the criminal, the narco, best case scenario, the gardener. So I promised myself that if I was able to produce, I would change that and that’s why for me it’s really important to portray Latinos in a different way. Acapulco is a series where you can see the other face of Mexico that is beautiful and colorful with beautiful beaches, nightclubs and nightlife full of life.”

The concept for the series was inspired by his movie How to Be a Latin Lover, about a fading gigolo dumped by his wealthy 80-year-old wife. Thankfully, the producers switched gears and dropped the idea of making it about how Máximo learned to seduce women as a young man in the resort to a much more lovable character and a different storyline.

“We changed the character so he is no longer a social climber, no longer a womanizer but a noble boy, a good boy who seeks to lift his family out of poverty.”

Derbez tapped a strong cast that includes award-winning Mexican actor Damián Alcázar (The Crime of Father Amaro, The Perfect Dictatorship, The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian) and Camila Pérez (Gotham), who worked hard to land the role of Julia, Máximo’s adolescent crush, and which she felt could be transformative.

“I had to do a lot of auditions to get the part,” she recalls with a laugh. “Julia is an ambitious, strong woman. Many Latina girls are not portrayed like this on television,” states Pérez. “She is an immigrant, like me. She has many dreams, she is very complex, she has many colors. The characters I’ve done in the past weren’t as colorful. You are going to see Julia grow and evolve from the first to the last episode.”

Pérez says it was an honor to work with Derbez. “He is a comedic genius and for me it was a blessing to be able to work with someone like him, because I admire him so much. I think we did a very nice show that many people will enjoy.”

The pandemic made production of Acapulco a lot tougher to pull off. Derbez says they had to create a 7-month bubble in a Mexican hotel.

“It was complicated and a lot of work. We had to lock ourselves in a hotel and build all the sets there. I had never experienced anything like it,” he says. “Once you went in, you couldn’t leave and once you left, you couldn’t come back in.”

Now, Derbez hopes the audience comes in and checks out Acapulco, which debuts October 8 on Apple TV+ with the first two episodes, followed by one new episode weekly, every Friday.

Acapulco also stars Fernando Carsa, Chord Overstreet, Vanessa Bauche, Regina Reynoso, Jessica Collins, Rafael Cebrián, Regina Orozco and Carlos Corona. It is produced for Apple by Lionsgate Television, 3Pas Studios and The Tannenbaum Company. The series is created by Austin Winsberg, Eduardo Cisneros and Jason Shuman. In addition to starring, Derbez serves as executive producer alongside Ben Odell and co-producer Sonia Gambaro on behalf of 3Pas Studios.