Benicio Del Toro stayed “truthful” while depicting his character in Escobar: Paradise Lost.
The 48-year-old actor portrays infamous Colombian drug lord Pablo Escobar in the forthcoming romantic thriller, which also stars Josh Hutcherson.
And Benicio did everything in his power to portray Pablo authentically in the fictional picture.
“There’s some footage of him; there’s some audio that you can listen to [of] him,” he told MTV News in a joint interview with Josh. “There have been several documentaries made about him, books written… you do as much [research] as you can, and try to stay truthful.”
Josh plays character Nick in the picture, a young surfer who falls in love with Pablo’s niece.
Initially Pablo seemed to be a nice guy, but the cocaine kingpin’s true nature eventually creates horror in paradise.
And Benicio thinks Nick’s story is reflective of many Colombian citizens’ experiences when Pablo was his most powerful during the 1970s and 1980s.
“Nick is a good metaphor for the people in Columbia, to an extent,” Benicio explained. “There’s many people like Nick at the beginning of the story that are seduced by him… and then in the end, they just got the wrath. All along, he was a snake. It’s a sad story, the Pablo Escobar story. It’s a hopeless story.”
Before Colombia’s streets were drenched in blood over Pablo’s drug trade, he did a lot to help the community with his wealth.
Josh kept Pablo’s ostensibly charitable nature in mind while preparing to play his persona Nick.
“He’s a seducer, man. He’s good at it,” Josh said of Pablo.
“I didn’t really know a whole lot about him; I kind of knew him as a Robin Hood kind of character. Obviously, I knew that he was also a drug cartel, or drug lord. So there was obviously a darker side to him than just being a Robin Hood… I didn’t do a lot of research though, on Pablo, because it wasn’t my character.”
Escobar: Paradise Lost is currently in US theatres, as it was released on June 26.
