At Midnight Star Diego Boneta Wants To Show Mexico City's Beauty In This Rom-Com [Exclusive Interview]

In the upcoming Paramount+ romantic comedy "At Midnight," Diego Boneta ("New Order," "Father of the Bride") plays Alejandro, an ambitious junior manager of a hotel in Mexico who is tasked with looking after the actors from a superhero film that's shooting in the area. Monica Barbaro ("Top Gun: Maverick") is Sophie, one of the film's stars, who catches her boyfriend and co-star Adam (Anders Holm, "How to Be Single") cheating with a crew member. She has to keep their breakup under wraps on the advice of their joint agent (Whitney Cummings, "Good Mourning"), and in order to keep it all quiet, she begins to tour the area with Alejandro each night at midnight as they slowly fall for each other.

I recently spoke to Boneta about the film, which has some beautiful scenes set in Mexico City. The actor was thrilled to be able to show this side of his home country in a different light than American audiences often see it. He also talks about the fairytale feel of the film and getting to speak Spanish on screen.

Note: This interview has been lightly edited for clarity and brevity.

There's a fairytale feel to this film, and I know [director] Jonah [Feingold] said there were a lot of fairytale influences. Did that sort of stylistic choice influence how you approached the role?

Absolutely. That was all Jonah, and that's why we chose him as our director. This is a project that I started developing in 2018 after shooting and producing "Luis Miguel" ["The Series"]. After many, many different drafts and different directors and writers involved in this, Jonah came in, and I watched his film "Dating & New York." I loved it because I thought it was just such a fresh take on a rom-com, and his sensibility, his taste, his style was just so great. When we met with him, he was like, "I want this to have a bit of that magic and have it be a nod and an ode to these '90s rom-coms, but also have a little bit of that fairytale magic," which I loved. That was all Jonah.

I love that. What I thought was really cool here is you and a lot of the other characters got to speak Spanish. We didn't do the thing where we pretend that everyone speaks English. What was that like to get an opportunity to do that in this film?

I think it was very important to me as a producer and being Mexican that Mexico was shown in an authentic way. Nowadays, I think people and audiences appreciate the authenticity. If you have two Mexican characters, they should speak Spanish. We wanted to keep it as authentic as possible.

The other thing about shooting in Mexico City, it was so beautiful, particularly that building where Alejandro's sister lives, and I'd just love to hear your thoughts on things we should see in Mexico City that you wanted to really highlight.

First of all, that house was built by Luis Barragán, who's one of the best architects. He's a world-renowned architect and being able to shoot in that location was really special. I'm from Mexico City, and when we first started developing this, you've seen rom-coms in New York, you've seen rom-coms in L.A., London, Paris, Rome, and they make you want to go to these cities. But you've never seen a Hollywood rom-com shot in Mexico, and let's show Mexico and make people want to go to Mexico. That was really important to me, super important to me.

I'm from Mexico City. I'm proudly Mexican. I love Mexico City, and we wanted to show the beauty of Mexico City and the people and the art and the architecture and everything. Teaming up with great producers was key. Fred Berger, who produced "La La Land," which is one of my favorite movies, Michel Franco who's an amazing Mexican filmmaker who's won Cannes many times and directed me in a movie called "New Order," which won the Venice Film Festival in 2020, he was a big part in showing Mexico and helping to show Mexico in a good light.

"At Midnight" will premiere on Paramount+ on February 10, 2023.