In his capacity as an actor-writer-director, Torres, who is 38 and grew up in El Salvador, has welcomed many a star into his Julio-verse, casting them in his surreal skits on Saturday Night Live<\/a> and in his leftfield TV shows Los Espookys<\/a> and Fantasmas. But actors aren\u2019t the only ones taken with his fantastical worlds, most of which exist somewhere at the intersection of Williamsburg and a fever dream; one TV critic called Torres \u201ca beacon of hope for TV\u2019s future\u201d. <\/p>\n The man I meet for lunch is more low-key than such a grand proclamation might suggest. He\u2019s quick to laugh and chilled out, wearing a shirt printed with the kind of fanciful scene you might find in one of his shows: penguins eating ice cream outside a neo-Classical building. Around his neck is a robot pendant. His hair is spiky, and over the years has functioned like an emotional thermometer: blond, black, blue, platinum. Currently, it\u2019s a shade of red that\u2019s hard to pin down. <\/p>\n Like his hair, Torres\u2019s work tends to evade description: stories so strange and slippery that words slide right off them with nothing to grab onto. It\u2019s why, when describing his new play, Color Theories at Soho Theatre, he can only smile and say: \u201cIt\u2019s a show about colours. Dot. Dot. Dot.\u201d The dot-dot-dot is key; Torres practically lives in the dot-dot-dot. More accurately, it\u2019s a one-man show about understanding the world through colours: Dwayne Johnson, for example, is yellow because he\u2019s halfway between a beachball and a gun; Ellen DeGeneres wants to be yellow, but she\u2019s red. As for Torres, right now he\u2019s feeling purple: \u201cPurple is a combination of blue, which is logical, and red, which is passion and anger,\u201d he says. \u201cI feel very red in logical settings.\u201d <\/p>\n Color Theories is a spiritual precursor to My Favorite Shapes, his anthropomorphic HBO<\/a> comedy special from 2019. In that, Torres wears a futuristic silver suit and sits in front of a pedal-powered conveyor belt carrying everyday objects, which he presents and comments on: a glass pot, a piece of chocolate, a blob-like figurine with googly eyes. It\u2019s like watching the shopping channel from another dimension, one in which the transfer of souls between plastic seahorses is a normal occurrence. If it sounds silly, that\u2019s because it is \u2013 ticklingly so \u2013 but it\u2019s also emotional, and vaguely philosophical. <\/p>\n As I said, his work defies explanation. Hollywood, by comparison, is an industry practically built on three- or four-word elevator pitches (Ghostbusters with women; Social Network about Uber; Goodfellas for bankers). Torres rolls his eyes. \u201cWhen I started having meetings with executives, the show they kept bringing up was Broad City,\u201d he says, tucking into a quinoa salad. \u201cThey wanted a Latino Broad City, a queer Broad City. The irony being that I am sure most of those people passed on Broad City… is the lesson there not \u2018Let\u2019s believe in new, fresh voices\u2019?\u201d<\/p>\n How Torres gets anything greenlit is anybody\u2019s guess. He laughs recalling the pitch meeting for Los Espookys, the two-season Spanish-language series he co-produced with Fred Armisen, which is ostensibly about a group of horror enthusiasts who are paid to stage eerie scenes for money. It\u2019s also about the heir to a chocolatier fortune living with a water demon trapped inside him. Did I mention the water demon is obsessed with the 2010 Colin Firth film The King\u2019s Speech? Try explaining that to a room full of suits. <\/p>\n His ever-growing Rolodex of famous friends helps. \u201cI find that, regardless of how big or celebrated people are in their careers, if you create an interesting world, people will come and want to be part of it,\u201d he says. Buscemi took all of 30 minutes to say yes to Fantasmas after reading the script. Equally, Torres says, \u201cI\u2019ve been very lucky to find champions in these big institutions \u2013 very fortunate to always be allowed to play over there.\u201d As his star rises, he hopes to be able to do the same for his peers, and so here, a quick shout-out to Spike Einbinder and River L Ramirez. <\/p>\n open image in gallery<\/p>\n \u2018Color Theories\u2019 is the spiritual successor to Julio Torres\u2019s 2019 HBO special \u2018My Favorite Shapes\u2019 (Joe Caster)<\/p>\n Torres grew up in El Salvador, the son of an architect and a civil engineer. His bedroom was lined with shelves that housed all his toys. \u201cThey were organised as if it was a museum,\u201d he smiles. \u201cAction figures, Barbies, little cars.\u201d Torres wasn\u2019t into popular culture so much as creating his own. \u201cI\u2019d cast the toys as my actors and create little stories,\u201d he says. Unsatisfied with the Barbie Dream Houses for sale, he asked his architect mother to make a custom penthouse for his dolls, with circular windows and doors that opened irregularly. \u201cI was always the kid who had the poorly executed big idea,\u201d he says, \u201cand I\u2019d so much rather be that [than coming up with small ideas].\u201d <\/p>\n It feels obvious to connect his country\u2019s love of magical realism with the surreal work he makes today. \u201cI didn\u2019t think it had influenced me, but clearly it has,\u201d he admits. \u201cNot in a conscious way, but that absurd and abstracted way of seeing life definitely rubbed off.\u201d On influences, Torres isn\u2019t certain he has any. He adored Late Night with Conan O\u2019Brien, but in the way that an accountant might adore it. \u201cThe kind of sketches I grew up loving on SNL [character work with Maya Rudolph and Kristen Wiig], I haven\u2019t created anything like that,\u201d he says. <\/p>\n open image in gallery<\/p>\n Julio Torres and Tilda Swinton in \u2018Problemista\u2019 (Everett\/Shutterstock)<\/p>\n If there\u2019s a throughline in his work, it\u2019s his distaste for bureaucratic systems. \u201cSomething that keeps coming back is the friction or tension between the individual and the systems that rule our lives \u2013 how isolating that can be,\u201d he says. \u201cAnd absurd.\u201d In Problemista, his directorial debut for A24, he plays a version of himself \u2013 a toy designer from El Salvador who loses his job and must find a sponsor to stay in the US. Tilda Swinton plays the manic, flame-haired art dealer who takes him on as her assistant; Isabella Rossellini narrates. <\/p>\n It\u2019s a funny take on a deadening experience, I suggest. \u201cI think that\u2019s just my nature,\u201d he says. \u201cI metabolise things through humour a lot, so it\u2019s not me trying to do something. That\u2019s just how it is. I don\u2019t know if it would be different if something truly, deeply, horribly traumatic would have happened to me, but for now, that\u2019s how I see the world.\u201d <\/p>\n open image in gallery<\/p>\n Alien sensibilities: Julio Torres and the cast of \u2018Los Espookys\u2019 (Sky\/HBO)<\/p>\n Like his character, Torres also went through visa hell. After graduating from university, he was given one panic-filled year to secure a work visa. Eventually, he landed a job in the art world. All the while, he was making and sharing hilarious, and often strange, videos with his roommate Einbinder. The pair amassed a cult following in the real world, too, performing at bars and comedy clubs. When in 2015 Torres\u2019s visa was up, and he had to pay more than $5,000 in legal and filing fees, his new friends in the comedy world made a video called Legalize Julio and raised the money in an hour. Torres\u2019s new visa classified him as an \u201calien of extraordinary ability\u201d.<\/p>\n He doubled down on the alien motif with last year\u2019s Fantasmas. The series, essentially six hours of stitched-together vignettes, is loosely held together by the narrative of his character (also called Julio) as he sets about getting a Proof of Existence card in order to sign the lease on a new apartment \u2013 or do pretty much anything. On his journey, he is blocked at every turn, trapped in a labryinth of pencil-pushers, systems and corporations, all seen through Torres\u2019s singular, meandering filter. At one point, Bowen Yang appears as an elf taking Santa to court for wages. How we get there is beside the point. <\/p>\n I don\u2019t want to provide a symbolic gesture of obedience<\/p>\n The fictional Proof of Existence isn\u2019t so fictional. It\u2019s not dissimilar to a credit score, Torres tells me. \u201cMiss a payment? Your score goes down,\u201d he says. \u201cHowever, choosing not to play the game and choosing never to have a credit card, never to take out a loan, never to spend money you don\u2019t have, gives you a bad credit score. Abstaining from the game gives you bad credit.\u201d To this day, he\u2019s never had a credit card. \u201cI don\u2019t want to provide a symbolic gesture of obedience,\u201d says Torres. His capitalist abstinence can make life trickier \u2013 \u201cbut it\u2019s worth it!\u201d<\/p>\n open image in gallery<\/p>\n Steve Buscemi plays the letter Q as a punk musician in \u2018Fantasmas\u2019 (HBO)<\/p>\n With all the fanfare and the famous co-signs (Gosling reached out to Torres to do Papyrus 2), Torres is becoming hot property himself. He has, though, little interest in the indie-to-blockbuster pipeline: \u201cI don\u2019t think it would be a good use of me.\u201d There is one character that could entice him into the franchise-verse. \u201cCalendar Girl,\u201d says Torres, referencing the incredibly obscure Batman villain. \u201cCalendar Girl is a former model who got really bad plastic surgery so she covers her face, and she\u2019s out for vengeance on brands and agents and magazine editors.\u201d He sounds giddy on the idea. \u201cIf anyone wants to make a Calendar Girl movie, let me know.\u201d <\/p>\n \u2018Color Theories\u2019 is on at Soho Theatre until 16 August; tickets here<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Your support helps us to tell the story From reproductive rights to climate change to Big Tech, The…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":65926,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[6491,96,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-65925","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-celebrities","tag-celebrities","tag-entertainment","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65925","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=65925"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65925\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/65926"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=65925"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=65925"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=65925"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\u2018Color](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/Julio-Torres-image.jpg\")
<\/p>\n![\"Julio](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/shutterstock_editorial_14436888a.jpeg\")
<\/p>\n![\"Alien](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/05_01_LosEspookys_S01.jpg\")
<\/p>\n![\"Steve](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/steve-buscemi.jpeg\")
<\/p>\n