\u201cIt\u2019s the first time there\u2019s been an all-Spanish comedy event at the Hollywood Bowl,\u201d Hern\u00e1ndez says. \u201cWhen my agents told me, I couldn\u2019t believe it!\u201d<\/p>\n
Hern\u00e1ndez greets me on a Zoom call wearing Clubmaster sunglasses, his head wrapped mummy-like by an off-white hoodie, knit scarf and beanie. He\u2019s just taken a morning stroll in New York with his girlfriend, Dominican architect Ana Amelia Batlle Cabral, and is still defrosting from the wintry chill; he\u2019ll be fully warmed up upon landing in California.<\/p>\n
\u201cI want to tell my kids about the Hollywood Bowl show,\u201d he says. \u201cLike, \u2018You know, your father was the first guy.\u2019 You know how your uncles were always \u2018the first guy\u2019 to do something?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cYeah,\u201d he says, fanning his hands across the screen for emphasis. \u201c\u2018I was the first guy \u2026 in the world!\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
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<\/p>\n
This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.<\/p>\n
Your Cuban and Dominican family is a fixture of your Netflix special, \u201cAmerican Boy.\u201d How do you think your family influenced your sense of humor? <\/p>\n
I think you gotta be funny if your parents are divorced. My parents getting divorced made me [grow into] an adult quicker. All my friends of divorced parents have a funny thing about them, because what is more childish than being like: \u201cI can\u2019t be with you anymore?\u201d I\u2019d call my dad like a grown-up: \u201cPick me up at 7. We will have dinner and then you will return me to my home because I have school in the morning.\u201d<\/p>\n
Caribbeans love nicknames. What were some nicknames you had growing up?<\/p>\n
Dominican kids that I met at summer camp were funny as hell. They used to call me \u201crubio\u201d [and] \u201cgringo\u201d \u2014 they knew I was Dominican, but they just liked to mess around. My little cousin didn\u2019t know how to say my name right, so he used to call me Mamelo. [Author\u2019s note: That translates to \u201csuck it\u201d in Spanish.]<\/p>\n
Do you ever consult your family before writing jokes?<\/p>\n
I think I did my time! I earned the ability to say this stuff. We\u2019re always together. I would never want to make my family look bad for a laugh. I don\u2019t think that\u2019s a smart way to play it. My mom has always gone to my shows and been like, \u201cWhat is he going to say now?\u201d But we have a great relationship. Something I love about immigrant families is that we have a pretty good sense of humor. We don\u2019t take ourselves too seriously, because some parts of life are very serious.<\/p>\n
Your mom is part of a Cuban refugee community \u2014 you managed to transform her stories into a running joke about your privilege in relation to how she grew up. How did it shape your perspective? <\/p>\n
I never had to leave my country or start over again, especially like [she did] at my age now \u2014 she had kids and I\u2019m stressed about jokes. She\u2019s given me a lot of perspective. And I think perspective is the difference between a person that\u2019s going to be OK and a person that\u2019s going to struggle. I think it\u2019s all based on your perspective. If you live your life from a place of gratitude, you have a better chance to last and give back too.<\/p>\n
When I was a teenager, I used to volunteer at a retirement home with these Cuban ladies. I hung out with one who was 98 years old and would drive her around in her wheelchair. She was always happy to see me. A year after we started hanging out, she passed away. I learned to enjoy the time. At first it felt like a job to go there [when] I wanted to just sit around and watch TV. But eventually I started to feel joy, being there for people. I\u2019ve met a lot of famous people [who] are really successful [but] also super nice, generous and caring. It inspires you to be better.<\/p>\n
Who are some of those people for you? <\/p>\n
Pedro Pascal has been a life changer in many ways with that first sketch we did on \u201cSNL.\u201d I think Kenan [Thompson] was always so unreasonably helpful with me in the early days. Colin [Jost] was always really nice to me, Ego Nwodim was like a big sister to me on the show. She\u2019s such a powerful performer. Kevin Hart also had big brother energy with me.<\/p>\n
As a Latino and the first Gen-Z cast member of \u201cSNL,\u201d you\u2019ve helped propel the show in so many ways. You\u2019ve written so many wonderful Latino characters into your sketches \u2014 and introduced people to \u201cSabado Gigante!\u201d<\/p>\n
That was with Steven Castillo, we wrote that together. He\u2019s Mexican American. He obviously grew up watching that show as well. And it really felt like a real moment because that show was so important to us. It was just cool to do it with American people like with Paul Rudd [and] Nate Bargatze, who was so funny in that. I hope to look back on \u201cSNL\u201d and think I did something cool. You\u2019re supposed to write about what you know \u2014 and I do know a little bit about being a little Latino boy.<\/p>\n
The way you and Bad Bunny have teamed up in your sketches is enjoyable to watch. How did you develop rapport with him, as actors? <\/p>\n
He\u2019s just a guy! I\u2019ve met his parents and all his friends. He\u2019s just a guy that keeps his family very close and his friends very close. I\u2019m blessed that he was cool enough to kind of let me in at all. He\u2019s such a hard worker and such a creative talent, and when he comes to \u201cSNL,\u201d I feel a responsibility to give him something to play with. His \u201cEl Chavo Del Ocho\u201d [sketch] was his baby.<\/p>\n
You\u2019re headlining an all-Spanish comedy show at the Hollywood Bowl with Feid \u2014 is there gonna be a musical component to your performance? <\/p>\n
I love his music! I\u2019ve actually been to one of his concerts on my own in the past. There\u2019s gonna be some comedy at the beginning and then there\u2019s gonna be freaking reggaeton! I want people to come and laugh and dance. What else can you ask for? That\u2019s, in many ways, my ideal evening.<\/p>\n
Say you were in a crowd of Latinos at a karaoke bar \u2014 what would you sing?<\/p>\n
In Spanish, everything feels more formal. [Singing lines from \u201cSe Prepar\u00f3\u201d by Ozuna] I went to high school in Miami and it was funny to be 15, 16, singing these heavy romance songs on the bus with the athletes, the football players. We were thinking that we were so cool! There\u2019s so many [others] to choose from \u2014 I sign off my emails with \u201cLa Bamba.\u201d One of my favorite songs of all time is \u201cLoco\u201d by Be\u00e9le. Also \u201cAmor Narc\u00f3tico\u201d by Chich\u00ed Peralta. Shout out to \u201cMe Reh\u00faso\u201d by Danny Ocean… And \u201cTe Lo Agradezco, Pero No\u201d with Alejandro Sanz and Shakira. I heard it playing from a food cart yesterday and it stopped me in my tracks!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"When Marcello Hern\u00e1ndez speaks, his voice takes ebullient leaps and bounds. He tells jokes with the same musical…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":289552,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[1431,123759,9831,2321,8122,29933,48,52,51,1637,47,50,49,77999,7087,1459,592,98543,1860,11391,11393],"class_list":["post-289551","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-los-angeles","tag-family","tag-first-guy","tag-first-time","tag-hernandez","tag-hollywood-bowl","tag-joke","tag-la","tag-la-headlines","tag-la-news","tag-life","tag-los-angeles","tag-los-angeles-headlines","tag-los-angeles-news","tag-many-way","tag-parent","tag-part","tag-people","tag-perspective","tag-show","tag-sketch","tag-snl"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/289551","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=289551"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/289551\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/289552"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=289551"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=289551"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=289551"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}