![]() ![]() Watching Bad Bunny wrestle in the ring, jumping off the third rope and doing a “satellite headscissor,” was like watching someone live his childhood dream. I was so ready for the hate.” In the end, he won them over. “I know they hate me, and I think it’s funny I love it. They do not listen to reggaeton they listen to metal,” he says. As a hard-core fan, he knew the rest of the fandom would be skeptical. He moved to Florida for three months this spring to train. I kept thinking, Why haven’t I seen them before? I’m full of regrets.”) But it’s possible Martínez Ocasio’s most memorable performance this year came as part of another franchise that requires an innate facility for comedy: WWE’s WrestleMania. “Now, everything is a reference to Harry Potter, a joke about Harry Potter. “Action movies are the last kind of movie I want to watch.” (The week before, he binged all the Harry Potter movies for the first time. “If acting is something I can continue doing in the future, I would love to do more comedy, and maybe drama, rather than the action path I am currently on,” he says. In February, he was in New York to perform as the musical guest on Saturday Night Live, in which he played a pirate and a dancing plant, respectively, in two sketches. for a part in director David Leitch’s upcoming Bullet Train with Brad Pitt. After filming his episodes in Mexico, he went to L.A. He’s in town to promote the third season of Narcos: Mexico, the Netflix series in which he plays El Kitty, a “narco junior” who rolls with the Arellano Félix clan, the family that rules the Tijuana cartel. After almost two years of canceled shows, he has been flying around the world for detours into acting. “It’s been un año cabrón in a lot of ways,” Martínez Ocasio says. For men of a certain age on the island, the word is simply a stand-in for dude. “Some little snacks for you,” announces the server, to which he responds with a “ Brr!” “Here are some crispy deviled eggs” elicits a “ Bop!” He declares a fluke tartare to be “ bien bellaco,” or “very horny.” Every other sentence is liberally sprinkled with “ cabróns,” a catchall cussword that can mean something is very cool, very bad, or very difficult - or that someone is an asshole. ![]() I am frequently reminded of hanging with my cousins back home when Martínez Ocasio makes funny little sounds as our plates are delivered to the table. (His high-school friend Pino is joining us for dinner.) Not to mention that when two Puerto Ricans meet anywhere outside of the island, they’re never quite strangers. “My God, you went over the line!” Or perhaps it’s that he’s still running with the same crew he has had since he was growing up. “Benito, te safaste,” he recalls her saying. “When she listened to ‘Safaera,’ ” he says - referring to the song off YHLQMDLG that pays homage to early reggaeton (back then, we called it “underground”) in its sexually explicit lyrics - “she sort of scolded me.” He puts on a gentle but concerned voice and begins imitating his mother. Perhaps it’s how frequently he mentions his mother, both in conversation and in songs. In person, Martínez Ocasio exudes a humbleness that belies his star power. “Well, we’ll get there,” he assures me, taking a sip of white wine. Martínez Ocasio looks like a bored, tired kid dragged to a family function. It’s painfully obvious that the energy levels at the moment are extremely low - decidedly not activa’o. ![]() There’s a brief silence and some stifled laughter around the table. The only noticeable remnant of Benito Antonio Martínez Ocasio’s larger-than-life alter ego is his nails, which are decked out in an immaculate green manicure. He’s buried in a big black puffy coat, scrolling through his phone a single curl is braided and looped through a little plastic bead that hangs over his left eye. Estamos activa’os!” Bad Bunny tells me when I meet him and his three-person crew at a Michelin-starred restaurant in the East Village on one of the first cold nights in November. ![]()
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