Raul Castillo is glad the "Looking" crew got a chance to say goodbye
It's not often an actor gets a second chance to close out a character, but Raul Castillo -- along with the rest of the cast of HBO's LGBT drama "Looking" -- got just that.
Soon after the premium cable network pulled the plug on the series after two seasons, it announced that the band would be getting back together for a follow-up film, which premieres July 23 at 10 p.m. It was an opportunity Castillo tells CBS News he glad to have.
How long before you started shooting did you know they were going to bring everyone back for the movie?
I guess it was several months. We learned we got canceled just around the same time we learned that we were going to get the movie special. It was comforting to know that we were going to get an opportunity to wrap up the story and not just be dropped in the middle of it, you know?
Were you excited to have that sense of closure?
Yeah. Certainly my character is someone who has grown on the show. To get the opportunity to go back and find some sense of closure, in any form, was really exciting. Andrew Haigh is such a great guy to work for, any opportunity to get to work with him again is really thrilling.
Richie as a character doesn't say much but still expresses so much. It seems like a very different acting challenge, being so quiet.
I mean, that's the beauty of film I think. I come from theater, and the text is so vital. But on film your behavior is just as important, and fortunately we had a lot of great castmates to play with and sort of made the work effortless in a lot of ways.
How much have you interacted with fans of the show?
It's been lovely. I live in New York, and you kind of expect there to be a certain amount of "Looking" fans here or in a city like San Francisco or Los Angeles. But I love going into middle America or going home to my family in Texas, for instance. When I get out in the middle of the country and find people who have watched the show, they come from all walks of life -- young gay kids, straight couples who watch the show together. I'm always impressed with all the different people who watch our show.
There were a lot of expectations when the show came out -- different levels of satisfaction or dissatisfaction with the show and what people wanted from it. I get that, because we're representing a marginalized community and there's a lot of need for more diverse representation in storytelling.
Watching this -- especially the club scenes -- takes on a new poignancy in light of what happened in Orlando a month ago. Have you felt any of that?
Absolutely. There was a beautiful sense of solidarity at the screening at the Frameline Film Festival in San Francisco we had a couple weeks ago. You could sense that the events of Orlando gave the whole event a significant tone. Pride was also that weekend in San Francisco, so there was a real sense of community, and certainly at the screening you could feel that need for work that will bring people together and stories that are going contribute to that, as opposed to add to the muck.
I think sometimes people in cities can become so jaded, but there are kids in these small-town communities -- like Orlando, like where I grew up in McAllen -- that don't have access to content like "Looking," and I think it's really so brave putting it out there. I'm excited by the young kids who are going to be watching our show and hopefully find some inspiration, especially in a time when these horrific acts of violence have been committed against the LGBT community. I hope a show like ours can at least bring hope.