Interview: Guillermo Diaz is Arresting Whether Playing Gay or Straight

It is probably accurate to say that there aren’t too many actors who could convincingly play the utterly ruthless, borderline psychotic gang leader Po Boy in the just released Cop Out and be just as completely believable as the much more gentle gay nurse Angel on NBC’s Mercy. But actor Guillermo Diaz has just that ability which has allowed him to work steadily in both television and movies for the past fifteen years.

Probably best known for his role as Guillermo on Showtime’s hit series Weeds, the thirty-four-year old Diaz has also played a punk rocker, a drag queen, and a surfer just to name a few of his many roles. And it's that ability to slip in and out of so many varied characters that likely ensures the out and proud New York City native will be working for many years to come.

AfterElton.com recently caught up with Diaz to talk about his new movie, his role on Mercy and much more.

AfterElton.com: Let's talk about Cop Out, which just came out. My first question is are you stalking Michelle Trachtenberg who is also on Mercy with you and turns up in the movie as well?
Guillermo Diaz: She's stalking me! [laughs] No, it was pretty great that she's in Cop Out, too, huh? It's great, because we work together a lot on the show, and I'm a completely different character on the show than I am in the movie, so it's kind of funny that we're both in Mercy and then we're both in Cop Out. I'm like a totally horrible leader of a gang, murderer, then on the show we're like best buds. It's so much fun.

AE: So you're the baddie in Cop Out.
GD: Yeah, yeah. I play a character named Po Boy. He's the leader of this hardcore gang in New York City. He somehow gets his hands on this vintage, 1950s Andy Pafko baseball card that's worth like thousands of dollars and belongs to Bruce Willis. Somehow my character gets his hands on it, and Bruce's character and Tracy Morgan's character are trying to find it, so I send them on a wild goose chase because I want something from them as well.

There's a lot of craziness. My character has a batting cage downstairs in the basement of his mansion, and in one scene I'm batting baseballs into a guy, trying to kill him with baseballs. [laughs] It's pretty hardcore.

Diaz as Po Boy in Cop Out

AE: How is it playing a character like that? Obviously I assume you don't go around driving baseballs into people.
GD: No. [laughs]

AE: Is that sort of fun to do, to get to explore that character?
GD: It is fun. It's so different from who I am that it's easy for me to take risks and go crazy with the character and really just have fun with it. I'm not as critical. When I'm playing Angel on Mercy, he's a lot more like me, so I'm a lot more critical about what I'm doing. I'm more judging about my performance.

AE: I'm sure this role in Cop Out is great, but it is another gang member. Does it ever get frustrating as Latino actor that you get those parts so frequently, or is it just like, 'Hey, it's work'?
GD: It's funny, since I started acting I've always played so many thugs and bad guys, always playing the bad guys, and people would always ask me that, if it was frustrating. To be honest, I was just happy to be working. I think in my head, I knew it wouldn't always be like this. I knew I just needed to work a lot and eventually my body of work would bring me to the next step and people would take chances on me and cast me in different characters.

And it happened. It started happening. I've played all sorts of characters, from a vegetarian punk rocker to a transvestite to a DJ to a surfer dude. I just try not to even focus on that. And I really enjoy playing the bad guy. I try to make each bad guy different. [laughs] It doesn't bother me at all. Yeah, I'm playing this horrible gang member in the movie, but at the same time, I'm playing a really great nurse who's gay on Mercy. I can't really complain. I have the best of both worlds.