“I’m not forcing where the river takes me”: David Castañeda on the end of ‘The Umbrella Academy’ and what comes next

Posted On August 15, 2024August 15, 2024

Playing a lead role in one of the biggest and most-watched shows on Netflix is a massive opportunity for any actor, but now that the fourth and final season of The Umbrella Academy has been sent out into the world, the next chapter begins for David Castañeda.

The actor was first announced as the rebellious and knife-wielding Diego Hargreeves in November 2017, and with the final batch of episodes premiering in August 2024, it’s been a seven-year journey from beginning to end. For comparison, Castañeda only made his screen debut in 2009, so the comic book adaptation has been a part of his life for almost half of his entire career.

With that in mind, how does it feel knowing that it’s all come to an end? “It’s a big question, and it’s a big answer to it,” Castañeda admitted. “I’m very grateful to have had this experience. I don’t know how to compare it to anything else I’ve ever experienced. The learning lessons, the triumphs of the show, working with such a wonderful cast and crew, and the directors and [showrunner] Steve Blackman. I owe so much to everyone, to all those people.”

More than just a job, the star forged close bonds with everyone he collaborated with on The Umbrella Academy. A cliché, it may be, but they really were a family. “Each year, we go in and work with them, and you’ve got to come out,” Castañeda explains. “And I’d come out a better person, a better artist, a better brother, a better son. It’s sad that this is over. I don’t know if I’m going to ever experience something like this specifically, but I’m happy that it happened.”

Each new season of the series has focused on the misadventures of the Hargreeves clan in a different timeline with a different set of issues to deal with. In a way, Castañeda has been able to treat Diego as four different characters in a sense, with each new evolution requiring him to bring different levels to his performance, an approach he didn’t find to dissimilar from real life.

“I think it’s a very natural thing as a human to not be the same person a year before or ten years prior,” he offered. “And I was very lucky that they really emphasise changing the character not in a drastic way, but incrementally, changing him from season one to season four and making it believable enough – at least for my sense – to be able to portray that character so that it doesn’t feel like he’s just coming out of left field and now it’s this other person.”

From moonlighting as a vigilante to being scattered to the four winds of the 1960s before becoming a father twice over under very different circumstances in the third and fourth seasons, it’s been a wild ride for both Diego and the actor who plays him. “I feel us as people, we sort of go through that,” Castañeda mused of the change. “As an actor, that’s a gift, in that it allows the acknowledgement of the natural progression in people.”

“And so, when I get to go into playing Diego again, I’m like, ‘How is he going to be different?’. Because I’m different, and I’m a different artist than I was in 2018 when I first started working with Diego. And being able to have that much time between seasons, you can come into the role with a different set of eyes, and I love that. I love being able to do that.”

With each edition of The Umbrella Academy being so markedly different from the last, Castañeda didn’t go in completely blind to each new iteration of Diego, but neither did he want to know too much beforehand. He “knew months in advance what sort of soft template Steve Blackman was working in”. Still, it wasn’t until he received the scripts that he’d find “the intricacies of the relationships” central to his arc, with that prep time putting him in the preferred position of being prepared but not overprepared or inundated with too much information.

It was announced well ahead of time that the fourth season of The Umbrella Academy would be the last, and while it can often be beneficial for the cast to have the confidence their show isn’t going to be cancelled on a cliffhanger, that concrete sense of finality is something a performer doesn’t want to bring to the screen despite the bittersweetness of it all.

“I just needed to take it moment by moment with this character,” Castañeda said about knowing the end was nigh. “As an actor, you hope there’s going to be more pages. You kind of hope that it’s like, ‘Oh, are we going to get a call and be like ‘Just kidding!’ or, ‘Hey, we’re thinking about a spinoff’. You’re hoping that you can still stay in the world, but I’m content.”

The finale has already proven to be somewhat polarising among The Umbrella Academy fandom, but not only was that something Castañeda fully expected going in, he even related it to how his own initial feelings on the last episode of an all-time great TV series gradually changed over time.

“I’m sure it’s going to be divisive because what finale ends up with everyone happy? It’s so unheard of,” the actor questioned. “Even with Breaking Bad, now that I look back at it, I’m like, ‘Oh, it makes sense that he died’. But when it happened, I was like, ‘There’s no way! No, he’s invincible! This can’t be the way.’ And it ticked me off for a few weeks.”

One episode of television Castañeda starred in that didn’t split opinion was ‘Escape from Shit Mountain’, the penultimate chapter of Poker Face‘s first season directed by Rian Johnson. Starring opposite Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Natasha Lyonne, the riotous detective story was a huge moment for an actor who admired all of the key talents involved long before he ended up working with them.

“It was the best episode of the series,” he stated in an assessment many would agree with. “It was very surreal, actually, because I had seen Brick and Looper, so this actor/director dynamic between Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Rian Johnson was a dream of mine since I was in my early 20s to work with him. You know, I’m looking at Joseph Gordon-Levitt, who I grew up watching a lot of his films.”

Not only that, but Academy Award nominee Stephanie Hsu was also part of the cast alongside Lyonne and Gordon-Levitt, which only enhanced Castañeda’s enjoyment of an experience he’d been craving. “I can’t believe I got to work with this trio of phenomenal actors and Rian Johnson,” he reflected. “I felt very taken care of, and they knew exactly what they wanted. They guided me. And it was really fun to play with all of them. It was a dream come true.”

Thanks to the skills he’s displayed in not only The Umbrella Academy but also sparring with Christoph Waltz in Most Dangerous Game: New York and his mystery role in the upcoming John Wick spinoff Ballerina with Ana de Armas, Castañeda has been a fixture of action-orientated productions in recent years, which is a path he’d be happy continuing to follow in the immediate future.

“I’m open to it all,” he said of branching out, even if one avenue continues to draw him in. “I feel like the wave of where my career is going, it seems to be going into the action aspect. I’m not forcing where the river takes me. I obviously love action films, it’s something that I grew up with. I also know that a lot of dramas are also what influenced me as an artist. I’m not closing that chapter. It just has to be the right thing.”

Funnily enough, one of the industry’s marquee action franchises neatly fits that bill. “Gratuitous violence, to me, is only really good when you’re doing it with the best in the world, like John Wick,” Castañeda accurately surmised. “I would love to dive into that world even more.”

In addition to his on-camera pursuits, Castañeda has dabbled in writing, producing, and directing, which is another path he can definitely see himself taking. “I think as I get older, I definitely want to move behind the camera and be able to do both,” he acknowledged. “I am currently working on a few projects to sort of facilitate that.” One particular source of inspiration began as an actor but quickly evolved into an awards-friendly and acclaimed auteur.

“Some of the people I really look up to at this moment, they’re really doing it at such a high-quality level,” Castañeda continued. “It’s like Bradley Cooper, who’s able to write, direct, and act in his projects. I don’t know if that’s what the cards hold. But in the moment, right now, acting seems to be the breadwinner.”

One upcoming project that could showcase an entirely different side of Castañeda is one that’s close to home, having become attached to the lead role in a biopic of influential narcocorrido singer and songwriter Chalino Sánchez. The musician was born and bred in Sinaloa, which is where Castañeda was raised after moving from Los Angeles. The pieces are still falling into place, but the star promised something memorable.

“It’s one of the best scripts I’ve ever read,” he said. “I can’t wait for people to actually see what this man and his story meant to a lot of people in the music industry, especially in the Mexican-American culture. Just to have the opportunity to play him, I would have never guessed that I would have that opportunity.”

Sánchez was shot and killed at the age of 31 following a performance in Culiacán, with his body being discovered blindfolded at the site of a motorway. Castañeda has been in large-scale and minor productions alike, but his personal preference as both an actor and aspiring filmmaker would always fall towards the latter, with the part indicative of his sensibilities.

“I always think too many resources stifle creativity. I always believe that a lack of resources is always what allows things to be very unique and singular,” he opined. “I think when you have unlimited resources, it tends to dilute what you’re trying to do because you have an abundance of choices, and then eventually you make no choice. If I had unlimited resources, I would make ten films. Chalino would be the first one, and then I’d work my way up from there.”

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