In 2010, longtime friends Gael García Bernal and Diego Luna were at the Berlin Film Festival, trudging through the snow after a late night out. “I don’t know if it was four or five, six in the morning, but definitely time had passed since we were going out,” Bernal says. “And on the way to the kebab [shop], we started to go into this pathetic crying out into the snow, like, ‘Let’s do something together. Let’s write this!’"

So they started to hash out an idea for a film about an aging Mexican boxer and his manager. The pair, who were childhood friends in Mexico, first appeared together in the critically acclaimed drama Y tu mamá también in 2001. They’ve collaborated since then, founding two production companies—Canana Films in 2005 and La Corriente del Golfo in 2018—and costarring in the 2008 sports film Rudo y Cursi. But they’ve also pursued separate acting careers: Luna has most recently been starring on the Disney+ series Andor, while García Bernal earned critical acclaim for his turn in the wrestling drama Cassandro. And as their stars have risen, that has often meant they are apart most of the time.

It would take more than a decade, but their long-awaited onscreen reunion is finally coming to fruition not as a film, but as a six-episode series for Hulu. La Máquina, which will debut October 9, is Hulu’s first Spanish-language original series: a story of lifelong friends who attempt one more grab at glory with a high-profile boxing match but find themselves up against a dark force that stands in their way.

Written and executive-produced by Marco Ramirez, and directed by Gabriel Ripstein, the show is filled with colorful characters, rich set design, and the vibrancy of Mexican boxing culture. La Máquina allowed García Bernal and Luna to return home in many ways, not only to their native language, but also in working with a crew they’ve got just as long a history with. It also allowed the pair to do some of their best work, bringing back to life a chemistry that can only exist between friends and creative collaborators who have known each other for decades. “We found a great vehicle to talk about the issues that matter to us, to play again, to be critical about a world we belong to somehow, or we witness at least from our perspectives as actors,” Luna says. “And more importantly, something that would make us work together in Mexico again with the people and family that we’ve grown with for these last 25 years.”

You might not recognize Luna when he first appears onscreen in La Máquina as Andy, a hustling boxing manager who spends most of his free time (and money) buying flashy clothes and getting Botox and other age-fighting procedures (rendered onscreen by some creative prosthetics and makeup).

Luna used Andy to explore what it’s like to be a manager of talent, to live your life for someone else. “He cares about everything but what’s real. He’s never comfortable with the way he looks, with the way he sounds, with the way people see him,” Luna says, adding that he took inspiration from managers and other talent reps he’s known. “I think he is a real showman, but he’s really playing a role 24/7, and it’s just that the play got old and people don’t want to watch it anymore.”

What Andy cares about most, though, is the boxing career of his friend Esteban, played by García Bernal. Estaban had an illustrious career as a boxer, reaching the level of fame where he can’t go out to dinner without being stopped by selfie-seeking fans. But he’s older and slower now, and his days as a boxer are numbered. “We wanted to do a story that starts off with a champion and the coming down—to do it opposite as normally these stories go, and to subvert the meaning of triumph as well,” García Bernal says. “Here, the real victory is freedom, and freedom of being oneself. So in a way, losing is winning.”

Andy hustles to get Esteban another fight, one more chance at glory. But then a past decision comes back to haunt them—and threaten Esteban’s chance to end his career on a win. “What would happen if somebody came into anyone’s life and said, ‘Everything you’ve made, everything you think you’ve fought for, everything you thought you’ve accomplished has always been a plan—it’s always been a script, it’s always been written and you have no control over it’?” García Bernal says. “That starts to get tragic. That’s what we wanted to do for the character.”

Esteban and Andy aren’t the only story here either. Their pair is actually a trio, completed by Esteban’s ex-wife, Irasema, played by Mexican actor Eiza González. Irasema and Esteban are no longer married, but they share a son and remain friendly. Irasema is often the one to give her two friends the hard truth and does her own digging into the world of boxing.

For González, who starred in Baby Driver and the Netflix series 3 Body Problem, joining La Máquina allowed her to play a new type of character. “It was my first time playing a mother, and I just also wanted to really tap into this softer side of me,” she says. But the bigger draw was to work with two actors whom she’d grown up admiring. “I’m not going to lie—it was a real ‘pinch me’ moment,” she says, adding that she used to watch García Bernal in a soap opera called El abuelo y yo.

The series was filmed in Mexico, presenting a rich and diverse view of the country. “It’s such a deep view into our culture—it feels like a piece of our home being shared across the globe and it feels very special and unique,” González says.

And for all three actors, it was an opportunity to work in Spanish after spending much of their careers focused on English-language projects. “Spanish is our homeland, in a way. Our linguistic cosmovision operates in Spanish. So we sound quicker in Spanish and we flow a little bit more,” García Bernal says. “But there is that double edge to it. Working with another language is wonderful because it’s a mask, it’s a character, it’s something that is a little bit alien to oneself.”

There’s an authenticity and an energy that reverberates through every scene of La Máquina, which is produced by Gael and Diego’s production company La Corriente del Golfo and Searchlight Television. Even the team behind the camera includes many close collaborators—“The guy lighting the sets is the guy who was there lighting Y tu mamá también 20-something years ago,” Luna says—which allowed the set to feel more like family than crew.

Luna and García Bernal joke that they needed the almost 15 years it took to get this project made to grow up—and grow as actors too. “Ten years ago, you wouldn’t believe that Gael was playing someone that was in his last round. But clearly, now he’s just perfect for the role,” Luna jokes. Then he turns serious, saying that he’s witnessed García Bernal grow in confidence as an actor while also finding more freedom in his performances. “What I sense now is the enjoyment he experiences when he’s acting,” he says.

García Bernal agrees that Luna has also grown. “Diego has always had really good energy working, always keeping it up and with a lot of stamina. And now his stamina has become much more like a good midfielder in football that knows how to administrate his energy and is always in the right place at the right time,” he says. Their biggest challenge this time was simply having too much fun when the cameras were rolling. García Bernal says, “The only thing maybe that has become more complicated is that we laugh a lot when we do scenes together, and sometimes we cannot finish the scenes.”