The Bright Future of Gabriel Luna

“There is no fate but what we make for ourselves.” Those were the fateful words relayed to a young Sarah Connor from her future war-leader son that have echoed throughout the entire Terminator series. Now, the fate of mankind is once again threatened by a new, advanced artificial intelligence in Terminator: Dark Fate, the sixth installment of the time-bending franchise that sparked to life with James Cameron’s 1984 original, sci-fi/action classic.

But forget everything you remember from 2003’s Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines and anything after that, including Terminator: Salvation (2009) and Terminator: Genisys (2015). Dark Fate wipes the slate clean and picks up right after the events of 1991’s Terminator 2: Judgment Day, following an entirely new timeline. Here, we learn what happens to Sarah (Linda Hamilton) and John Connor (Edward Furlong) after they seemingly stopped Judgment Day and prevented the existence of Skynet—the future A.I. manufacturer of the Terminators. It turns out mankind just can’t seem to escape total obliteration, and another malevolent A.I., this time called Legion, took the place of Skynet and created its own metallic breed of cyborg assassins hell-bent on eradicating human life. One of those new killing machines is the Rev-9, a Terminator with a metal endoskeleton and liquid metal skin. Think of him as a hybrid of Robert Patrick’s sleek and stealthy, shape-shifting T-1000 and the iconic, skeletal T-800 model that’s become synonymous with Arnold Schwarzenegger.

The new menacing Rev-9 is played by 36-year-old, Austin-born actor Gabriel Luna, who some might recognize as Tony Bravo from El Rey Network’s Matador, but more recently, he’s better known as Ghost Rider, thanks to his breakout role in Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. There, Luna made his first major career leap and won over legions of Marvel fans thanks to his memorable performance as both Robbie Reyes and his blazing, skull-headed alter ego. He made such an impression as the fiery antihero, it was no surprise that Hulu asked him to reprise the role in his very own series. But Luna, as well as eager Marvel fans, were recently delivered a crushing blow when it was announced the project was, well, terminated.

Will Luna sport the burning chain-whip again? The jury is still out on that, but fans are hoping and theorizing that he might appear in S.H.I.E.L.D.’s upcoming final season. This minor setback left Luna wide open for other opportunities, and it’s also allowing him more time to bask in the Terminator: Dark Fate spotlight. He’s currently on an extensive press tour for the film, which provides his biggest role to date, and traveling the world with one of his childhood idols, Schwarzenegger. Take a glance at his personal Instagram account, and you’ll see that the two have become BFFs ever since Dark Fate began production.

After stops in Seoul, Beijing and London, Luna made his way back to Los Angeles (where he currently resides) to conclude the first leg of his press tour. His hometown of Austin, followed by New York and Tokyo, were next up on his itinerary. Luckily, I managed to sit down with him during his busy schedule at the Beverly Hills Four Seasons Hotel to discuss his new Terminator movie. Luna, unlike his Rev-9 persona, is all ear-to-ear smiles. While shaking hands, he spots the H.R. Giger Alien tattoo on my arm and asks to see it. “I had a big, egg head when I was born,” he says while grinning. “They would call me a Xenomorph.” Seconds later, our conversation ensues. Here, Luna tells PLAYBOY about how his athletic background allows him to take on the more physical aspects of his role, his budding friendship with Schwarzenegger, why he turns down stereotypical Latino roles and the guiding light that is Linda Hamilton.

Landing the part of Ghost Rider in Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. was a major career leap for you, but playing the lead villain in Terminator: Dark Fate is the biggest role you’ve had so far. Did you nail the audition and nab the part right away, or was there a lengthy audition process?

Oh, no—it was a lengthy process. It took about four and a half months. I know if I was in James Cameron’s position, I wouldn’t just willy-nilly hand over the title role to just anybody. But yeah, I started with my audition, and I met [director] Tim Miller the following week. I did my best, and apparently it went well. So I took my wife on my vacation. They kept calling me, saying “You’re still in the mix.” I was like, “Alright, that’s cool.” I just tried not to think about it. I came back to L.A. and met with Tim, did my stunt assessment and met the producers over at Skydance. Finally, I had the screen test.

I think at that point, Tim had already decided I was the guy, but James still needed a little more convincing. Tim was like, “James asked you to screen test, man. I told him that I think you’re the guy.” I was like, “Well, we give James what he wants.” And he’s like, “Yeah, because he told me he once built a whole a jungle for a screen test.” Which he did for Sam Worthington in Avatar. And it’s like, “Well shit, man—let’s do it.” And we did it, and 10 days later I got an email from Tim saying that I was the guy.

When you found out you got the part, did your inner child come out when it dawned on you that you were going to be working with Arnold Schwarzenegger?

Oh, the inner 10-year-old me is still geeking out like crazy, man, because I saw T2 in the theater with my mom. My mother was a 15-year-old widow when she had me. So she was very young, and she liked to go see movies, and she had a couple of kids. But if you’re accompanied by an adult, you could go to a rated-R movie. So, there I was. It certainly occurred to me that there were some very big shoes to fill. And I just wanted to work really hard and apply the work ethic that I’ve had my entire life—one that I’d learned as an athlete, one that had been instilled in me by my mother. She was a very hard-working lady. And give your all, man, because Linda Hamilton is leading this picture. And she deserves everything we got; Arnold felt the same way. And then, of course, Arnold deserves every bead of sweat that I can pour out.

On your Instagram, you’ve shared a lot of posts with Arnold featured in them, and it seems you even trained at the gym together quite a bit. What’s the No. 1 thing you learned from Arnold that you’ll take away from all of this?

Discipline. No excuses, man. He’s 72. He’s up there every morning at 6:30 a.m. And he also introduced me to a lot of adaptive athletes. He always gives back. He helps out, and he gives his time and his energy to others. And he lifts other people up. He does a lot of work with wounded warriors—adaptive athletes. Now, those are some motherfuckers that give you no excuses. They’re over there working. You had guys with no arms, no legs, adapting to the equipment so they can get their pump in. So a No. 1 thing is discipline and energy. And of course, you only need to read his seven rules of success. [Gabriel in an impressive Arnold voice] “Some people say they need eight hours to sleep. To them, I say sleep faster.” And of course, the big one at the end, “Always give back.”

Did this role push your physical limits? Some actors rely on their stunt double for some of the more extreme action, but you seem to be the type who just goes for it.

Oh, I do everything big. Tim had to pull the reins on me a number of times because I’m there for them. I served the picture with everything they need. And my body is able to do a lot of things. So I know as an audience member, you’re always like, “Let’s see the guy do the thing.” So, I want to give that to the audience, so they don’t have to suspend disbelief. So they are drawn out of the picture at any moment when they clearly see it’s not the guy.

In the Terminator mythology, everyone knows that when you travel back in time, you have to travel nude. Did that make you nervous a little bit? Or did it encourage you to pump up a little more?

Oh, it definitely gives you motivation. The fear of looking like a shrimpy man is excellent motivation to try to get your body in the place it needs to be. I will say that I wish we shot that scene two-and-a half months later, when I was at my absolute physical peak. Because we shot it day one of the shoot. First day is, “All right, Gabe, drop trou. Get out of that robe, and let’s get up on this trapeze thing. Do a little flip and land in the iconic pose.” I was ready, though. I still feel pretty good. I mean, up to that point, that was like my physical peak, but then I just kept getting bigger and stronger and a little more defined.

Did you examine the performances of any of the other Terminator villains that came before Dark Fate to get an idea of what you wanted to bring to the role?

Well, I’ve only seen Arnold and Robert as Terminators. So those are the only two I know because I haven’t seen the other three movies. Just T1 and T2. And absolutely, I thought it was very important to maintain a thread between all of us. From Arnold’s, his walk, his deliberate movement. And efficiency, obviously, is very important. You’re a machine, you must be efficient. There is a common saying in the stunt community: “Slow is smooth, smooth is fast.” So you never rush anything. Everything is effortless. And Robert’s T-1000, you elevate that. You add speed, you add agility, you add more of a sharp edge to it. So I incorporated all of that. And then I just added what it is in me. I just had my own particular physicality. I just tried be a fucking hot blade cutting through the world, literally. And then just stay in attack mode. That’s very important.

This movie has a diverse cast, and you’re basically the first Latino Terminator in this series. Your co-star Natalia Reyes said that she didn’t know what she was auditioning for, and she pretty much assumed it was just going to be another stereotypical, Latina role.

“I thought I was auditioning for a maid,” she said.

Yeah, that’s what she thought! You’ve been pretty lucky. You’ve gotten Ghost Rider, now this. Have things changed in recent years? Or do you still get offered lots of stereotypical roles that you turn down? Like, the cliché Latino lover, the gangbanger …

Well, I’ve turned all that down for years now. In my second film, I played a low-level pot dealer, but he was a good man. He’s taking care of his family. It was a means to an end. I refuse to play narcos. I refuse to be that. I’ve refused, say, the Latin lover. I respect and love my culture, but I personally am not fluent in Spanish. Sure, I do play roles and incorporate the Spanish language. But a lot of times they’re just like, “Oh, you got to play this guy, he speaks Spanish.” I’m a Texan. I’m an American. No, I’m a Mexican-American. I’m as brown as the soil, baby. And I’m very proud of that. We should all be. But we all have very different experiences. Natalia had a different experience as a Columbian woman. Diego Boneta, as a Mexican national. And me, as a mixed-American from Texas. It’s a wide array. It’s a large spectrum of our experience.

So what I’ve been striving to do is make sure that I play characters my grandma would be proud of. I have many friends who take those other parts. They have to feed their families. I’m not knocking that. I’ve been fortunate that I’ve had the ability to say no. But even when I didn’t really have the position, I would always say no just because I knew what I wanted to do. I knew that I wanted to be a leading man. I wanted to be central to the story and I believed in myself that way. I knew that I had to be true about me. And I aligned myself with people who can see that truth. And we seem to be achieving success, by doing it the way we intend to do it.

Did the great James Cameron visit the set at all or provide any guidance?

No, he didn’t visit us at all because he was in New Zealand making the Avatar movies for three years now. I met him for the first time via Skype about three weeks ago. And his philosophy is that the set is the realm of the director. It was Tim’s domain, and that’s who we followed. Tim was my captain. It was a Tim Miller picture, and I followed him; I’d follow him to the end. I love that guy. And above all, we followed Linda. Linda was our guiding light, and she was all the motivation and all the fire we needed to apply ourselves and try and make a great picture, because she is the one. It’s the story of Sarah Connor. That’s what the Terminator is about. James was amazing, in that he was always present in the sense that he would do rewrites and offer us new scripts and new ideas. Linda would always fight back because she’s a fucking fighter.

Speaking of Linda, it’s also nice to see a badass female character in the 60-plus age bracket. We need more of that. Male action stars like Arnold, Sylvester Stallone and Liam Neeson hog the spotlight, so it’s nice to see Sarah Connor come back at that age and shine.

Yeah. That’s a cool thing about our movie. And it all happened naturally. We didn’t force it in any way. They are that age, and they are those characters, and we are making the movie almost 30 years after the last one. So, naturally, they’re going to be the age they are. So older moviegoers can see themselves represented on the screen. Myself, Natalia, Diego—the Mexican-American public, the Latin-viewing audience worldwide, can see themselves. And it makes sense because we’re in Mexico city, so of course, the Terminator would come back looking like he’s a Mexican. And Mexico has always been important to the trilogy. Sarah’s always gone there for sanctuary, to regroup and to rally. And so that’s natural. And then, of course, you have the women—Sarah was the mold, man. So there’d always been women warriors. And so all of those things seem to check all the boxes, but all of those things just happened naturally, and they weren’t forced.

Audiences also have a fascination with these end-of-the-world type of movies. Any movie with natural disasters, being destroyed by aliens, gods, viruses or cyborgs from the future always have a strong appeal.

Yeah, we are infatuated with our own demise, aren’t we?

Exactly. Why do you think movies like this resonate with audiences?

It’s just that I think you feel most alive when you’re eye to eye with death. When you’re in survival mode. And I know that’s how I’ve felt in my life. I’m most exhilarated when I’m skydiving, or when I’m doing something dangerous. That’s when I feel most like myself and most human; it’s confronting mortality. And so maybe that’s it, maybe it’s just we all know we’re going to die. So we must be memento mori—remember death—and in doing so, really enjoy your life.

We’re also fascinated with time travel. There are many movies, not just the Terminator series, where someone wants to go back to the past to change or fix something. If time travel was real, would you go back and change anything? Or are you one of those “everything happens for a reason” types who believe in the butterfly effect?

Exactly. Well, my father passed away before I was born. My mother had a tough life raising us as a 15-year-old widow. I’ve had a lot of pain in my life. I just lost my cousin last year. It’ll be a year on October 31, on Halloween. And I loved them all. But I guess I wouldn’t change any of it because then I wouldn’t be here talking to you. Having done this movie and living the life that I’m living. So yeah, I wouldn’t change anything.

Fans were crushed to find out that Hulu’s Ghost Rider project was killed. They want to see you back as Robbie Reyes. Do you still have hope that we might see him again? Maybe Kevin Feige will call you up one day and say they want you in the MCU.

Y’all just barrage Kevin with phone calls and emails and tweets. [Laughs] I don’t know what happened there. That had been in the works for two and a half years. The Fox-Disney merger happened and kind of set us back a little bit. But who knows exactly what’ll end up happening. But then again, if I was working, I wouldn’t have been able to go on this great press tour. Now my schedule is wide open. There’s certainly a few other things on the cooker. I’m very selective these days. I’m fortunate to be able to be selective. So I just want to pick because everything’s been escalating in a way, and you can’t expect it to always go up. I know that at some point there will be a fall. But now that we’ve done this picture, maybe I can stay up in this realm and work at this level for a while. Because working on this film has allowed me to work with people who are the absolute pinnacles of their field. So I certainly would like to remain in this tier, and continue to work with these great professionals.