Te Ao Rauna & Jan Luis Castellanos Interview: Breakwater
Te Ao Rauna & Jan Luis Castellanos reveal talk their new dystopian series Breakwater, including its resonant themes, filming the action, and more.
Breakwater is a new dystopian series streaming on Snapchat. Waterworld meets Blade Runner, the show is a timely exploration of climate change, capitalism, and immigration set against the backdrop of a race against time as a hurricane comes barrelling towards Mai (Te Ao Rauna), Jax (Jan Luis Castellanos), and the rest of the population of Breakwater, a city outside the walls of Los Angeles. Mai and Jax will have to work together to save themselves and everyone else in Breakwater before the devastating hurricane destroys everything.
Screen Rant sat down with Rauna and Castellanos to talk all things Breakwater, including what it was like to film the fast-paced show, the timely themes that should resonate with everyone, and how the bond between Mai and Jax came to be.
Screen Rant: These characters of Mai and Jax come from such different backgrounds. As performers, how do you aim to embody that?
Te Ao o Hinepehinga Rauna: It's funny - the character-building [for] Mai wasn't hard for me. I come from a family of very strong-willed women who are very do-it-yourself and get-the-shit done. So I just channeled my mother and my aunties. And they love that, which was great. But yeah, my for me, she was really grounded, and a lot of the Maori woman that I grew up with, and the Maori values that we carry - it was kind of just tapping into that old knowledge and building her, and then figuring out where that fits in this dystopian world, I guess, which was trial by error, I'll be honest.
Jan Luis Castellanos: For me, I'm definitely not the son of a billionaire, unfortunately. I felt like he needed a sense of elegance, but also a lack of awareness because, once he meets Mai, it becomes a master class into a world that he has never kind of stepped foot in and she is his guide, really into being street smart. That was the dynamic I wanted. I wanted to give her all the power because Jax is in a spot to learn, really.
And for me, the channel that I kind of just had to put myself on [was] borrowed vulnerable states if that makes sense. because you in states where you don't know what's going, what's going on, and what's going to happen. I gotta thank [Te] for that because she would carry scenes. Once you have chemistry on set, and you're under all that pressure, you understand the character and where the scene is going. And she did a good job at taking it in her direction. So Jax, his job is literally to follow, like, literally. So I kind of just went with that intuition.
How long did it take to film this whole thing and what was it like being on this dystopian set?
Castellanos: I'm a big fan of these kinds of worlds where you just feel like everything is falling apart. Because then there's little acting that needs to be done. And to answer your question. I think we filmed it all together, right? We didn't shoot anything individual. It was just kind of like sometimes Te and I would have a crazy scene from one another and then we'd go do something else. And we're like, Wait, hold on. Where are we? Let's figure this out real quick. Yeah. It was cool.
So many times with these dystopian stories we get white savior characters or men leading the charge and we don't get that diversity when in actuality the themes of Breakwater adversely affect communities of color and less wealthy communities. How did it feel to sort of being able to tackle this in such a relevant way?
Rauna: That was probably a big highlight for me. T o celebrate that and to see that not just in our dystopia - like, it's not just Breakwater, but it's the billionaire son. We saw there wasn't a white savior complex, it was people of different ethnicities, there were different languages, and we were from all over the world. I mean, Flask is Southeast Asian, there was a couple of different cultures that were there. So it was so diverse. And there wasn't a particular - we weren't touching on the race, but we celebrated it through our diverse casting, which was pretty incredible to see.
Castellanos: It also takes like a peek into the future in my opinion, dealing with climate, dealing with immigrants, me being the son of a billionaire. And I obviously I'm not that, but I'm also an immigrant. So I sympathize in a way for these refugees that were on the one side of the wall, and you kind of just have to put yourself in a mental state where it's like these topics that we're talking about, they matter. Especially to the Gen Z population that Snapchat is targeting.
Also, to have someone like Te, for example. A female character lead. I think it's very important. And also, it's just new and refreshing, while also having that diversification without it being like, "Oh, you're Brown, and you're not and this and that." And it's like that was so not it, because naturally speaking, it almost felt like everybody was a refugee, everybody was an immigrant. And, you know, this is America, it was based in Los Angeles. So, therefore, it almost feels like you're seeing a peek into the future, you know, and that's just how I saw it.
I want to get into the show a little bit. That hopeful ending felt so important to me and I was wondering how that came to be?
Rauna: I'm going to be honest - we filmed like, three versions of it. Me, the directors, the writers, and all the creative team, we had a lot of different ideas of how it could end, but we didn't know which one was going to feel right until the entire piece came together. But the hopeful [ending] felt good. And it felt true. Because there's an honest element to that no matter how bad things may seem, we'd love to be hopeful. We want to wish for the best because the moment that you give up you've already lost. So as long as there's hope still, there's a chance for you to carry on. So I think, for me, it was the right ending. And I'm really, really glad.
There were also plenty of action scenes. Were you guys doing all your own stunts for that?
Castellanos: You only have to try to do the best you can, you know, and you got to be thankful to the crew, the stunt coordinators, and everyone involved. Because everything is a new experience. Her and I experienced the marine training together and had the stunt coordinators trying to teach us how to stay under the water when we're really floating up and all that stuff. You feel not just the acting pressure, but also the physical pressure.
I feel like, to touch back on that hopefulness that you brought up before, you don't really play into the hopelessness because you feel like there is no hope. At least for me. So, you lean into the moment and I think that's beautiful. You have to thank the directors and writers and everyone involved because they figure out the story's dynamic, the bigger picture, but as an actor, you're really lost in the moment.
And you know, when you have a good partner to work opposite of - it's like, a bunch of rain, a bunch of water, a bunch of physical activities, and all these stunts and action scenes. Te's a badass. It's hard to come across actors that are willing to go there and that aren't afraid. Te's got this strong persona, that it's like, she'll run, she'll jump, she'll do whatever. I thought that was very important for the role. Like that is such a Mai thing and I just got to keep up.
Rauna: It was an interesting experience in the sense that freezing our butts off in the ocean was probably the tipping point. I feel like that's actually how we bonded - we were both dying of cold and we were like, "I got you bro."
And I'm gonna totally take this as a breaking moment because I'm very proud of this - I did my own stunts. I remember the first meeting and I was like, "I really, really want to do my own stunts or my own fight stunts." That's a cool thing for me. So they were like, Okay, well, we'll see how it goes. And thankfully, my partner has had 10 years of martial arts training. So we worked a lot together [in] pre-production and [they] trusted me enough to do it myself. There were a few hiccups, none of them during the stunts. Funny enough, I am a clumsy person. But I did get to do all my own fighting, which is really cool.
With such a short time to tell this story, how do you guys approach developing the romance between Jax and Mai?
Castellanos: I think it's just being open to each other's vulnerability at that point. We would bond off set - I would try and poke her while she's meditating under a tree or something. We would go out to eat and have tacos and grab drinks. All these things are great because you build more chemistry.
But when it comes to the set, I feel like you're just so vulnerable, and you sink into the story, where I am literally asking this person to help me find my other half, which is my sister. So you go through this journey, where it's like, you're relying on this person, you're going to see my scarier sides. You're going to see my most ferocious and angry sides, but also my most desperate side, and you are going to be the person that I vent to and talk to her, that guides me through these emotions. Jax is at a loss for words. He doesn't even know what to say [or] what to think at some points and he's just so entrusting of her that at the end, sympathizing for her as an immigrant on the other side of the wall, as a refugee that can get to the other side.
And me, seeing the point of view that [Jax's] sister would go ahead and fight. It solidified the connection for the character. Obviously, Te and I, we were in love. [Laughs]. No, I'm kidding. But throughout the course of the story, the characters just kind of solidify trust in one another and see each other's POV, which is why Jax starts to really identify his father's intentions at the end of the day. His love [for his father] shifted in a way. Giving it a hopeful ending, and also a bit of a romance in there, I think it was inevitable - you have two good-looking people, what are you going to do? [Laughs].
Rauna: I don't have much else to add on that. I think the only other thing I'd say is, despite the fact that the show was short, it was very intense. It was very fast-paced, we were doing a lot. I mean, we were filming six days a week. We started the day at sunset, and we finished the day at sunrise, so this intensity, you can't help but bond over that. So we inevitably bonded over that and it's sort of like the relationship off-screen. So it was just now marrying that with the beautiful relationship that Mai and Jax were kind of building together and it just kind of fit. It didn't feel like we had to work at it.
Castellanos: Yeah, it was naturally, organically there. Especially when there were moments where it was like a tug of war kind of thing. You had Mai on one side saying, "Trust me, I got you," and Jackson like, "I don't know, I don't know." He just gives in and I feel like that point where he does give in, it's where he has the shift in his heart where he realizes that Mai is really here to help him and vice versa. Even though she has her own intentions at the end of the day, I feel like that going through that journey together was something that will solidify some form of romance or trust within one another, being close to death multiple times. It's not something you experienced. It's like, Hey, listen, we almost died like five times together.
Breakwater is now streaming on Snapchat.