Hotel Cocaine’s Danny Pino, Mark Feuerstein, and Yul Vazquez Discuss What Makes the MGM+ Series Unique [Interview]

MGM+ newest series, Hotel Cocaine, centers around the unique setting of the famous Mutiny Hotel and Club and its significance in the 1970s and 1980s Miami drug world.

The narrative revolves around Roman Compte (Danny Pino), a Cuban exile who manages the hotel; Burton Greenberg (Mark Feuerstein), the hotel’s owner; and Nestor Cabal (Yul Vazquez), Roman’s older brother and the notorious drug lord of Miami.

I spoke with Pino, Feuerstein, and Vazquez while attending the ATX TV Festival in Austin, Texas, about the making of the series, fiction versus reality, and what’s to come after the Season 1 premiere.

Cast Reactions to Reading the Script for the First Time

At the heart of the show, Hotel Cocaine is a story about a father doing whatever he can to protect his daughter, two estranged brothers on different paths reconnecting, and the story of the Mutiny Hotel, a hedonistic paradise.

Pino said that when reading the pilot script for the first time, he could get a sense of the multiple facets at play, singing creator Chris Brancato’s praises because of how it functioned on many different levels. One aspect he fell in love with right away is the portrayal of Burton Greenberg’s journey.

“[That] journey of hedonism and self-reflection provides a moment for our audience and our story to breathe and laugh, juxtaposed next to some awful and heinous violence.”

“[That] journey of hedonism and self-reflection provides a moment for our audience and our story to breathe and laugh, juxtaposed next to some awful and heinous violence,” Pino said. “I think on a social level, understanding that there’s a tie between that violence and maintaining that hedonistic paradise. What is the cost of it? ‘Every pleasure has a price’ is what is said to open up our show. It’s our mantra, our slogan.”

“I found it hard to sort of put my thumb on whether I’d ever seen a show that was jumping back and forth between scenes that way. Frankly, I wondered whether it could work. I wasn’t sure whether we would find the balance between the family’s story, the violence, and the crime story, along with the humor, comedy, and levity being sort of weaved in. That challenge, to me, was fascinating and exciting,” Pino continued.

For Feuerstein, he knew from the moment he read the script that he needed to be part of the show in some capacity.

“I remember reading it and, you know, sometimes you think, ‘Oh, I hope this works out,’ but you don’t really care. With this one, I was like, please, please let this work out,'” Feuerstein said.

On What’s to Come in Season 1

At the end of Hotel Cocaine Season 1 Episode 1, “The Mutiny,” Roman is left reeling over his decision to shoot Chucho and whether he’ll survive the injuries or not. Despite his reluctance to be reunited with his brother in an extreme fashion, Vazquez says Romans’s relationship with Nestor will be a defining factor throughout the season.

“They share a particular dream that is very, very important to both of them, and that begins to come into play later on in the season. Also, his daughter is very close to me. Nestor can’t have children, so my wife in the show is my fourth wife. I’m trying to be like Elizabeth Taylor. By the end of the season, I wind up with eight wives,” Vazquez joked.

“So, his kid is very, very dear to me and very important. I spoil her, and she begins to become another thing in the show as well, which you’ll see. We have common goals that will want to make him [Roman] come this way.”

“There’s also a lot of loyalty on the table, not only Romans’ loyalty to his daughter and to his girlfriend, Marisol, but his loyalty to his brother over an agreement that he’s made with the DEA, who’s been manipulating him. I think the loyalty he has to his brother begins to bleed into this agreement that he has with Zulio, and I think Roman actually rather enjoys trying to deceive the people who are trying to handle it,” Pino added.

How Mark Feuerstein Relates to His Character

Based on “The Mutiny,” the audience can quickly gather that Burton is the black sheep of his family, and that’s something that Feuerstein said he can relate to on a certain level.

“I wouldn’t say I’m a black sheep in my family, but I can relate to Burton in that way because I come from a family of lawyers. I decided to go into Hollywood and become an actor, and there’s that feeling that you’re taking the path less traveled, which is both incredibly risky and scary but also filled with that fun and excitement of not knowing where it’s going. And that’s very true for Burton.”

“He felt like he was a misfit as a kid, and he built this hotel as a home for misfits like him, for creative types to find their muse. He sort of thinks of himself as the muse, and in episode two, you’ll see that he is the muse, apparently, of the song Super Freak. In taking that path less traveled, there are a lot of risks and a lot of costs. When he comes head to head with his sister and his family, we see what he has to do to keep the party going, and it’s dark,” Feuerstein continued.

What Sets Hotel Cocaine Apart from Other Series

Creator and executive producer Chris Brancato is no stranger to the world of narcotics, having helmed Narcos, but to Feuerstein, one thing that makes Hotel Cocaine unique is its ability to focus on more than just the hardcore aspect of the series.

“You feel like you’re at the Copacabana or Rick’s Cafe in Casablanca.”

“[He] add[s] in the pleasure, the fun of the mutiny club, and not only comedy in the form of my character, but also the incredible mutiny girls, the dances, and the life. You feel like you’re at the Copacabana or Rick’s Cafe in Casablanca. Trying to balance those two tones and going from the dark into the light and back to the darkness is so pleasing, and it’s so nice to have that balance,” Feuerstein said.

“You have the family element, and then you have all that juxtaposed against the political background of Miami at that time and the Cuban American experience, which would come to play big time as the season goes on. So, it’s all taking you somewhere. It appears in the beginning that it’s one thing, and it begins to turn on you,” Vazquez added.

For Pino, another facet that sets Hotel Cocaine apart from the vast amount of series available on the subject matter is its ability to emphasize that the cost of maintaining Burton’s hedonistic paradise is “the blood that’s running through Miami to bring the substance that is fueling that party.”

“Oftentimes, that part of the equation is forgotten, the blood that runs through Miami all the way down to Central and South America and through the Caribbean.”

“Oftentimes, that part of the equation is forgotten, the blood that runs through Miami all the way down to Central and South America and through the Caribbean. Also, having Spanglish as the main language of our show is something that either has been done very infrequently or not very well. It is the language of South Florida. That’s the way we speak to each other. That’s what I heard growing up in Miami,” Pino said.

“Thankfully, Chris Brancato said, ‘Go for it. If there’s something in there that you would say differently, say it that way.’ And so, I feel like the audience, through the language, wardrobe, set design, and direction, will be transported to a place, although familiar, different.”

On Bringing the Character of Roman Compte to Life

For Pino, one of the main challenges is bringing to life a character based on someone who actually existed. Roman Compte was the father of Maurice Compte, an actor and producer on the show.

Out of respect and in an attempt to establish a firm foundation for the character while simultaneously being accurate to the actual Roman Compte, Pino asked Maurice to share everything he could about his father before embellishing and exploring what he wanted to do with the character.

“One of the things he did was he pulled out his chain, and he had a medallion that belonged to his father. His father wore [it] all of Maurice’s life. He doesn’t remember when his father didn’t wear it, so I asked if we could take pictures of it, and we reproduced it.”

“I wore that medallion throughout all of shooting to have a representation, like literally, right on my heart the entire time we shot. Those are the little things that allowed me to really jump into the character, both sort of externally and also internally,” Pino continued.

“I just want to add that there was a moment when we were backstage at the Los Angeles Latino Film Festival recently when Danny said to Maurice, ‘I hope I’ve done him justice.’ And Maurice got emotional as he looked at Danny and said, ‘You couldn’t have brought him to life more than you have,'” Feuerstein added.

Hotel Cocaine is available to stream on Sundays on MGM+.

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