‘Babylon’ Actor Diego Calva Reveals Playing Pokémon Cards on-Set Helps Him Stay Focused
Damien Chazelle’s new movie Babylon is the final blockbuster of 2022. The film is a polarizing portrayal of the excess and transformation of the industry in the 1920s, featuring global stars like Brad Pitt and Margot Robbie. However, Babylon’s audience surrogate is Diego Calva, a relative unknown who spent most of his acting career in Mexico.
Performing alongside such renowned cast members in his most high-profile role yet could quickly become a nerve-wracking experience. Still, Calva turned to her trusted sets of Pokémon trading cards to keep himself calm and relaxed while on set.
Diego Calva plays cards to unwind in his spare time
Diego Calva appeared in a video for GQ about the 10 essential items he can’t live without. The most important things for him to bring to every production are the decks for his favorite card games.
“I love playing cards all the time. I am a game-oriented person,” the actor says. “For me, the best game that exists is definitely Magic: The Gathering. And the second game, which I’ve liked since I was a kid, is Pokémon.”
These games are still a hobby for Calva, but he still approaches them with some level of seriousness. He’s not one of the people obsessed with finding the most expensive card of the day. According to TCGplayer Infinite, that distinction goes to the alternate art version of Giratina V, which can apparently fetch $270 on the resale market. Instead, he’s focused on creating the best deck. “I’ve been making decks all my life. And when I go on a trip and I’m shooting a movie I’m always playing alone against myself. It’s a bit ridiculous, but it’s what keeps me focused.”
Playing multiplayer games by yourself does sound silly and a bit lonely, but Calva’s been a working actor for nearly a decade and received increasing acclaim, so it must be working for him.
He also plays poker in his off-time, his favorite variants being Speed and Widow. While Calva doesn’t have any card tricks up his sleeves, he claims to have a pretty nice routine when he plays with his friends. “All I do is gamble and take their money.”
Calva’s Manny is a production assistant who aspires for more
Diego Calva plays Manny Torres, a wannabe filmmaker working his way up from the bottom of the film industry. When Babylon begins, he is tasked with fulfilling the studio’s least glamorous demands, this time procuring an elephant for a drug-filled sex party at an LA mansion.
While at the party, Manny meets Robbie’s character, Nellie LaRoy, an intensely driven it-girl with similar ambitions of stardom. They form a bond thanks to their mutual feeling that they are meant to do something bigger in life, but they are working in an industry that is on the brink of a landmark shift from the silent era to the talkies. Manny also receives some help from Jack Conrad (Pitt), a silent film star feeling the squeeze of the coming transition.
Manny does advance through the studio system, but he learns firsthand that the chaos of Old Hollywood is a tough place to find fulfillment.
‘Babylon’ is a manic, divisive movie about the end of a cinematic era
Babylon is a wild, disorienting movie that, at times, seemingly revels in the feral darkness of the entertainment industry and is deeply sentimental about the importance of artists and their creations. It’s tough to pin down what Damien Chazelle wants viewers to think about this time in history and what it says about the modern day, which means it is inevitable that some people will love Babylon and others will be disgusted by its more over-the-top moments.
Chazelle’s vision of the 1920s is one where drugs and bodily fluids (including those of that elephant) flow freely with little thought for the consequences. The movie is more than happy to marinate in the seedier parts of celebrity while also telling a romantic story about main characters who are anxious about how they will be remembered when the spotlight fades.
Whether that dual purpose is worthwhile or sustainable throughout Babylon’s three-hour runtime is very much in the eye of the beholder. It currently has a 55% rating on Rotten Tomatoes. Our reviewer Jeff Nelson is much more positive about the film, giving it four stars out of five.
