Marcello Hernandez poses for a portrait in Portland, Ore. Credit – Clayton Cotterell
Marcello Hernandez loves to work. The 28-year-old Florida-born comedian says so a dozen times during a phone interview with TIME the morning after wrapping shooting comedy film 72 Hours and performing two stand-up sets in a single night for his 30-show tour as he prepares for his upcoming Netflix special.
Hernandez’s career has been years in the making: starting out as an assistant to a manager at an Ohio comedy club before selling tickets in Greenwich Village in exchange for commission and performance time and later touring with legend Gilbert Gottfried. Today he’s most recognized for his Saturday Night Live characters, like the super-suave Domingo—a Latino heartthrob known for stealing women for a night (or more)—or Puerto Rican superstar Bad Bunny’s fictional nephew. He and Bad Bunny have become frequent collaborators outside the show, which Hernandez joined in 2022, too, including appearing together in a music video by the latter and acting as family again—this time cousins—in Happy Gilmore 2.
Though the political landscape has shifted, with wholesale immigration crackdowns across the country and a President demanding fealty from media, Hernandez says he doesn’t consider himself “a very political person.” He does not, however, shy away from making his background central to his comedy. “If you come to my show, you’ll see it’s a big part of my identity—the fact that I was raised by immigrants—and I’m very grateful for that,” says Hernandez, whose mom is from Cuba and dad is from the Dominican Republic. “I’m the first American in my family, and I realized that the opportunities that I have are because my parents were able to leave their country and come here and try to give me a better life.”
Still, Hernandez says he tries to focus his energy on creating the best things he can create. “I’m actively trying to work as much as I can so that I can have the means and the power to do more and help more people and create a name for myself, but also to represent for Latinos, which is really important to me.” At SNL, he says, the funniest material wins. “I’m just writing stuff that I think is funny. If people laugh in the writers’ room, and at the dress rehearsal, and if the host and the musical guests like it, you have a chance,” Hernandez says. “I never have to be like, ‘Can I please speak Spanish this week, Lorne?’”
Contact us at [email protected].
‘ The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties ’
‘ Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.yahoo.com ’
