‘Narcos’ Season 2: Moura Learned Spanish With Japanese Teenagers, But Had Nothing To Say About Possible Delays

Wagner Moura apparently learned Spanish in a classroom filled with Japanese teenagers, according to statements he made during his recent appearance on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon.

Moura apparently took the best job advice your father ever gave you and ran with it: If someone asks you to do something you don’t know how to do, say you can do it and learn it very quickly.

“This is a big case of miscasting. One of the biggest miscasting in the history of…” Moura said to Fallon, trailing off. “I was super skinny, I mean I was forty pounds lighter and I didn’t speak a word of Spanish. So when they decided to do it I was like, these guys are crazy.”

Unfortunately for Moura, while he did manage to learn Spanish enough to fool the English speakers enamored with Narcos, he did not master the language enough to pass off a believable Columbian accent for native Spanish speakers. This has been a source of constant aggravation for anyone with a rudimentary mastery of the language watching Narcos.

“It was the craziest thing. Because the first idea was to do it in English and I thought, I could speak English with an accent, I could do that,” Moura said. “So what I did was, even before Netflix knew that I was being considered to play the part, I flew myself to Medellín, Colombia in order to learn Spanish and put myself in university for Spanish for foreigners, so I was in a class with Japanese teenagers. It was like being in school you know, learning things and eating delicious things.”

Moura has made the rounds lately, showing up during an actor’s panel at Netflix’s CES 2016 keynote in Las Vegas. Moura was presumably taking a break from filming season 2 of Narcos to attend the Golden Globes, in which he was nominated for the Best Performance By an Actor in a Television Series, Drama category. Unfortunately for Moura, Jon Hamm -- for his role as Don Draper in Mad Men -- won the Golden Globe.

“[Narcos] is spoken in English and in Spanish because I don’t think people are buying Second World War films where German people are speaking English with a German accent,” said Moura said during Netflix’s keynote at CES 2016. “So I think this brings to Narcos a certain amount of authenticity.”

Scheduled to be released in August 2016, Narcos recently replaced its showrunner is filming in Colombia.