In Fantasmas, Julio Torres & Martine Paint a Surrealist Dream Grounded in Friendship

Of all of her madcap co-stars in Fantasmas, the surrealist HBO comedy odyssey from the mind of Julio Torres, Martine has a clear favorite: “I love Melf, we’re very close,” she says of the ALF-like alien featured in the first episode. “I would love to see them soon.” If you ask fans, however, it’s Martine who is perhaps the series’ biggest breakout star. In it, she plays Vanesja (the j is silent), a performance artist who’s posed as a talent agent for so long that she actually became one. The character serves as something of the voice of reason for Torres’s self-named protagonist, imploring him to pursue lucrative commercial work so he can finally secure “proof of existence” (the show’s catchall analogy for a Real ID and credit score). Julio, however, would rather spend his time tracking down a lost oyster earring.

Fantasmas is a natural evolution of the work Torres began on Saturday Night Live with sketches like “Wells For Boys” and “Papyrus” and continued most recently in his directorial debut, Problemista. For the mononymous Martine, however, her co-starring role is something of a surprising career turn. Though she’d acted in small parts in Torres’s work before and had a role in the Robert Pattinson-produced indie, Rotting In The Sun, she was previously best known as a rising force in the art world. When we talked, she was in Vancouver for the opening of her first Canadian solo show ANTI-ICON: APOKALYPSIS, a collection of images in which the artist poses as archetypal heroines in a way meant to evoke modern advertising.

Though Torres and Martine hail from different disciplines, the themes of the creative duo’s work overlap. Here, they discuss Dylan O’Brien’s Fantasmas lingerie moment, the influence of The Little Mermaid, and just about everything except how they actually met. On that point, they can’t quite remember.

Let’s start with Vanesja. I had initially placed her in line with Patsy Stone from Absolutely Fabulous, Karen Walker from Will & Grace, or a Christine Baranski type of character, but she’s her own thing. What were your reference points for her?

Martine: Well, I like your examples. I love those characters, but I felt like Vanesja gained a lot of freedom by being very indirect.

Julio Torres: I like that she is more questions than answers. She's a bit of a riddle. She could be a spy pretending to be a performance artist pretending to be an agent. She's constantly double crossing herself and all wrapped in this packaging that is very Samantha Jones. I feel like the name was very informed by Ursula from The Little Mermaid’s human form, Vanessa, who is, now that I think about it, a good reference point: Something complicated pretending to be something that isn't as complicated. A sea witch pretending to be just a lady that can sing.

M: Pretending to be a bride. Vanessa’s moment is really to get married, but it’s stolen from her.

JT: Her motives are also a little obtuse because it's not like she loves the prince.

M: She mostly just can’t handle Ariel succeeding.

JT: She's supposed to be like, oh, she wanted the kingdom, but it's like, does she really?

Disney villains are all sort of queer-coded, so maybe she's disrupting the heteronormativity?

M: Yes. Ursula’s very minority coded.

JT: She really is. I mean, she's the only octopus in that under-ocean kingdom.

M: Yeah, we don’t get a reason either. Just like Vanesja, the reason is not offered to us. The reason is there for us to ruminate on.

I was reading some of the other interviews you guys had done, but I saw two different versions of how you met.

JT: [Laughs] So what is the truth?

One story said it was at an archery competition. The other said it was maybe at a video shoot about an archery competition, but that was unclear.

JT: I see where you might be confused, but the answer is yes.

Is this like when my co-workers asked me what I did over the weekend and I don’t want to tell them the whole truth?

JT: Yeah, you're like, I took it easy, but then I didn't. And I should have, but it was fun....until it wasn't.

M: It’s kind of like, “Wish I stayed home.”

JT: There is something about art and friendships where, because we are in constant consumption of each other, work and play just blend a lot. It's a little hard to place, “What do I know about Martine through my hanging out with Martine, and what do I know about Martine by just consuming Martine?” if that makes sense.

M: We both put out a lot of media. We both have tried to reach out through media to find some community or semblance of reflection for ourselves. We've cultivated our careers through using social formats.

JT: I found my way into making film and TV through standup. I met and befriended a lot of peers who are, like me, sort of off-center and a little off the beaten path, but I was very determined to always say yes to doing shows for tourists in Times Square and doing just the worst broadest comedy clubs because I thought that reaching out of my ecosystem felt important not only to what I want my work to say, but to my development. I think that there is something in the packaging of Martine's work, it's engaging with fashion editorial and commercials and logos and publicity, that also has the same preoccupation to not be an artist exclusively for other artists.

I love that the show aired on television at 11 PM on a Friday. It reminds me of the television I'd watch late at night when I was younger just trying to find something else. I'm wondering if you had any favorite late night TV shows?

M: Oh my god, yes!

JT: Will you give an example?

M: So I would get off the bus....

JT: Let’s start there.

M: I lived on a dirt road. The bus would not go up that dirt road. It was too steep. There was nowhere for it to turn around, so I would walk alone to and from this kind of shepherded transit to school. On that road was where a lot of crazy magical awakenings occurred. It was also a place where I could make up time if the bus was running late, and I knew that I could get home in time for MADtv. I loved MADtv. I was like, this is so weird, funny, and so inappropriate. I would watch it alone and was pretty confused trying to sort out what I was supposed to laugh at and what I wasn't. Not that that’s anything I really get caught up in, but it was fun to be stuck with so many choices.

JT: I really loved Late Night With Conan O’Brien. That was very informative to me. I love that it was in conversation with his more mainstream peers and subverted it. It felt funny for the sake of funny and very stupid and ridiculous and unburdened.

Let’s talk about the Dylan O'Brien moment that the internet seems to love. Did you just put out a call that “We need a hunk who's comfortable with lingerie and having an existential breakdown?”

JT: He wasn't fleshed out until later in the writing process. Just, the idea of Vanesja having this client who actually believes her and actually has a career was very funny. The lingerie was one of Martine's many little jokes that she would text me.

M: The lingerie is sexy, and I don’t think it’s funny.

JT: I think people are liking it because it's sexy. I don't think anyone's laughing. Everyone's like, “Oh!”

You’re opening people’s eyes.

M: And closing doors.

I'm so intrigued when artists step into pop culture. Martine, you’ve acted before, but this is your first main role in a series. How has that experience been for you?

M: My health took a turn. I got shingles while we were filming. Luckily, I'm not in a legal dispute with Julio at this time, but I was very ill. I think I lost the fun in it towards the middle. We were working simultaneously on a timeline where I had this big performance at The Whitney Museum and Julio couldn't even come to it because he was filming the show. His boyfriend was in it, James Scully, among many other New York hunks, and it was called Supremacy. I did it. I came back to set, and I had this mysterious rash, which quickly escalated into a weeping blister, as medical providers call it, because it pops and it oozes. It weeps and it spreads. So I really had to look at the way that I deal with anxiety. Also it showed me how serious I am about acting, despite having so much fun and it being about letting go to have fun. I think that's when my best performances are. I learned that I wanted to be the best I can be. I like acting. I think I'll do more.

Have you been following the memes from the show?

M: I haven’t seen any memes.

I thought you had a whole story of Melf memes on your Instagram.

M: Oh, those are my memes. I'm obsessed with Melf. They wouldn't like me using that word. Melf is just so inspiring to me—the way they have not changed for anyone else, just perseverantly themselves and so generous, so unfearful. They don't internalize other people's fear—and they’re hot.

Has there been talk about a season two, or is it too soon for that?

JT: It was news to me that this was seen as a series. I was like, “I don’t know what it is.” I suppose that I would be open to revisiting this world in some capacity. I have no idea what that would look like.

M: I would say part of Julio's gift is this organic structure. It's important to both of us that things feel effortless. When you say you're not quite sure what this is, you explained it once to an audience as a Trojan Horse, and I believe that that is what it is. It is this pioneering vehicle that's taken on the structure of something that people understand.

All episodes of Fantasmas are now streaming on HBO Max.

Styled by Dara

Fashion assistant: Fernando Cerezo

Hair: Sonny Molina

Makeup: Maya Fagina

Props master: Kay Kasparhauser