While the Mutiny Hotel at the centre of Hotel Cocaine still exists in Miami, Florida, it’s a far cry from the hedonistic playground – of the rich, the famous and the criminally inclined – it used to be in the 1970s and ’80s.
“In its heyday, it really was a den of iniquity,” Cuban-American actor Yul Vazquez, 59, tells TV WEEK. “Now, it’s a shell of what it once was, but it’s still there.”
The adrenaline-fuelled eight-part series follows the manager of the Mutiny Hotel, Cuban exile Roman Compte (Danny Pino). He’s chosen an honest life, working to achieve the American Dream.
His brother Nestor Cabal (Yul), meanwhile, takes the dangerous shortcut of selling cocaine to a starving market, and makes huge profits in the process.
On separate paths, the siblings haven’t spoken for a long time – until Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) agent Zulio (Michael Chiklis) forces Roman to spy on his estranged brother so they can gather evidence against him.
Filled with sharp shootouts, racy dance scenes and of course, plenty of cocaine consumption, some of the more decadent scenes from the past ring true.
“There was a bathtub filled with Dom Pérignon [vintage Champagne] that really happened,” Yul reveals. “That was an expensive scene to film.”
With the history of the infamous hotel being a main part of the story, as is how deeply the cocaine trade affected Miami all those decades ago, who better to tell it than two Cuban-Americans from Miami who actually lived through it.
“There was a subculture within the community who trafficked it [cocaine], who made a lot of money from it, who invested in a lot of real estate and developed a lot of the city through it,” Danny, 50, explains.
“You could probably argue that much of Miami was built through it [drugs] – and turned it from a sleepy retirement vacation community to the thriving international metropolis it is today.
“Most Miamians understood that it [cocaine trafficking] was going on, because it was hard not to pay attention to the bodies dropping dead around you, to the skyscrapers going up, and the money being infused into the city – but the majority of us were just living our lives.”
Yul and Danny, who met on the set of police procedural crime drama Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, are happy to contribute to the growing library of crime dramas that keep us all addicted to our streaming platforms.
“To be able to add an authentic Cuban-American story into the world of dramatised criminality – and to add our thread to this quilt – there might be some substance and even importance in that,” Danny says.
Hotel Cocaine is streaming now on Stan.
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