For the past few episodes of Midnight, Texas, half of the show’s Romeo and Romeo storyline has been missing. Why did Bernardo Saracino’s Chuy Strong leave town? And is he a supernatural being?
“Romeo and Romeo,” said Saracino, who plays the husband of fallen angel Joe, not answering my questions. “I love that analogy. I think I’m going to steal it.”
Saracino hails from Atrisco, NM, a small town outside of Albuquerque, where “Midnight, Texas” films. He and I chatted briefly in January while standing in the Home Away restaurant—well, the restaurant set.
That’s where I first asked him what secret Chuy keeps in the show’s first season.
“Everybody’s hiding from something more internal than external,” he said. “I think that’s kind of the human condition.”
So he’s human?
“Chuy’s very Zen and he meditates a lot and he spends a lot of time focusing on love, focusing on goodness,” he said. “The nature of Chuy’s character is that he’s forced to stay grounded simply by who he is and his past experiences. Joe can lose his cool much more easily than Chuy can.
“But Chuy has to force himself to be grounded.”
Ahh, a clue—finally!
Since that conversation, the writers have dropped more clues about Chuy and about his relationship with Joe, who is played by Jason Lewis.
Before Chuy left, he dropped another tantalizing hint when he told Joe he was worried about the tearing of the veil between hell and earth. “What if I can’t fight it?” he asked his hubby.
Even before that, in Episode 2, Chuy found a feather in the laundry and chastised Joe for flying and thus, potentially exposing that he is an angel. (It’s a good thing Chuy left town by the time Joe used his angel light to save Creek in last week’s episode.)
They’re out and proud—as a gay couple. So what is it that Chuy wants to hide about the two of them?
“They aren’t a couple that has suited the norm and shouldn’t be together,” Saracino said during a phone call last week. He went on to give a little bit of their millennia-long love affair.
“Both Joe and Chuy left their comfort zones for love. They found love in one another, which is beautiful,” he said. “They went through a lot to get to that point.”
I have a theory about the two of them, but my conversation with Saracino might be too spoliery. So come back after “Angel Heart,” the Sept. 4 episode, to hear more about the most loving relationship on “Midnight, Texas.”
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