Julio Torres Is His Own Thing

Julio Torres has never had a credit card. He doesn’t even have a credit score, he said, and doesn’t want one, even though trying to rent an apartment is hellish without it.

“I don’t want to do a symbolical gesture to bow down to the system so that I can have a home,” he said.

Torres’s new HBO show, “Fantasmas,” reflects his contempt for the bureaucracy of modern life. It is ostensibly about his character Julio’s mission to find a lost golden oyster earring, but he is stymied every step of the way by technology, systems and corporations. A form of ID called “proof of existence” is required to do pretty much anything, but Julio is as defiant as the man who plays him. “I’m different,” he says in the show. “I’m my own thing. I’m the exception. So no, I don’t need proof of existence.”

Torres, who also created, wrote and directed the series, described it as “free, roaming, surreal, but grounded in human emotion and very curious.” Julio’s quest frequently detours into absurd comedic vignettes featuring actors including Emma Stone, Steve Buscemi, Dylan O’Brien, Rosie Perez and Aidy Bryant.

On the whole, however, the show is a shade darker than previous work like “Problemista,” Torres’s feature directorial debut, from earlier this year, about a toy designer from El Salvador racing to renew his work visa before it expires. A former writer for “Saturday Night Live,” Torres released an HBO comedy special, “My Favorite Shapes,” in 2019. The same year, he cocreated and starred in the Spanglish comedy series “Los Espookys,” also on HBO.

In late May, Torres sat down in his office in the Greenpoint neighborhood of Brooklyn to discuss turning the tangible into the abstract and why representation onscreen must come from an honest place. These are edited excerpts from the conversation.