“I do not believe you!” Pedro Alonso (Vigo, 1971) said in surprise when the journalist told him that this was their second meeting, many years after the interview at the beginning of the two meetings. The reason was to talk about the artist’s first film, Alma Gitana (1996). “I was just starting out, and I had just spent two years with La Fura dels Baus, which was my first experience in this profession. We can congratulate ourselves for being alive,” he said, laughing. After that debut with a leading role came irregularities, and a lack of opportunities to the point of flirting with resignation. It wouldn’t be until 2008 when the Galician series “Pare Casares”, first, and “Gran Hotel” (2011), made him regain his confidence in his craft.
Three decades later, and after some ups and downs in the business, the Galician actor continues to benefit from the radical change in life, both professional and personal, that came with the global phenomenon “La Casa de Papel”. In the spin-off film that Netflix will premiere on December 29, and named after his character “Berlin,” Alonso continues to lead a gang of thieves, but in a time-traveling prologue, our man is still not the sociopath we knew him to be. In the new series, he leads a group of characters ready to rob a Parisian gambling house that is protecting (or trying to protect) the most valuable jewelry collection of all time. With a much lighter and more sophisticated tone, “Berlin” will arrive on the platform ready to repeat not-so-past successes.
How about Pedro Alonso from Ánima gitana compared to what’s in front of me?
Well, a lot and nothing. When I came back to Vigo and ran into people I knew, friends from high school, and they told me I was the same… Absolutely not! I increasingly have the impression that life is many lifetimes. I have changed in many things, especially with regard to energy balance and attention. I had something like anxiety, and it took me years to get my focus right, because I wasn’t finishing anything. But it is true, and I say this carefully, that in recent years I feel that my tools have become more ready, and I have come to terms with communication on all fronts: I write for the press, I finish the post. Producing a documentary series that I wrote, and I got to draw…and some things feed into others. I’ve come to terms with the impulse I had in the beginning, with that curiosity coming from a more balanced place.
This desire to eat the world is typical for young people…
Yes. I was a goat. He’ll be the leader, you see… [riu].
Obviously there will come a moment when the phenomenon “La Casa de Papel” will change your life. Perhaps it would be better if this happened to you in your forties or in your twenties, as it happened to some of your colleagues…
I write a lot of nonfiction and I’ve written everything, and there are real atom bombs here. And I’ve come to the conclusion that it’s not because you’re younger that they’ll handle it worse, and it’s not because you’re more well-rounded that they’ll do worse. Because the syndromes triggered by this phenomenon… some of which I have seen have brought me some amazing surprises. Talking about my mental health as a person in question has its risks, but it is true that this came to me at a time in my life when I was working hard. I immediately felt that I should distance myself, and in short, I was clear that he wanted to get to know me as soon as this phenomenon occurred. And I had time to see that the speed is brutal: if you think you are what they say, you will die. If you make decisions because you think you can take certain things for granted, you will definitely regret it. Then I prioritized slowing down, my personal growth, and I don’t deny that it’s a test, it can be a powerful test, but it’s also an opportunity. I took this opportunity to produce a documentary series, disappeared for a while, said “no” to many things, wrote a book, published in the press… I used this stability to gain access to talent and people, and to continue developing my own research.
If you think you are what they say, you will die
You had to say no coming from a long career where you probably had to say yes to too many things. And among these “no’s,” what makes us fall on our asses?
Look, I’ve already committed to making the documentary. And my legs trembled, never speak to me again, when they showed me something that was obscene! And then I gave up on the documentary, because it took me another year to make it. But then, in the research process that I was explaining to you, I believe that if you find your speed, everything happens because it has to happen. Then I try to stay more and more connected to my own rhythm and be more open to reading the signals. I feel more comfortable about it too. I don’t want to do everything, be the person who does most of everything. I just want to go on my way. Life has given me this, and I take it like a wave, and I continue to carefully surf it on all fronts, but it does not represent my entire life, not by a long shot. But yeah, I’ve had worse times of course.
Before “La Casa de Papel” I went through complicated times. Have you thought about retiring?
Yes, I remember in my 30s, when I started meditating, I had an absolute “reset” moment. The programs I had were no longer good for me, and did not lead me to a good place. I wasn’t feeling well. I felt like the train had passed me, and I was penniless, and with a 4-year-old daughter… I had a hard time. But then I saw it, who doesn’t? In the world of communications, whatever your specialty, who hasn’t had a Guadiana moment? Suddenly everything falls apart, and you can’t take anything for granted… This is an industry that can be very annoying at times, and wonderful at other times.
Let’s go to Berlin. It has nothing to do with “La Casa de Papel”, except with your personality…
Yes, it’s something else. Lighter and happier. It’s an exercise in great style because we couldn’t change the nature of the character, but we’re clearly in a different key, closer to a romantic comedy. You have to believe the convention and connect with the truth. The character suddenly enters separate moments of comedy, and in the same scene there are narrative shifts in which it is not easy to control the brakes. Another reason to be grateful, because every time I touched a key with the character, it was taken out in the next cycle: it began to get dark, then it died, and I lost the present of the event that was for me dramatic. In those flashbacks. Not only is he still alive in this introduction, but now we’re stealing romantic myths from the French, so I no longer take anything for granted, I believe everything. Berlin is the character of the characters. I imagine him entering Hamlet and swallowing him. He’s a gift then, and if we’re still genre-bending stylistically, as an actor he’s fantastic. What he had at some point of grief, he ended up making up for. Did you know that Netflix is now considering a Berlin Childhood movie and I should go for it? Can you imagine [rialles]
Do you think “Berlin” can repeat the success of the original series?
My tidbit, especially when we started looking for tone in the series, was that the change didn’t leave the character flesh or fish. He crafts this new setting, this development really well, and the character just keeps rocking. I feel like a magic stroke has appeared again, I feel very calm. I’m already competing with the aftermath of “La Casa de Papel”… I remember when Messi was put up to compete with Messi. Eight or ten years ago they said he was dead, but he showed that it is possible to live more than one life and reinvented himself as a player. I don’t know what’s going to happen, it’s not up to me, but I feel like I solidified my commitment to the character, and I think it was worth it and we honored the shot. The ambience is good.
I feel like I’ve solidified my commitment to the character; The ambience is good
Going back to the “La Casa de Papel” phenomenon, has anything Martian happened to you in a faraway country?
Well, Erdogan’s culture minister hounded me on a trip to Turkey to present my book, and wanted me to meet them at Galata Tower. But what is this? What is happening? And I filmed it, because we were there doing tests for the documentary, which is a Gestapo-like film. It was like I was on a hidden camera, and I had so many experiences.
You’ve mentioned your documentary to us several times. Tell us about this…
I’ve always loved non-fiction. In literature, it’s more normalized, but the documentary is a non-fictional journey about my relationship with my ancestral medicines, which I’ve always kept very intimate, even to people I’m close to. So it’s a version of the voyage of Ulysses, but through Mexico and to give clues to what I understand as this kind of ancestral knowledge. I don’t mean to talk about the papacy or say that it is a panacea for anything, but my contribution is to focus on this mental thing that makes people not sleep at night. People do not sleep because we are completely disconnected from the body, and I have found something in meditation, in painting or in shamanism, which is a very rich world, with its shadows, its quarrels and its charlatans. I also speak from myself. It’s a big exercise in exposure, because I’m partying in front of the camera, but either I was doing it honestly or why? It’s already been shot and edited, we’re in post-production, and now I’m looking at how to distribute this work. I’m over my dizziness but I’m glad I took the plunge.
You were also talking about the book “El libro de Filippo” that you presented in Turkey, which talks about returning to past lives… another controversial thing.
We live in a culture, the Western culture, that since the Enlightenment has looked down upon everything that is not an error of experience or an error of experience. There are people who find it strange that someone is meditating, or that you go with the Indians into the forest to celebrate a millennium ritual. However, I also like the academic argument and walk side by side with a neurologist… There are 20 universities around the world that study the effective principles of substances like this. If you start reading, you will discover that Socrates and Plato practiced vision, which lasted for twelve centuries. Where is this information? Today it was said that Plato equated reason, but it turns out that he was esoteric. Knowledge has been liberated through our culture, many times from libraries. I do my own research, and there will be people who think it’s crazy, so I try to inform myself, document myself, beyond “flower power” or “new age.” There are very contradictory studies, and this is a topic that interests me. What I do not doubt is that there are many people who do not rest at night, because their heads do not stop. There’s a serious mental health issue, and the kitchen drawers are full of medications. I went through the forest with a man with a machete cutting plants: this is anti-cancer, this is for rheumatism… There is a kind of knowledge, like grandmothers, that appeals to me. After all, it’s true that the visual part is nice, but it’s not what interests me most about all this. I’m interested in understanding each other, being more balanced and less separated…
There’s a serious mental health issue, and the kitchen drawers are full of medications
Very useful for managing a phenomenon like the one I experienced.
Yes, what people tell you is one thing, but what happens is another thing. If I learn to read it myself, my life may grow healthy. Not talking to anyone, just so I don’t lose my ass chasing a carrot with complete dissatisfaction. I read something the other day… It’s one thing to live well and another to live better. I want to live well, and this is quite an art.
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