Fran Perea has won over the years. He has also grown up as a professional in the cultural industry, as he is part of the company that owns the Luchana Theaters, which also manages the Quique San Francisco and Pavón theaters in Madrid. He puts money and effort into putting plays on stage (in fact, he created his own company, Feelgood Teatro) and gets an adrenaline rush when he takes the stage with the guitar.
Today he does it again: this Friday, April 21, he premieres the album Uno más uno son 20 coinciding with the premiere of the series Los Serrano and a tour throughout Spain. Despistaos, Ana Guerra, Ãlvaro Benito, La oreja de Van Gogh, Ginebras, Bely Besarte and Rayden collaborate on this album, in whose clip we see Verónica Sánchez, his girl in the series and ex-partner in real life. In conversation with La Vanguardia, the artist explains how the project came to be.
Participating in this project is the pianist VÃctor ElÃas, who played his brother Guille in fiction and is today a renowned musical director. He was the first to respond to FrancisquÃn Perea’s call, but not the only one: the seven members of the family that made up Belén Rueda and Antonio Resines intervene in the video clip for the main theme. If you followed the series back in the day, take this advice: you need to see their reunion.
“I remember those years very fondly. It was a crazy time because your life changes almost from one day to the next. When one day you decide to dedicate yourself to this, you are not able to imagine that your life will go through a phenomenon like Los Serrano. That supposes good things and others not so much, but I keep the positive of the story. Of course, I appreciate everything he has given me subsequently.
Fran had to assimilate that success made him a character in the tabloids. Mainly, because of his relationship in real life with Verónica Sánchez, who played his beloved Eva in the series: “Imagine being monitored 24 hours a day and not being able to live without someone in front of your house with a camera. They are very uncomfortable situations for which you are not prepared, even more so if you have not favored it or traded with your life. For a while it was a nuisance.”
The actor maintains an excellent relationship with his former colleagues, particularly with VÃctor ElÃas: “We did the play Fedra together, in which we were brothers again, and we have always been connected. VÃctor told me ‘Call me, call me, I want to be your pianist’, so in 2018 I called him to collaborate with me on the album Viaja la palabra and we produce it together now. There is a lot of affection between all of us, we intersect in life and we even have a chat, ‘The family’: we experience something unique together and we have a special bondâ€.
We asked her about the collaboration of Ana Guerra: not so much because she is a couple of VÃctor ElÃas but because when Los Serrano was broadcast she was older than watching Peppa Pig than a series in ‘prime time’: “A very curious thing happened with Ana. I went to some Dial awards in 2018 and a girl came to me asking for a photo “to update this one”: we were both, she was 10 years old and I was in my 20s, at a concert I gave in Tenerife. And she told me that the first song she learned to play the guitar was I’m going to think about you. How nice. Naturally, when we started the record, that song had to be for her.”
Fran Perea, disheveled hair and stocky from the weights, is very far from that young and somewhat nerdy Marcos Serrano who gave him fame. The Malaga-born actor, musician and producer is training for the second season of Kosta, the Paradise: in this series he plays a gruff policeman tasked with investigating a string of crimes on the Costa del Sol among the largest community of Finnish citizens outside of Finland.
Many do not know that Fran is also a theater manager. Why would someone advance his time, money and effort when he could live more comfortably just as an actor or singer? “Producing in the cultural sector is a risky sport because you invest a lot of money and nobody assures you that the public will come to see a play or that the tour will turn out well. But it is my sector and I want to invest in it; I do it with love and jobs are generatedâ€.
