A renewed Zorro adapted to the new times is the proposal of the new series about the popular vigilante that arrives tomorrow, Friday on Prime Video and next Sunday on La 1. Miguel Bernardeau is now in charge of embodying the legendary character Diego de la Vega almost two decades after Antonio Banderas did it in the cinema.
Bernardeau claims to have felt no pressure from that precedent. “When they gave me the scripts I did feel a certain respect, but then during filming I completely forgot and I didn’t feel that pressure,” the actor acknowledges. “I tried to do my best, make the character my own and give it my own interpretation.”
The series, created by Carlos Portela and produced by Secuoya Studios, tells how Diego de la Vega becomes the first non-indigenous Zorro and his first steps in training as a hero. Although in principle he has no intention of being the new Zorro, the injustices that the inhabitants of California suffered daily during the Mexican period (1821-1846) will gradually transform him. The will to unmask his father’s murderers and bring them to justice will finally lead him to don the iconic mask, although it will only be the beginning of the story.
“It is a different Zorro from the previous ones. Younger, he goes through a maturation process during the series and has a nice arc. He becomes a man suddenly, because he goes from a child to an adult, he understands that the past of him and his father is not as he believed, and many of his principles and his origins are scrambled. . And then he has to discover who he is,” the actor reveals that he gained great popularity from the Elite series.
Zorro, created in 1919 by Johnston McCulley, is one of the first fictional heroes of modern culture. In 1920 he was first brought to the screen with The Mark of Zorro, directed by Fred Niblo and starring Douglas Fairbanks. Since then it has been brought to film and television on different occasions and actors such as Tyrone Power and Alain Delon have worn the iconic mask. Banderas was the last to play the vigilante in The Mask of Zorro (1998) and The Legend of Zorro (2005).
The new series offers a renewed story adapted to the current era. “What they did from the script is a magnificent job. It is a necessary renewal of the characters, of the dynamics and also includes current things, such as more female characters, empowered and strong. Even though it is period, it has that modernization of many concepts that I think is missing in a series today,” explains the actor.
In this direction, the Mexican actress Renata Notni, who plays Zorro’s first love, Lolita Márquez, agrees with the actor that her character and that of others in the series are powerful women. The actress advances that viewers should not expect to find in her character “a woman waiting for her hero to rescue her” because “she is strong and independent, something that I love about this new version, which also shows female heroines as they are.” the character of Nah-Lin (Dalia Xiuhcoatl), an indigenous warrior who fights for her justice.”
The series, which consists of ten episodes, has been created by Carlos Portela and produced by Secuoya Studios. Javier Quintas, Jorge Saavedra and José Luis Alegría have been the directors of the episodes in which Emiliano Zurita, Elia Galera, Fele Martínez, Rodolfo Sancho, Joel Bosqued, Peter Vives and Luis Tosar, among others, have also participated as cast.
