Javier Calvo (Murcia, 1991) and Javier Ambrossi (Madrid, 1984) are at a key moment in their careers with The Messiah: they have created their most naturalistic and distressing fiction, one about traumatic childhoods and a monstrous mother who claims to speak with God, and critics have embraced the proposal. They have developed this unequivocally authorial facet while establishing themselves as one of the most popular sentimental and creative couples on the Spanish scene (they have been together since 2010) as judges on television formats such as Mask Singer and Drag Race. But seeing their new creation on Movistar Plus means considering that there has to be a lot of themselves in the images, just as they were present in Veneno and Paquita Salas. Where, if not, can a story so intimate, so disturbing, so good come from?
“There are many connections with us,” Ambrossi acknowledges on the terrace of a hotel on Rambla de Catalunya, where they have stayed for the premiere at the Serielizados Fest. The first, in her case, is related to Macarena García, her sister, winner of the Goya for Snow White, who precisely stars in the series.
“Why is there something that separates me and my sister? She always wants to be very close to me and it’s hard for me to be with her because I love her so much,” he explains, “and I’ve ended up identifying that she knows me so much (and knows where I come from and the things we’ve experienced) that, “When we look at each other, there is something that jumps out.” Irene and Enric, from a different childhood, symbolize this idea: “that what we have experienced separates us” to bury a Manichean and simplistic version of brotherhood.
His relationship with religion is another of the emotional knots that he has wanted to address through fiction because of having studied in an Opus Dei school: “I have eaten potatoes that were made fun of at school, that the teachers since their pulpit said that I was disgusting, that being a faggot is disgusting.” “I have had to eat my desires, cry and vomit because I have not been able to explore them more than toxically in a bathroom, on a drunk night, because I was not able to explore my sexuality naturally in adolescence because I had been made to believe that it was shameful.” “, the Mint.
In The Messiah, parents are shown locking their daughters in a farmhouse. They have no contact with the outside world and, when they have the opportunity to watch Singin’ in the Rain on a television, their lives gain some light. “As an LGBT teenager, you live in mental confinement, and in La Mesías we pay tribute to all those films and songs that open a window for you and show you that the world is something more than what you are experiencing: that window that we need to feel that we are not drowning. ”Calvo shares.
The sincerity in their words is compensated by the positive energy that both exhibit while they provide vital reflections that, as the authors they are, they refuse to silence or simplify: their objective as storytellers, as evokers of realities, is to lead those who reflect. They lend them their time.
But, even recognizing Ambrossi those truths that still weigh on him (“to this day I still feel separated from my family: it is difficult for me to talk about my life or what I feel with them”), they also show the strength that, because of adversities, so many people in the gay community have had to develop.
They create what they want. They worked on Operación Triunfo as teachers despite Calvo’s initial fears that they would not be taken into account in the Goya awards for The Call for being linked to reality television: “And we did it and it was one of the most beautiful experiences of my life.” . Some time later, he also expressed what he had learned at Noemí Galera’s academy: “Thanks to OT I had to learn to be a teacher and this has helped us with the trans actresses in Veneno who had never worked and in La Mesías with the girl actresses.” ”.
They participate in Drag Race even though, as the influential RuPaul warned them, the gay public can be especially hurtful to the jury because of their evaluations. And, while they conceived an intimate, total authorial work that is a dramatic dissertation, they danced with Melanie B in Mask Singer.
“What I refuse is not to live experiences because of what people may think because what people think today they may not think tomorrow and the one who has been left without the experience is me,” explains Calvo, who at the same time recognizes that suffers more and more from public exposure.
But, with their personal attitude, a solid and expanding artistic identity and an ability to direct actors until they give them their best performances, the Javis, like their works, demolish prejudices: being introspective authors is not incompatible with being celebrities who applaud the popular culture. “Do you think that we, who have suffered bullying, are going to guide ourselves in life in case we are bullied?” they ask. A life lesson.
