There are not so many people who, like her, can boast of having rejected a guaranteed professional path in television to risk continuing with their vocation. Rocío Madrid, one of the best-known faces of the immortal Crónicas Marcianas, rejected irrefutable offers to return to fiction, to theater, to acting: that’s where she came from when Xavier Sardà pointed the most important finger on television in the 90s to her. take it with him and there he returned at the end of an unforgettable time. Next November 24, Rocío Madrid returns to Barcelona to premiere Lo Nuestros fue sung at the Aquitània Teatre, a musical comedy with Jaume Casals as her (bitter) better half based on the text El uno contra el otro by Ignasi Vidal and adapted by Miguel Molina .
Ours was sung, which has just been performed with great success in Madrid, it is about a couple who goes to court to get divorced but get stuck in the elevator. What happens then?
They do an analysis of everything their relationship has been and quite surreal things happen: we will see many ideas and reflections that we have about our partners but that we are unable to tell them. That lack of real communication and cowardice left my partner thinking that I don’t love him, thinking that the one next door is better. Insecurities that hurt us. Who tells you that after many years of marriage there is someone at work who starts to tease you? Instead of keeping it to yourself and trying to manage it, who tells you that if you tell your partner, they should not respond, ‘thank you for being so honest because it happened to me too or it’s happening to me too.’ But for this you have to be very brave and have a very solid relationship. Or the number of times we think funny, romantic and even cruel things about our partner that we are going to put voice to.
Do people feel identified?
Everyone tells us that they laugh until their stomach hurts but that we also leave them with a lot of conversation: all couples have to come see us because they are going to feel very identified, of any gender and sexual preference.
You meet Carlos Latre again after Crónicas. He does the voice of God, no less. What accent does he give it, handy, Andalusian, Galician…?
Many accents and all of them will sound familiar to you. I won’t tell you more! It’s like the final climax of the show when no one expects it and it’s very, very fun and very crazy. In the end you will understand why everything is so crazy.
When has it happened to you in your life that you have said “what we had was a given”?
More than once, at work and personally (laughs). Well look, when I started in Crónicas, Boris became obsessed with finding me a boyfriend. And I didn’t want a boyfriend because I had just left a seven-year-old and I was having a great time in Barcelona with Operación Triunfo, traveling, etc., but he was obsessed with finding me a boyfriend. And then you could say that Boris would end up finding me a boyfriend; He introduced me to some that didn’t fit me but what happened with Ángel and me worked: from that day to today.
Tell me what your best memory is from those years in the Martian Chronicles.
I think the best one was when Javier told me he was entering Crónicas. It was at a party at the end of the season for Gestmusic, the production company. At the end of dinner, with some skates on and riding a slide – those parties were a fantasy – in front of hundreds of people she began to speak: “Rocío Madrid, stand up.” And everything was shaking for me, what is she going to tell me? What will this man want? “I haven’t slept a wink all night thinking… I’m assuming you’re going to say yes, but what if you don’t and you screw me up for the entire season of what I have in mind? Nothing, if you want to be our new Martian.” It was like a movie, brutal.
And the most bitter?
The first months, when I went home crying, saying that I wasn’t coming back, I’m not up to it… They had been working together for five years and they had a rapport, speed and mental agility that took me two months to adapt to. I was very frustrated thinking that I was not going to be up to the task and that I was not going to be capable. And above all because I was always very concerned about wanting to do more than what was asked of me. Until someone told me, look, Rocío, don’t get obsessed, I mean, what we want from you is freshness, it’s fun, it’s more of your actress side. The first months were hard. One day, I remember in the bathroom of my house talking to Boris and telling him “that I’m not coming back, that I’m not going, that I don’t care about anything, that I’m not going, that I can’t handle this, that it’s crazy”, of the such great pressure that was experienced at certain moments there on set.
Does collaborating on a program with so much social impact, not just the media, open or close doors? The visibility is enviable but the cliché can be inexorable.
It then depends on where you want to guide your career. When I joined Crónicas, my career was as an actress because I came from doing series and theater, but not as a presenter except for Canal OT and a local TV in Malaga. I wanted to redirect myself towards what really makes me happy, which is fiction and theater. At the end of the program, the same network offered me a job: to be with Ana Rosa, to present Here there is a tomato on Carmen Alcayde’s vacation… But it was not the path I wanted to take. My representative wanted to kill me on many occasions but I was very stubborn in that, as I still am: I have a very clear line of work that has nothing to do with or goes hand in hand with popularity and the media thing, not even with economic.
What happened?
I want to work to be happy and earn a living, so it was difficult for me to find a place in the world of theater and musical theater. Being Rocío Madrid at that time, coming from the highest rated program, I queued for miles to do my castings as a private soldier. Now the panorama has changed but at that time it was very pigeonholed and very defined: you have to put a label on yourself, you are an actress or you are a singer or presenter, because you can do everything, if not, you are interfering. It was a very difficult time for me to return to my work where I wanted.
Added to that if you are not in a prime time program on a national network, it seems that the earth has swallowed you, when there are many professionals succeeding in regional shows, in the theater, on tour…
That’s how it is. Because of my age and the projects I am developing in Malaga, I cannot be in a big musical or another big project that involves being in Madrid from Tuesday to Sunday, without practically having a life. I prefer to take on quality but more controllable projects, small ones, so to speak. I already have 45 tacos, I don’t feel like being in a theater from Tuesday to Sunday without having a life. I already did that and it’s very good, but now I prefer little gems like this that we are going to bring to Barcelona, ??which is wonderful.
Furthermore, you have known how to diversify. I think you have some unusual business going on.
A year and a half ago I planted two thousand pitaya plants, the dragon fruit, which is like a fuchsia-colored dragon egg. Well, I have created the Pitaya La Mística brand, and I am full of it, plus a ‘glamping’ that I am also developing on that property I have in Malaga facing the sea.
You present, you act, you sing, you dance… Tell me something that you’re really bad at.
Drawing, I’m a fucking disaster, but a disaster. In other words, I don’t even know how to draw a proper puppy: a five-year-old child draws better than me. I don’t know why, it’s like a problem in the brain when it comes to drawing.
