Pablo Rivero: “Parents can also make ‘bullying’ to defend the children” | Culture

We were at noon in one of those cuquis bars in the Malasaña neighborhood of Madrid (in which he has lived many years, but that he no longer frequents so much) without falling into that, at that time he would be crowded and it would be impossible to maintain a discreet conversation. So we go and, looking for a quieter place, we give with another place, huge and almost empty that, before, explains to me, was a leisure center of older people and now welcomes a restaurant of those organic and sustainable ones in which there are no tail soft drinks, but there is a target tap tap allegedly natural. Pure recent history, we agree both. Closely, Pablo Rivero, Antonio’s eldest son and Mercedes in the series Tell me how it happened, It is an extremely friendly and cautious guy who, like his character, who was a journalist, and himself, a graduate in audiovisual communication, is after the street.

Write a book a year, it opens a movie and is on tour with a play. Does life give you?

It gives me. I feel very privileged to be able to do it: I value it and enjoy it. I had a turning point when I was a father, seven years ago: before I was very nocturnal and did not take advantage of the mornings. I’ve spent years sleeping five hours. Now I get up very soon and write. As I have left the exercise, now I have time to everything: even to have leisure with my family.

He says he has left the exercise as who leaves a vice.

Well, now I’m taking it back, because I think the extremes are not good. But if. I had a stage where I was doing a lot, I got very strong and I entered that dynamic that you never like. Now I swim a lot, but not as something associated with the image, but to be healthy and with energy.

Did it fall into the vigorexia?

Well, a little yes. I had a stage in which, in addition, they asked me in the filming. In different jobs I had to lose weight, gain weight, I changed weight in a short time and entered a bit in that obsession of physical perfection. The boys also write sequences out of the shower and evaluate us and score us, sometimes without the character needing it. In recent years of Tell me He was a father: with his belly and such that he then had it, but, when doing other things, I had to get in tune.

No male actor had told me before.

Well, they lie, or shut up. Now I don’t feel that pressure because I am another age (45 years) but, in certain stages, you compete for a series of characters and papers in which they look at you with magnifying glass. You look at how fiction is on the platforms and see how the main actors are. It is not all the handsome stereotype, but see what bodies they have. If the actor is good and also very good sells more, and in the end it is any image. The terrible thing is that many times it is all sex, although we want to play the opposite. In the end, producers have to fall in love to choose you, and, not in all projects, but there is something implicit in which, if you are good, you have more options.

Veteran actor and writer with respectable sales. How do you get?

Well, I’m lucky that my two jobs, act and write, are my two dreams of childhood. My games were inventing stories, interpreting and developing them. As a writer, I have a thousand stories in the bedroom and I don’t want to die without counting them.

Is there the narrator pulse of the journalist who wanted to be?

The funny thing is that I started journalism and then I went to audiovisual communication because I wanted to flee from reality. I hated teletypes, news, politics, wars. And, in addition, I did not like to be in front of the camera if it was not with a character. So I left milk, but my mother told me to endure, that everything is useful; And, in the end, that has helped me to know what I want to tell, how, for which, for whom. The journalistic techniques in both trades serve me. As an actor, I have no problem being disciplined and in being used by the directors for what they want to tell. But, with the books, I am the owner of what I tell. And I enjoy that very much.

His books go from realistic terror. In The flock Talk about a crime in a school. Not anything invents?

Reality is much more terrifying than spirits or fiction stories gore. Normally, when the most rugged events happen, the culprit is around. The most terrifying thing is that the wolf can be in the flock, camouflaged and living with the sheep. The wolf can be yourself, or your child, and that you or your child do not know. That seems very disturbing. I am fascinated that, when a crime happens, nobody knew anything. Of course, it was known, or not, and that is what I try to decipher in my novels.

Is hell in the houses?

Of course; If not, they would not happen according to what things. Once, documented for a book, a friend told me that her boyfriend, who worked in a minors reform center, told her the case of a 14 -year -old boy who was internal to violate her sister and that, when she had visits to Vis, the parents themselves took her to the sister. That is hell.

His book comes out shortly after Badajoz minors crime who killed his caregiver and at the time the series triumphs Adolescence About a minor murderer. Chance or work?

Well, I carry it writing a year ago. But, yes, I suppose that they attract my attention that I observe around, that they are in the air, or that they pass me and I cannot remove myself from my head. In this case, it was a personal episode in the Chat of Parents of the College that made me think that, perhaps, we overcover our children too much.

His son is seven years old. What kind of father are you: helicopter, drone, hybrid?

I try to be a very present father, I am Megaduro With screens and networks: zero mobiles, zero iPads, everything that can be done with the hand, does it, will have time for the rest. But neither my son nor I live isolated, and of course we can have contradictions. In the books I like to put on, and put the reader, in front of the mirror. Although it is a black novel and I take things to the extreme, recess situations in which I can also look reflected, what happens is that recognizing it is hard. I do not give lessons to anyone, nor do I issue sentences, but I know about some friends who have not felt good to read according to what things.

Among its parents in Tell me how it happened And the parents of now is there a gap or an abyss?

There is a concept that terrifies me and that is, at the time of Tell me The parents worried what time you got home because they didn’t know what you were doing and who you got out of. Now, the problem is that the enemy is at home, because your child can be in his room and can be chatting with a pedophile, or they can be doing bullyngor harassing others.

But were not the bad children of others always?

I also treat that in the book. As a society we rarely get in that case. We are not empathic: we sentence and judge. But there are also abusive parents and parents of guilty children. I was interested in talking about bullying Of the elderly: that parents can make to teachers, among us, or the children of others when they touch ours a hair. Parents also do bullying To defend children.

Sometimes it seems that new parents believe or eva. Is it your case?

I think it’s difficult and inevitable. In the book I speak of a grandmother whose daughter tells her that she is very overwhelmed with the upbringing and education of her only daughter, and she replies that I grew up to three and would not have done so badly. I think that the parents of now can be overprotectors, and also because we are enforced: networks, children’s educators, psychologists. That excess can have to do with that overinformation of wanting to do things so well that in the end we are trying to be the parents who have imposed us that we are: all the opposite of what we have lived, trying to live in a utopia. And, man, it never hurts to be attentive, because, luckily, things change and there are recurring themes, such as mental or physical health, to take away that pressure from the kids, but the danger of spending is creating five -year -old tyrants.

In 2020 he published a photo making his family model visible: a couple of men with a child. Have you suffered bullying Therefore?

Do you know what happens? I hate talking about this issue. I have neither had or left any closet because I have always made my life with all honesty and naturalness, and I do not talk about it, just as I do not talk about my parents, or my uncles, or my dogs, or my friends. I don’t have to justify anyone. I do things the best I can and I have not done anything illegal. But yes, what you ask: some co -worker stopped talking to me, I understand that each one has their opinion.

We have talked a lot about writing, but do you have mono of actor?

The truth is that. But I have learned to be fair to myself. We are always complaining. There are seasons in which I have thought I was not in the place that corresponded to me and that I was very stopped, but I have been fortunate, I have saved and, in addition, I have another profession, because literature is also my trade. And someone choosing my book still looks like a miracle.

.