Rabidly topical, and with a touch of black humor, the award-winning fiction ‘Vota Juan’ arrives on Cuatro (this Wednesday night, double episode at 10:50 p.m.), a comedy that premiered on the TNT channel in 2019 and that delves into a particular and nondescript Minister of Agriculture (Javier Cámara), whose ambition leads him to run in his party’s primaries to run for the Presidency of the Government.
Along with the politician will be his inseparable communication director, Macarena Lombardo, played by actress María Pujalte (A Coruña, 56 years old). “They are losers and people who are very embarrassing,” says the interpreter, who is also preparing two new special episodes of the incombustible ‘Los misterios de Laura’ for TVE.
-Did you expect this second life of ‘Vota a Juan’ in Cuatro?
-Last year I had the feeling that this series was totally expanding. The first season premiered on the TNT network; then the second was recorded, went to HBO Max and had its viewers. But in 2022, with the third season, a lot of good things happened to the series that it hadn’t had before. It was a wonderful year. For it to be released now on Cuatro is to reap the harvest of an idea well conceived and written by Diego San José. The fruits are being reaped and everything that is going to happen now is very beautiful.
-Is the general public ready to see a series like this?
-Now everything has changed so much… I have the feeling that the vast majority of us are platform viewers; many more people watch series that are very different from each other, that have other tones, formats and themes. The variety in fiction is greatly expanded and the public gets used to that. Before, when there were only three or four general television channels, they told you that certain products were not going to work, but I think that is more diluted now. Fortunately, we viewers have broadened the spectrum of what may interest us. ‘Vota Juan’ has very good reviews and is accepted by the public. I don’t see why viewers of Cuatro won’t like it.
the new tv
“I have the feeling that the vast majority of us are platform viewers”
-How would you describe Macarena Lombardo, your character in the comedy?
– Let’s say it’s Juan’s right hand. It is the network of this political populist, who whenever he falls and is going to crash, because Macarena is under there. She is enduring it and it is something that she has her reason for, which will be discovered in the series. She never leaves him and always tries to help him. In a way, both are made of the same paste.
-Despite everything, they are characters who like each other.
-They are losers, people who are very embarrassing. They do very ugly things, they have few scruples and a rather seedy ambition. They want to succeed in politics and I think that the field in which they work is very well chosen to explain this mediocre absurdity of the human being that is choosing politics. You see them like this and you think: ‘what a horror of people!’. But the real sharks are on top and then you empathize with them, because they are two losers who are not going anywhere. And let’s not forget that this is a comedy and that they talk to you about these people in that tone, it relaxes you. If they tell you seriously, you would hate them.
-Did you also laugh while you were discovering and reading the scripts?
-When we read the scripts for the first season for the first time, we couldn’t believe what we were reading. Comedy must be done very seriously, but of course, we faced the scenes with great seriousness, but there were moments when we couldn’t look at each other’s faces because we couldn’t stop laughing. Humor is a very powerful weapon to be able to tell and say barbaric things, and make the public laugh. But we are also public and it is inevitable not to laugh.
‘The mysteries of Laura’
«It is a series with a very long journey with which we could have done more chapters»
-What can you anticipate about the return of ‘Los misterios de Laura’ to La 1?
-We are going to record the two special episodes that TVE has decided to commission after the last one we did in 2021. It is wonderful and we are very happy in the team. It is a series that began in 2009 and it is incredible how the character of Laura Lebrel has reached people.
– Do you still notice the affection of the people with this fiction?
-Every year they ask me about ‘The mysteries of Laura’, that they see the chapters in Clan or want to know when she will return. This shows that it is a series with a very long journey with which we could have made more chapters than what Televisión Española wanted. It’s a classic fiction, with the elements of a series of a lifetime, and it’s very nice to see that people still follow you.