“He’s like Billy Elliott, but instead of dancing he just wants sex.” This is how Teresa Fernández-Valdés summarizes the new production, the creator of this fiction that addresses the figure of Nacho Vidal and who also delves into the porn industry that had its peak in the 90s thanks, in part, to the great success of the actor. ‘Nacho’, the new Atresplayer Premium series, which premieres today on the Atresmedia streaming platform, gets into the bowels of adult cinema, inspired by the life and international career of Vidal, but those responsible warn: « It’s not a biopic, it’s a cheeky, controversial and daring project.”
The new bet from Atresmedia, produced by Bambú Producciones, and whose premiere in Spain was initially scheduled for the Lionsgate+ platform, has its starting point in 1993 in the city of Valencia. Ignacio Jordá (Martiño Rivas in fiction), better known later by the stage name of Nacho Vidal, is a crazy and magnetic kid who decides to live his life to the limit. He a lover of his friends and fun. The black sheep of a very conventional and Catholic family, with a father who sees his son as having no future and lacking in talent.
The young man meets Sara Bernat (played by María de Nati), the first love of his life, and discovers that she has a gift: she wants to pursue a career in adult cinema and become an international star.
Rivas, who gets into the skin of the fictional porn actor, explains that he met his interpreter when he was 12 years old, through some photographs that also featured Belladonna and Sophie Evans. “It made a big impact on me,” he says. The interpreter was later able to read Vidal’s biography and discovered that “there were many lives in one.” «My challenge was how to imitate someone with so much weight and density. His voice is very vivid. He is someone who has traveled through quite inhospitable places », he indicates.
The protagonist acknowledges that in fiction they already knew that they had “sensitive material on their hands”, but he also offers an opinion on the porn industry. “The universe of adult entertainment carries a lot of stigma and there are a lot of people who don’t want to hear about it. I don’t believe in the ban either,” says Rivas, who advocates “not trying to bury or look the other way.” «The most adult position is to try to normalize it and shed light on that darkness and darkness. ‘Nacho’ was an opportunity to do this », he adds.
Filming difficulties
Rivas also reflected on questions from the media about the hypocrisy of a society that does not openly say that it consumes porn. «When we interact with a person who is dedicated to this, we adopt two positions. One, with a certain disdain and arrogance, because we believe we are morally superior; and another, in which we become 11-year-olds and make little jokes. It shows a certain immaturity », she replies.
Because the new Atresmedia production also aims to shed light on the lives and privacy of the people who work in this peculiar and controversial industry. With their concerns, their dreams, their conflicts. They do it, according to its creators, from “a sensitive and emotional perspective, without avoiding harshness or pain when necessary, given the particular world in which the protagonists of the series move and the moral limits of the society of the moment” .
Martiño Rivas in a scene with María de Nati, who gets into the skin of Sara, Nacho Vidal’s first love.
R. C.
It is a series, in short, inspired by the real lives of many successful actors who in the 90s led the birth of this new industry.
“All the actors pursue the American dream and it turns out that it had been fulfilled in Spain through porn and Nacho Vidal,” adds, for her part, the producer Teresa Fernández-Valdés, who clarifies that the fiction, made up of 8 episodes of 50 minutes long, it focuses on the professional part and leaves aside his most controversial episodes with drugs or the rite of the bufo toad, in which the actor was involved and which caused the death of a person after ingesting a toxin produced by this amphibian. “I’m interested in the porn star,” says Fernández-Valdés to avoid these two thorny issues.
The production, as revealed by Martiño Rivas, had impediments and inconveniences during the course of filming. “The Badalona City Council prohibited us from stepping on municipal territory three days before shooting,” reveals the interpreter, who also adds that finding a 7-year-old boy to give life to the porn actor “was a real challenge.” «Nacho Vidal is in the eye of the hurricane, you look at him with a magnifying glass and he raises many blisters. If we got to do a series of Jack the Ripper in London, they would have made it easier for us than to do one of Nacho in Spain ».