2023-11-19 11:36:02
At only 26 years old, he took the risk of bringing to Spain the largest musical that had been organized to date and which, in the midst of Franco’s dictatorship, managed to revolutionize the country despite the pressures of the retrograde environment to stop the premiere. The actor Alejandro Jato (Vigo, 29 years old) plays a very young Camilo Sesto in the fiction ‘Camilo Superstar’, the new bet from atresplayer (Atresmedia’s streaming platform) that premieres today the first of the four chapters, where It tells how the singer from Alcoy revolutionized the musical panorama of the 70s with ‘Jesus Christ Superstar’.
-What did you think when you were selected to play Camilo Sesto?
-I was very excited and I shared it with my people, but I also had the feeling that, after they chose me, it was time to start working on the character. I went from euphoria to thinking how I’m going to do it.
-How has the preparation of such an important character for Spanish music been?
-It is true that working with enthusiasm helps me in what I am doing and sometimes social life comes to a standstill a bit. In this case, it was more than normal because this interpretation asked for it and needed it. I got into books and movies that inspired me a lot. I spent more than two months preparing until we started filming. It was a lot of script study, the context and the story of his life. We had to try to find out who was behind the image that Camilo projected with the press and his followers.
-In this documentation work, have you managed to discover who Camilo Sesto really was?
-I saw it as a puzzle. The archival things that I had already seen about him, the interviews and two books, such as the authorized biography titled ‘My Last Song’, and another that he wrote. This last biography did begin to give me more knowledge of what he was like. And there is a very nice thing in that book that says that if you want to know Camilo Blanes you have to know the songs of Camilo Sesto. You complete the enigma that he had between the archive that exists and your imagination. Among all that, I have tried to imagine things that are real parts and others that I have imagined were.
-What has been the most difficult for you to interpret?
-Everything in general, but above all try not to judge the character. I ran the risk of becoming infected with the idea that society now has of Camilo and his ultimate image, especially since the 1980s. We have focused on his beginnings in music, in the 1970s, and discovering what he was like at the time. 26 years old, he was a kid with a different innocence, toughness and vision of life.
-Has your image of the artist changed?
-In general, I believe the press and society have been very unfair to certain figures. It also happened with Sara Montiel because she reduced her image to a caricature. It is time to do a little justice and see the greatness of an artist like Camilo, who not only dedicated his life to art but also changed the history of a country through his music. It’s nice because people are going to discover a stage that they didn’t know about a Hispanic American singer who was the most important.
-The fiction focuses on how Camilo brought ‘Jesus Christ Superstar’ to Spain. Why was this musical so important to him?
-It was something that accompanied him the rest of his life and that he continued to talk about until his last interviews. He completely changed the course of his life and his musical career. It was a very great act of bravery and freedom, which gave him the power to show that he could do whatever he wanted. There is something very important that I always highlight: it is music and culture that shape a country in those years. That’s why I think ‘Jesus Christ Superstar’ was so historic.
-Has the family been satisfied with the series?
-His ex-wife Lourdes Ornellas has been very affectionate and close. She has helped us a lot. She always gave me a lot of support and she told me that she got very excited when she saw the series. She liked it because she saw in this fiction a little piece of her life.
#press #society #unfair #Camilo #Sesto