“If you don’t burn, why have you come?”

We were already in Culturamas talking with Mario de la Rosa about his novel Let this house burn with us inside, whose review you can also consult here. But Mario told us many more things that you still don’t know, such as, for example, some curiosities about his role as an actor.

We know that Let this house burn with us inside It is a title-metaphor through which de la Rosa refers to three fundamental pillars in his novel (and in life): love, sex and death. He told us that his main interest is to know what fuego It moves people and from there a large part of the novel was born. What is ours? Love, sex, death? What’s yours? Which of these roles have you had to play, for example?

Eva: Have you had to play any role, in your work as an actor, that is very similar to that of the characters you have described in your book?

Mario: I have had to play a lot of villains and a lot of authority, a question of voice, size, features… profile, basically. And this makes you document and learn a lot. My first novel, in fact, is totally detective. Let this house burn with us inside it’s more thriller and open the fan more. Also, I have given courses as a teacher to prepare police characters, since the police officer I play is not the same as, for example, in The Money Heist than the one I interpret in Terminator or en The old bridge. Being on patrol is not the same as being in office, homicide is not the same as drug trafficking. I have played a cop, yes, but what cop?

Of the characters in my novel, there are none that I have specifically had to play, but in the end, what I try to make my characters people because what matters to me is what happens to people. My characters are not puppets subject to a larger story, but rather they have their own story, we know where they come from, how they have mutated, how that barcode that each one has carried since their childhood with their traumas, their relationships has been configured. relatives… Logically, I also have an idea and those characters end up telling me a story, but they are not dolls or a cliché, they all have depth and are good and bad in some aspect.

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(E): How does it feel to have appeared in series with global impact?

(M): Do you know what happens? When the series hits internationally, you have already done half of the series, so you are not aware of what it can be. Many times I have done projects that promised to be the bomb and then have come to nothing and vice versa.

In The Money Heist Yes, there was a feeling that something special was being made because of what you saw being filmed, but you don’t know what the final product is going to be, because movies and series have three phases: what is written, what is interpreted and what is shot and edited.

I think that among us no one thought that The Money Heist was going to be a global showbut chen the series already has a global impact and you still have seasons left to film, you enjoy it, yes, but you also feel a responsibility to maintain the level.

Also You have to know what place you occupy in each project. When I went to shoot Terminator It was James Cameron’s third production in the saga, and there were 120 million dollars invested in it, but I was very aware that my character was going to be testimonial, that it was going to be subject to a scene told about the protagonist. And how do I live this? With great enthusiasm.

I started being an actor when I was 30, so Terminator I saw it when I was 15 and, suddenly, all those movies that I watched at home, with my sisters on the couch, I find myself working on them twenty years later. I flip, I jump, I celebrate. But then I get to set and I’m having breakfast with Schwarzenegger within walking distance and I behave as if I do that every day, professionally.

Photo caption: Maximum concentration

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(E): How do you define your own writing style? It seems to me that it is very mindfulness in the sense that it is very sensory because it anchors you to the present: sound, flavors, smells, touch…

(M): Well, look, I’m going to thank you, Eva, because you said that my style is sensory and it’s true… (laughs). Sensory in pursuit of wanting to tell things that happen to people, that is, if I put the set, the guy comes in and performs the action, but I won’t tell you how he felt, in the end I’m already putting together a puppet. But if I tell you what it smells like, what he sees, …, I put you in the place, which is what we actors do.

We work a lot on presence. In fact, there are love scenes in which I am proposing to a person (although very little happens to me, it happens more to me that he pulls a gun on you -laughs-) and sensorially I connect, I think and I begin to visualize, smell and feel on my palate. my favorite food to pour it on that person, to turn it into my favorite food, so what is shown on camera is that I really like that woman.

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(E): Do you think that writers are firefighters of their own fire?

(M): I can’t know what happens to other writers, but for me writing is a very therapeutic process. I’m not saying it’s therapy, but it is very therapeutic. By putting the words in black on white, they take on another dimension…

Once, talking to Carlos Bardem, told me that when someone wrote it was because they wanted to understand something. I left thinking he didn’t agree, but I stayed on the surface. Then I started researching what I had written myself and I realized that within my stories I told what happens to people, so there I do want to understand something. Yes it has to do with my own fire. I have met Bianca, Carlos, Álex… I have met those types of characters, even they have a lot of me.

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(E): A good reason to burn?

(M): Because if you don’t burn, you are dying in life. For me, burning is feeling and you have to feel, you have to be present, you have to let all the emotions go through.

If you don’t burn, why have you come?

«SIf you don’t burn, why have you come?».

Photo caption: Image taken from the stories of the author. Can you find the phrase?

Let me say goodbye to this very pleasant interview with the actor and writer Mario de la Rosa saying that his last phrase, the phrase with which we closed the meeting, has become a maxim for me. When I set out to do something, I remember Mario’s words and ask myself whether or not I’m going to burn. If not, then why do it? What sense does it have? And this fire that moves the author is the same that moves his work, Let this house burn with us insidea recommendation that we already left you on the website a long time ago and that we continue to reiterate.

> If you want to know more things, we also interviewed Mario de la Rosa in Culturamas.