Leonor Watling and Paco León, love in times of Covid

When someone writes a chronicle of this cold dark age in a few years, they will have to talk about the lights that have helped us endure it.

Among them, love.

Even that has suffered its mishaps.

But he has adapted to the circumstances.

"Life!

Life prevails, life imposes itself and seeks its ways for us to work, fuck or fall in love ”, says Paco León.

He tells it - better, he proclaims it - with the conviction of someone who does not speak from hearsay, but from experience.

With a faith and confidence in the capabilities of the species, allied with his own art not only for survival, as the actor assures, but to devour every gulp of oxygen in any breach.

In fact, survival is a word that falls short.

Insufficient in its limited size.

Paco León firmly believes that this goes beyond mere advantage or simple resignation to the fact of survival.

Living is what you want.

Not survive.

It is also what you see and observe around you.

Life hungrier than a year ago.

Life with that impetus that gives you the fact of facing death every day.

Something similar happens to Leonor Watling.

"Although I am different, I take it more inward," he says.

But that does not stop him from feeling happy about the dream come true of working together: an aspiration they shared since years ago they got together for an advertisement.

"Let's see if one day ...", they said to each other when they met again there.

And that day came.

And there were two.

The first, when Félix Viscarret offered them to work together in

Desde la sombra

, his adaptation of the novel by Juan José Millás, which has just been shot in Navarra, and another, the second, when Paolo Vasile, CEO of Mediaset, and Aitor Gabilondo , head of Alea Media —producer and screenwriter, creator of

Patria

or

El Príncipe—

, involved them in

Besos al aire

, the first miniseries shot in Spain with the theme of the pandemic, which takes place in a hospital.

The latter will premiere on March 2 on Star, within the Disney + platform.

Later - with a date not yet closed - it will be broadcast open within Telecinco.

In fact, it is a series in which Vasile himself has been very involved.

It was he who personally asked Paco León to interpret it.

"He told me with real emotion," says the actor.

“He wanted to pay tribute to that health sector that has given so much for us and it seemed to him that I could play the leading role.

It finally settled.

They made everything so easy for me… ”.

Javi, his character, is an orderly who helps patients pass the drink through messages in which he mixes the personal circumstances of each one with cinephilia.

Dr. Cabanas (Leonor Watling), mired in the dynamics of saving lives, doesn't even see it.

But she does hear him glancing at him one day addressing the sick, mixing arguments that she also controls.

From there… Romantic comedy.

Kisses in the air

... That is, love in times of covid.

It will not be the definitive series on the subject, but it is the first.

And both Vasile and Aitor Gabilondo have wanted to focus on it with laughter and tears without avoiding the tragedy.

They needed two actors with a hook for this choral work with stories intertwined in

Love Actually

, written by Darío Madrona and directed by Iñaki Mercero, with a cast that also includes María León, Mariam Hernández, David Castillo, Nuria Herrero, Nancho Novo or Grace Olayo.

The Italian convinced León and Gabilondo tempted Watling, whom he had turned into a villain with a role in

Living Without Permission.

When Watling got the proposal she wanted to be cautious in her approach to the character.

He was concerned with transmitting a coldness that should not be confused with reluctance, but with rigor.

His doctor Cabanas initially lacks empathy with the sick, unlike the character of Paco León.

And he asks for your help to solve it.

“I have infinite respect for doctors and health personnel.

If you arrive at the emergency room in a bag of broken bones, you don't want to be looked at or pity.

In the emergency department, you are not looking for someone to tell you: 'Oh, poor thing', but for someone to solve ”.

Javi, that orderly that the same leaves you a clinician who tells you a joke, plays a fundamental role in those psychological supports that bifurcate in the corridors of hospitals.

"His role in this case is to tell you a story," says León.

"I don't know if it's a lie, I see it as the beautiful and convenient part of the truth in those situations."

The character's ability also lies in mastering genres and their ingredients: tenderness for drama and capacity for entanglement in comedy.

Of course, Leonor Watling points out, "the harshness of what it portrays, especially what happened to us in the first wave of the pandemic, is not hidden."

When Leon was made the offer, he hardly thought about it, he remembers.

His relationship with Vasile entails a kind of loyalty for life since the head of Mediaset helped him to make him a star with Luisma de

Aida.

“I have a good relationship with him.

In addition, they produced

Carmina and Amen

, a film that once represented an experiment.

I owe a loyalty to that and to what his commitment to a completely lost creator meant at that time, ”says León.

“He is a bold man and also scathing: he has something unpredictable that may seem arbitrary to you, but it is not.

I believe that I have reciprocated in mutual loyalty.

For me, that's natural: loyalty.

And that they also know how to respect my freedom.

Anyone who knows me understands that I do what I want.

Even when it is difficult to know what one wants… ”.

Doubts have often disturbed him.

For example, when both he and his then partner, Anna R. Costa, decided not to repeat a season of

Arde Madrid

after having announced a second.

“The first one took us a long time.

Five years.

It was very hard work.

When we got on, we said, 'Damn, what for!'

And we decided not to.

That we did not give the same or worse.

For that, let it stay like this.

You have to know how to kill successes, and when you have a life, the feeling that there are things that you have already done or seen or experienced drives you back.

I sometimes get bored with myself.

I was not scared, I do not move out of fear.

It was a mixture of laziness and responsibility, ”says León.

Arde Madrid,

that chronicle about

Ava Gardner's

ravings and foolishness

in Spain, moved between the airs of the Mankiewicz of

La condesa descalza

and the Azcona / Berlanga of

Plácido

or

El verdugo

.

Back-room glamor in Chicote, along with the ravages of polio, the smell of the Women's Section and all kinds of quinqui tricks.

It was a milestone in León's career as a creator, just as the family portrait of

Carmina and amen

had been before

.

Another measured move by an artist who knows how to combine popular pull with experiment like few others.

So much in the gap is León that throughout this year he has filmed five projects as a director and performer: from

Destino,

a short recorded at home with a mobile phone that went viral, to international projects such as the French comedy

Papá y mama;

the blockbuster

The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent,

with Nicholas Cage and Pedro Pascal (agent Peña de

Narcos

), or now Besos al aire and

Desde la sombra.

Leonor Watling has also been lucky in that sense.

That same series and film in these times accompany her acting career.

To that he has also added the recording of

Harry Potter

for audiobook.

Another thing is music.

"Everything is worse there, not to say tragedy," he says.

Being two in Marlango —Alejandro Pelayo and her, piano and voice— makes it easier.

“Not to compose.

We have barely had two songs in all this time.

But we have been able to give some concerts, especially in theaters.

To create we need synchronicity, to be together, like fireflies that connect to each other at the same time and light up at the same time.

However, a concert arouses a lot of emotion.

The joy is more intense, and the sadness, too.

Everything multiplies in their reactions this time, the strange thing is to see them behind the masks, but they are perceived ”.

In

Besos al aire

and

Desde la sombra,

the two have had to travel from the tenderness that the series gives off to the surrealism of the world of Juan José Millás.

When the author published the novel, a collective confinement was not even considered.

But he unwittingly rehearsed sensations with the story of a man locked in a closet who observes the daily life of a couple.

Somehow, it now connects with a collective hunch very familiar to all.

"That of hiding under a stone, from that comfortable place where you feel ultra-protected, like inside a uterus, and from which many people find it difficult to get out," says Watling.

León sees it as a primary exercise for what the life or attitude of a creator should be: “When you stop, things start to happen.

That is an exercise that we lack because we always walk like in a stampede.

Standing still and looking is an increasingly interesting attitude ”.

But move too.

Let's remember: five projects Leon has signed in the year of total stoppage.

With what sensations?

"Well, I have already done and do not know how many PCRs.

This challenges us to be more resourceful and daring.

At first it seemed like something from space, with the protocols and restrictions, the 'you can't go there' and the food in astronaut-like bags.

In the American movie, the directors - Tom Gormican and Kevin Etten - were even giving instructions through Zoom.

They told you the same thing they would tell you on set, but in a very surreal plan.

I don't see myself, but if you have to see yourself, you see yourself.

That you have to do things on foot, well on foot;

that with one eye I cover, then with one eye I cover;

that you don't have to pronounce the r, because you don't pronounce the r either ... The fact is that we feel like it and we get it out as we can ".

Cautious but convinced, yes, avoiding danger.

In fact, Leonor fell ill: “I have passed the virus, but without consequences.

I live with mixed feelings.

On the one hand, I see that we have become accustomed to the fact that every day in some countries up to the same amount dies as in the Twin Towers.

I understand that we feel mourning, but also that we get used to living with it.

A collective psychological challenge of which we do not know the consequences for our battered morals.

"They have not yet arrived in their full dimension, we are still in shock," believes the actress.

“Even the political row has to do with it.

I don't understand them.

Their attitudes are a shame to me.

Everyone's, huh.

But I think they have to do with the fact that you get distracted by any nonsense.

I've been in and out of those states where it helps a lot to overcome a trauma to focus on ridiculous and small problems, "he says.

Like the button metaphor.

“When my father died, I was 18 years old.

As I went to the funeral, I realized that I was missing a button.

That, so absurd and so insignificant, distracted me from the serious.

You could even make a world of that nonsense.

Now I see the same in the reactions of politicians: that they cling to the button when what happens to us is something much more terrible.

They entertain themselves with the fight and thus they do not have to face the fundamental thing.

At first I even thought that this, at least, was going to be something that could not be politicized, and you see, at three hours… ”.

Watling stays with social responsibility.

"Despite the illegal parties, I think sanity prevails in the majority."

Paco León agrees.

In the case of responsibility, he has assumed his role.

“I think many of us have examined ourselves and asked this question: what do I do best to help people?

Well, in my case I have it clear.

I am the clown ”.

And he has given himself to the task of entertaining.

Without this sometimes getting over his nerves or feeling a certain loss of meaning: “I wanted to learn more things during these months and I am not learning anything.

I look for my inner peace and no trace, I shoot anxiolytics and there is no way either.

I look for it, I look for it, but it is so difficult to live… And now more.

Anyway, I don't know anything.

We do not know anything.

Less in this war without bombs, with a bastard bug and workers forced to be at the front because they have no other choice.

And yet… “Well, I repeat: even so, people fall in love.

Life is very stubborn, it is very strong, it can do more.

And there we are all;

even though we are counting the dead, we still find a joke amusing, we are moved by a song and we are able to enjoy a delicious meal ”.