"We are very exposed these days and we are very old to be so exposed."
Carlos Cuevas (Moncada y Reixach, Barcelona, 25 years old), known since he was nine years old, when he began to act in the daily TV3 series
Ventdelplà
(2005-2010), and famous since he was 19, when he began to play the idolized Pol Rubio by
Merlí
(2015-2017), buries his beard between his fingers while reflecting in a Madrid cafeteria what he learned in these years of public projection.
“I am no longer a bad age, but being very exposed when you are 15 or 20… Either your circle anchors you and you have a head that pushes you to them, or it goes away.
I've seen it up close, "he says, and continues:" The candy is very sweet.
They start to recognize you on the street, people stop you, girls pay attention to you, they call you handsome, handsome, you have followers.
It has not interested me, really.
Yes it has tempted me, I have seen that if I upload a photo, if I say something in an interview, noise is generated.
"Wow, I have the power of communication."
But I do not like.
I'd trade all my Instagram followers for a good movie script. "
Scripts have become an important issue in Cuevas' life, more than the dangers of fame.
The sequel to
Merlí, Merlí Sapere Aude,
premiered on Movistar + in 2019 and last week it returned with a second season.
It will be the last: Cuevas says goodbye to Pol Rubio after six years and now, his career will depend on the decisions he makes.
“I can choose a bit, but come on, I don't have a caravan of scripts in the
waiting to be read by Carlos Cuevas.
I do not dare to say very loudly what I would like to choose.
I close a stage that has made me go from being a teenager to an adult and the only thing that I have very clear, very clear, very clear, is that I don't want to shoot any more adolescent characters.
Of those with the backpack on the back.
Because of my physique and age, I can't be a father of a family with three children, but I can do more things, preferably cinema ”.
The series' farewell has come with a twist.
Pol Rubio, the bright, smiling and bisexual man, one of the most loved by his fans on Spanish television, turns out to have HIV.
"I figured it out before shooting the first season of
Sapere Aude,"
Cuevas boasts, his face accentuated by a half smile.
“There was a clue in a scene from the first season that ended up being deleted, but it pissed me off.
I asked Héctor Lozano, the screenwriter: 'Is Pol sick?
What's wrong with it?
Is it something I should know?
And yes, he had HIV but they did not know when they were going to introduce the news.
I shot the first season knowing that Pol was positive without knowing it.
It's not something you can act on, is it?
But I had a very bright season, very fun, very jovial, with a smile, so that later when this happens the host would be fatter ”.
It is a unique twist of its kind, almost revolutionary despite the traditional series in which it is located, the first time that such a popular character has been associated with this disease on television, and, by far, the first time that the virus does not appear neither stigmatized nor a destroyer of lives.
“Most of the times in which HIV is talked about, it is done from previous decades, where it was a diagnosis that led to death of socially stigmatized characters: the prostitute, the drug addict, the gay who is in environments that should not be, nocturnal, treacherous and clandestine ... To have it today with a normal kid, who goes to university, who is bisexual, which of course is not a sin, it is cool ”, Cuevas explains.
Merlí
has always been a series about negotiating adversity with happiness and this twist is directly connected to its DNA.
Pol must learn to live with the virus without giving up his life: "The first thing he does is 'why me, what have I done wrong, why do I deserve this?'
Then he understands, or rather they make him understand that, colleague, we are all playing this.
Have not all the heterosexuals in Spain ever fucked without a condom?
We all play with this, what happens is that they are more worried about getting them pregnant, ”he says.
“The first time I asked about the plot, I myself did not say HIV, I said AIDS: I thought they were the same.
I did not know that with current medication one could become untransmissible and undetectable.
I think a lot of people didn't know either.
It is important what he does this season, not to criminalize it, not to stigmatize it.
It is not pleasant news to receive, but we are no longer in the nineties. "
That was the route to parting.
The real goodbye took place last October, on their last day of filming.
His last scene as Pol. He alone, in front of the camera.
“It was the first sequence we shot that day.
At noon he was free.
I burst into tears, because I am very whiny.
I knew it was the end and it was very cathartic.
When the seasons are over I always cry a lot.
We hugged and the team gave me a bottle of whiskey.
I shared it with everyone, a shot each ”.
Pol started the series as straight.
It ends up being bisexual, which Cuevas is not, and as a symbol of the coexistence of HIV, which Cuevas does not have.
His face turns serious after the joke.
“I can think of many causes that give me allergies, these do not.
I do not pretend to be an icon or a flag.
It is the Héctor Lozano series, the actors put our faces and do our best.
In the case of my character, they tell me a lot: the one who fought not to leave school, to come out of the closet and to accept bisexuality, many people tell me that it has helped him.
I do the best I can in my job, but this is a gear.
I am an important part but I am not the whole, far from it ”.
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