The Limited Times

Now you can see non-English news...

Alfonso Herrera, the emerging star who refuses to leave Mexico: "Everything goes better if you have fun"

2022-01-24T03:39:02.069Z


A teen idol in 'Rebelde', an emerging global star thanks to 'Sense 8' and a critically acclaimed performer in projects like 'El baile de los 41', the Mexican tells us about his leading role in the new season of 'Ozark' and why global success won't make you leave your country for now


Alfonso Herrera (Mexico City, 38 years old) never tires of airports.

They are his favorite places in the world.

"Many people consider them 'non-places' because they are places of transition, but they fill me with nostalgia, in them we can do absolutely everything: eat, travel and rest," he says in a video call with ICON.

And it is not for less: an airplane is a nod to the life that he could have had.

Before debuting on the big screen with

Amarte Duele

(2002), one of the highest-grossing Mexican films in history, young Alfonso had everything ready to travel to San Antonio, Texas and become an airline pilot.

However, a few days before that, at the institute's theater workshop he was invited to audition for a film and he decided to appear out of curiosity.

That is how he was immediately chosen for the role of Fernando, a wealthy and classist boy from Mexico City who is the boyfriend of the protagonist, Renata (Martha Higareda) in

Amarte Duele

. “I had no plans to be an actor, I had no hope or expectation. Sometimes I wonder what would have happened if I had been a pilot. From there he continued with the Televisa youth telenovela

Clase 406

, but his first encounter with international fame was when he played the character of Miguel Arango in

Rebelde

, a television series that soon became a phenomenon throughout Latin America and Spain. Another project came out of that project, the pop band RBD. With them, Herrera won a handful of platinum, gold and diamond records. Today, however, he has put his career as a singer on hold, since he considers that music is not his main strength. “They accused us of doing a lot of

playback

, and in my case it was not like that: I sang loud and ugly, but it was me. And they weren't songs that demanded much of you either. I never pretended to be the singer that Mexico was waiting for, I know my pros and cons perfectly, "he recalled in an interview for

El Interrogatorio

de Foro Tv in 2016.

He doesn't mind being asked about

Rebelde

and about those years of his youth when he seemed to take over the world.

He remembers it fondly, as a turning point in his career.

“Since I joined that project I couldn't let go of the audiovisual industry.

I deeply appreciate having been part of

Rebelde

because it gave me a great projection.

And I see that they continue to have an impressive success, now they have a new adaptation on Netflix.

Alfonso Herrera in his time as a pop star, during a concert by the RBD band in 2006. Victor Chavez (WireImage)

"In those years we were not aware of the magnitude that

Rebelde

had

, I had the opportunity to travel to practically all the countries of Latin America, but especially in Brazil there was a great fury and passion for this project," recalls Herrera.

In fact, an event took place in that country that shows the most tragic face of a mass phenomenon: in 2006 three fans died and dozens were injured as a result of the tumult of people originating in a space with a capacity of 3,000 people where they ended up arriving 10,000 fans of the band.

For Herrera, becoming a teen idol of this magnitude meant carrying the shadow of

Rebelde

and Televisa soap operas that he wanted to leave behind.

“After Rebelde I stopped and asked myself: 'What do I want to do, where do I really want to go?'

I was very comfortable on Televisa because I had an exclusivity and I received a monthly check and that, in some way, made me

lazy

because you no longer venture or experiment, ”revealed the actor in an interview for Channel One in 2019.

“At that time I went to a casting for

La Dictadura Perfecta

(2014), by director Luis Estrada and they accepted me, but at the same time I had to make a telenovela on Televisa. I decided to leave the company and not act in the soap opera. I felt calm with that decision despite feeling a lot of uncertainty because I no longer had that economic comfort, but I was confident that a range of possibilities would open up. I knew that many people knew me and that many producers and directors did not want to work with me because I probably came from certain projects, "he explained on Canal Once.

From then on, his professional career continued to rise and he has managed to work in different countries around the world, but always returning to Mexico, since he considers that in his own country he has managed to diversify his career, as he acknowledged in an interview for EL PAÍS in 2016: “Very interesting things are being done in Mexico and all of this is consumed in the United States, Latin America and in many other markets.

It is a great country to work and to live.”

Alfonso Herrera and Miguel Angel Silvestre at the 2015 Fenix ​​Ibero-American Film Awards gala. Victor Chavez (WireImage)

His latest work also promises to be a major success.

Now, Herrera plays Javier Elizondo in the fourth season of the series

Ozark

on Netflix, which premiered last Friday. This is a series of drug traffickers where, unlike other productions of the same theme, the villains are not only Latin American. American citizens and even authorities such as the FBI and the CIA end up up to their necks in it. “

Ozark

shows that the responsibility for drug trafficking, drug and arms trafficking does not only fall on the neighbors to the south, such as Mexico. The responsibility is joint and global”, he explains. "A large part of the financial systems in the United States and in the world are sustained by money laundering, it is impressive the number of white collar people who are involved that we have no idea," he says.

Ozark breaks

away from the stereotype of the big metropolises where these stories take place. Just as the macrocosm exists, the microcosm exists, as is the city of the Ozark in Missouri, a quiet area in the interior of the United States where a child can have easy access to a weapon and from where the Byrde family launders money. But, what differentiates the narcos of this series from those of the rest? “We have already seen many characters like these in other productions, the key, in my work as an actor, was to humanize them. Javier Elizondo, for example, is someone who enjoys the small pleasures of life, is interested in studying, likes to share an afternoon in a museum or an interesting talk”.

In this fourth season of

Ozark

, which was recorded in the midst of a pandemic, the Mexican shares credits with actors Jason Bateman (Marty Byrde in the series), Laura Linney (Wendy Byrde) and Julia Garner (Ruth Langmore).

“The power that these people have in Hollywood also goes hand in hand with their generosity: if they feel that you or someone on the team needs something, they make themselves available to you, they help you, they teach you.

They all formed a big family from the first season.”

This is not the first time that Herrera has worked on a major production for

streaming

platforms .

Among his projects, his participation in

Sense8

(2015) by Netflix, with the character of Hernando, partner of Lito Rodríguez, played by Miguel Ángel Silvestre,

El exorcista

(2016) by FOX, where he plays the priest Tomás Ortega, or

The dance of the 41

(2020), also from Netflix, with the role of Ignacio de la Torre and Mier, a film that deals with a homosexual love story in the Mexico of Porfirio Díaz.

Alfonso Herrera at that decisive moment in the career of any off-road actor: he acts as a priest.

It was like Tomás Ortega in the television adaptation of 'The Exorcist'.FOX (FOX Image Collection via Getty I)

For now, the actor is in the Mexican capital, close to his two children and focused on projects in his country.

At the end of 2021, he announced through his Twitter account his divorce, after five years of marriage, with the journalist Diana Vázquez.

"The situation is by mutual agreement and on friendly terms, always wishing us the best," the publication said.

Meanwhile, Herrera does not stop working.

His agenda for this 2022 is almost covered.

For now, he plans to stay in the Mexican capital to work in his country and at the same time be close to his family.

He will make his first foray into the world of the

podcast

, he will dub an animated film, he will wait for the second installment of the fourth season of

Ozark to be released in the coming months

(which is divided into two parts of seven chapters), and will resume, if the evolution of the pandemic allows it, the missions to Central America by the UNHCR (United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees), an organization with which it collaborates as goodwill ambassador

"With my work I don't judge the platforms or the windows, the important thing is that it be a good story and from there create without stopping having fun, since everything turns out better if you have fun", he concludes.

You can follow ICON on

Facebook

,

Twitter

,

Instagram

, or subscribe to the

Newsletter here

.

Source: elparis

All news articles on 2022-01-24

You may like

News/Politics 2024-02-16T05:12:47.519Z

Trends 24h

Latest

© Communities 2019 - Privacy

The information on this site is from external sources that are not under our control.
The inclusion of any links does not necessarily imply a recommendation or endorse the views expressed within them.