The 'revenge' of William Levy: "As a young man, in Cuba, I experienced too many injustices"

A few months ago, actor William Levy (Cojímar, Havana, 41 years old) could see himself from the window of the luxurious Madrid hotel near Plaza de Callao where he was staying.

One of the gigantic advertising posters with his image, which a fashion brand had placed in cities throughout Spain, made him face a strange mirror every day, which reflected an enlarged and even more perfected version of himself.

Since the Colombian telenovela

(which is available in Spain in the Netflix catalog) made him a global star last year, the epitome of traditional masculinity, Cubans have been dealing with the syndrome of the character that threatens with overshadowing the person.

It is just what happens to the protagonist of the project that has brought him to Spain at a time when he could shoot in practically any industry in the world:

, a new adaptation of the Alejandro Dumas novel prepared by Secuoya Studios.

The figure of Edmundo Dantes has been close to him since he was very young.

Because, like the literary antihero, Levy is not the man he was.

“I have grown up in a country where many injustices are committed.

From there a desire for revenge is born... although I don't know if it's the right word.

But yes the need to rectify things.

In life, everyone should deserve what they work for”, he defends in a room 17 stories above Callao, with Madrid and much of the world literally at his feet.

William Levy during one of the first days of filming 'Montecristo'.Juan Carlos Lucas (Secuoya Studios).

He describes his childhood in Cuba as difficult but beautiful.

“With one loaf per person a day, I was always hungry.

We were all destined to live the same poor and miserable life with no future, ”she recalled in 2020 to his followers on social networks, when it was 25 years after his arrival in the United States.

Her father was never present and, through his stepfather, he became an immigrant as a teenager and knew no English.

From there, he was looking for and taking advantage of opportunities that have led him to build a versatile and somewhat unlikely career until completing his particular settling of accounts with life.

He got a university scholarship for his good work in baseball, a sport that "taught him discipline" and that as a child he practiced with a ball of socks as a ball;

he worked as a model, participated in several

—among them Telemundo

, he did theater and was a successful heartthrob in Miami and Mexico.

He also came to the Hollywood industry, supporting action sagas like

and working on projects by Tyler Perry and Lee Daniels.

All this until returning to the Latin world, to Colombia, to complete

.

It is a new version of a soap opera from the 1990s that has updated the role of women in this type of story and in which the actor has tried to participate as much as possible in the scripts to qualify his speech.

“I have a daughter and I have a son.

And he wanted the points of view of both genders to be reflected throughout the story, without one being overshadowed by the other.

Finding a balance was difficult, but that was the beautiful part of the story.

A man [of today] has to like having an empowered woman by his side, who is strong, successful and with character, but there is nothing wrong with the man being strong as well.

I am not macho, but I am macho.

Just as I am delicate, I can sometimes have rude ways, ”he comments.

More information

'Entrevías', the series that opens a new path for immigrant characters in Spanish fiction

Now, Levy is looking from Spain to take a new qualitative leap in his profession.

Locked up with around thirty people in a flat in the center of Madrid, with spacious rooms and a narrow corridor, he finishes some scenes from the sixth and final chapter of

while asking the technical team for recommendations on the restaurant he should go to eat once it's over. the shooting day, after five in the afternoon.

In the original work, Edmundo Dantès is a young merchant marine officer about to marry and become a captain.

But he ends up in jail for the betrayal of people close to him, jealous of his fortune.

While serving an undeserved sentence, isolated in the castle of If, he meets Abbé Faria, who trains him in basic subjects and gives him the philosophical arguments and the moral springs with which to find forgiveness towards his enemies.

But the protagonist needs to make that path for himself, learning from his own mistakes.

He decides to create a character, the Count of Monte Cristo, to execute a personal revenge.

William Levy during the filming of 'Montecristo', in front of the towers of Madrid.Juan Carlos Lucas (Secuoya Studios)

Levy's version jumps to 2022. It revolves around a man of Cuban origin, founder and CEO of a successful technology company.

He symbolizes the new world and modernity against the tradition and decadence of old Europe represented by his enemies, members of the Spanish economic, political and social elite.

Along with him, appear in this miniseries Roberto Enríquez, Silvia Abascal and the Mexican Esmeralda Pimentel.

Levy, in search of his own abbot Faria, embraced the Catholic religion as an adult.

“My children were baptized before me,” he says with a laugh.

"Perhaps I was looking in God for the father figure that I lacked and to connect myself to an image that would hold me to certain values," he suspects.

In Madrid, the actor returns to feeling like the eternal emigrant, he admits: ”Life has forced me to have to move, to leave places even where I feel comfortable.

Wherever I go, I feel from there.

I do not know if it's good or bad.

The ideal would be to find your place in the world, but I am finding it difficult to achieve it.”

A character to suit you

“We want to deal with many of the themes of the original, but it is going to surprise the viewer.

It doesn't necessarily end the same as in the book.

The protagonist goes to extremes that he did not go to in his first version ”, advances William Levy about

, which has been adapted by the screenwriters Lidia Fraga and Jacobo Díaz.

It is a project that Secuoya Studios has designed for the Cuban actor, so the two writers developed the story with him in mind, giving him the opportunity to play a much more controversial and traumatized heartthrob than he is used to.

“Having such a reference is a huge advantage.

We have created the character to suit you.

This

has his particular magnetism, ”says Fraga by phone.

The miniseries also updates its female characters from classic fiction.

"They have more strength and more nuances, so that they are a product of this time," says the screenwriter.

And she is in charge of transferring to the present an aspect that already appeared in the original text, in the 19th century, such as the cult of the power of money, portrayed here through the world of the Stock Market and cryptocurrencies.

Or the capacity for forgiveness and personal development.

“As long as the world is as unjust as Dumas's was, this text will continue to be revised.

Because, furthermore, in a society as individualistic and narcissistic as the current one, the revenge of the Count of Monte Cristo takes on new meanings”, says Díaz.

“We live in a world of appearances in which you are worth what you show and we all play a character, as happens with Edmundo Dantes”, completes Fraga.

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