Berto Romero: “The people who are really very successful are outside the circuit”

Berto Romero premieres this Tuesday on La 2 the program

Ovejas electricas

, a production by RTVE in collaboration with K 2000 (The Mediapro Studio). In it Romero (Cardona, 49 years old) will talk about narrative and stories through different formats: literature, cinema, comics or video games, a project of which he says of himself that he will be a presenter and spectator at the same time and in which he will be accompanied by five collaborators: Jorge Carrión, Marta Jiménez Serrano, Isabel Cadenas Cañón, Antonio Martínez Asensio and Isabel Vázquez.

Ask.

I recently heard him on the radio define his role in

Electric Sheep

. He says it will be “the tuna for the cat's medicine”…

Answer.

That image explains my role in this project and is a very necessary function. It is a program that is about narrative, about stories through which we go through literature, movies, games, comics... With the profile that I have, maybe someone thinks that I am going to go out smoking a pipe and not There is going to be room for a joke, when what the team and the director, José Antonio Pérez Ledo, have asked me to do is the opposite, that I be me and make all the jokes I can.

Q.

In the press release they refer to you as “comical but serious.”

A.

Sometimes those of us who do comedy seem like we have to continually be stupid in a disproportionate way. When they ask me if I want to get serious, which is something that is often asked from a certain bad point of view, they want to tell me: “When are you going to work on something respectable?” I always take that as a joke, because those of us who dedicate ourselves to this know that it requires the same effort to be serious as it is to be funny. What I believe is that I am quite empathetic and I adapt quite well to situations, to the tone of others. The collaborators have overwhelming and deep knowledge about these topics, so my role is to be a spectator and be a tuna.

When they ask me if I want to get serious, they want to say: “When are you going to work on something respectable?”

Q.

You return to TV, which you described as a “meat grinder.”

A.

Making this program comes from the luck I have of not being subject to artistic needs or covering certain files. I have already done general, daily television, and I have received offers, but I don't need to accept them. I do well with my theater, with my fiction projects, I can do something if I like it and I can learn, and that is a wonderful prerogative. I insist on luck because many have to say yes to everything to pay the mortgage and support their children. I had been following Pérez Ledo for a long time, I liked many of his facets as a creator, in

Órbita Laika

,

The Great Blackout

,

God's Signature

, as a comic book writer... We met recently and suddenly he came out with this project.

More information

Berto Romero will present 'Electric Sheep' on La 2, a program about literature in popular culture

Q.

What do you like about TV now?

R.

I am a very bad example, I haven't watched television since 2003, I think (laughs). Maybe 2006, what do I know.

Q.

As soon as this interview is over they are going to kill you. You know that, right?

A.

Yes, but I don't want to deceive you. When I started living alone in my apartment, the community antenna didn't work, so I played videos or downloaded series from Emule. I have never been very fond of the most common formats: contests,

reality shows...

From time to time I have gotten hooked on one, but never with the discipline of sitting on the couch once a week pending something. Sorry, huh?

Q.

For nothing…

A.

I never watched the program I worked on at night, much less if I went out, because I preferred to dedicate my time to other things. Since the platforms appeared I have a diet of fiction, movies, series and documentaries, I go at my own pace. Fortunately, there is no longer the anxiety of the beginning, when we believed that we had to keep up to date with the current series.

Berto Romero, last week in Barcelona. massimiliano minocri

Q.

You say that the job of a comedian is to observe a lot.

A.

I am very observant, very curious, but I go very little in depth. I'm not obsessive enough to get into a topic and know all its ramifications. My culture is very good for an after-dinner conversation, like trivial things, because then if you scratch a little, there isn't much. That can be seen in what I do, in the last series I have done —

The Other Side

— you can see a knowledge of the subject, but nothing academic. I mean, there is music, but I don't know the lyrics very well. And that way of being suits me very well for doing comedy, I can always give an opinion on something but it is a joke, a point of view, an approximation.

Q.

In the last few hours I have received two press releases with information from two authors. One focuses on the awards he has received. On the other hand, in their number of followers on social networks.

A.

It makes me a little sad. I don't understand the awards thing and I never will. I had never liked awards, they smelled bad to me and now I have accepted that I am not cut out for that. I don't like the dynamics of the competition itself, and I know that's how the world works, the followers you have are worth it regardless of the quality of those followers. It's all quantifiable and measurable. You can make a program, a movie, a series, with what it costs, and suddenly you enter a race with other people. The lists of who is the best comedian, for example. The important thing is that it reaches some people, with certain results, you are satisfied, it allows you to earn enough money to undertake another project... And if you realize, the people who are really very successful, but very, very successful, are out. of all that. He doesn't have social networks, he doesn't win awards, he's out of the loop.

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