Berto Romero premieres this Tuesday on La 2 the program Electric Sheepa RTVE production in collaboration with K 2000 (The Mediapro Studio). Romero (Cardona, 49 years old) will talk about narrative and stories through different formats: literature, cinema, comics or video games, a project in which he says he will be both presenter and spectator 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 defining his role in Electric Sheep. He says it will be “tuna for the cat’s medicine”…
Answer. That image explains my role in this project and it is a very necessary function. It is a program that is about narrative, about stories through which we move through literature, movies, games, comics… With the profile that I have, maybe someone thinks that I am going to come out smoking a pipe and there will be no room for a joke, when what the team and the director, José Antonio Pérez Ledo, have asked me is the opposite, that I be myself and make all the jokes I can.
P. In the press release they refer to you as “funny but serious.”
R. Sometimes, those of us who do comedy feel like we have to be constantly acting like fools in a disproportionate way. When people ask me if I want to be serious, which is usually a question with a certain malice, they want to say: “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 takes the same effort to be serious as to be funny. What I think is that I am quite empathetic and I adapt quite well to situations, to the tone of others. The collaborators have an overwhelming and deep knowledge on these subjects, so my role is to be a spectator and to be a tuna.
When people ask me if I want to get serious, they mean, “When are you going to work on something respectable?”
P. He returns to television, which he described as a “meat grinder.”
R. Making this programme comes from the good fortune I have of not being subject to artistic needs or to covering certain expedients. I have already done general television, daily, and I have received offers, but I do not need to accept them. I am doing well with my theatre, 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 the 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 Laika Orbit, The Great Blackout, God’s signatureas a comic book writer… We met recently and suddenly he came up with this project.
P. What do you like about TV these days?
R. I’m a very bad example, I haven’t watched television since 2003, I think (laughs). Maybe 2006, what do I know.
P. As soon as this interview is over, they’re going to kill you. You know that, right?
R. Yes, but I don’t want to lie to you. When I started living alone in my flat, the community antenna didn’t work, so I put on videos or downloaded series from Emule. I’ve never been a big fan of its most common formats: contests, reality shows… I’ve gotten hooked on one from time to time, but never with the discipline to sit on the couch once a week watching something. Sorry, huh?
P. No reason…
R. I never watched the programme I worked on at night, much less if I was on it, because I preferred to spend my time on other things. Since the platforms appeared, I have a diet of fiction, films, series and documentaries, I go at my own pace. Fortunately, there is no longer the anxiety of the beginning, when we thought we had to be up to date with the series of the moment.
P. He says that the job of a comedian is to observe a lot.
R. I am very observant, very curious, but I don’t go into much depth. I am not obsessive enough to get into a subject and know all its ramifications. My culture is very good for a table talk, like trivial, because then if you scratch a little there is not much. That can be seen in what I do, in the last series I have done —The other side— I 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.
P. In the last few hours I have received two press releases with information from two authors. One of them focuses on the awards he has received. The other, on his number of followers on social networks.
R. It makes me a little sad. I don’t understand the prizes thing and I never will. I never liked prizes, they smelled bad to me and now I’ve accepted that I’m not made for that. I don’t like the dynamics of competition, and I know that the world works like that, the followers you have are worth it regardless of the quality of those followers. Everything is quantifiable and measurable. You can make a programme, a film, a series, for whatever it costs, and suddenly you’re in a race with other people. The lists of who is the best comedian, for example. The important thing is that it reaches some people, gives certain results, you’re satisfied, it allows you to earn enough money to undertake another project… And if you think about it, the people who are really very successful, very, very successful, are outside of all that. They don’t have social networks, they don’t win awards, they’re outside the circuit.
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