During the coronavirus lockdown in 2020, Emmanuel Restrepo (31 years old, Medellín) wanted to take his life. He entered a friend’s building unannounced—the security guard knew him because he was a frequent visitor—and took the elevator to the top floor. Standing on the edge of the terrace, he made one last call to his ex-boyfriend, with whom he had just broken up. “I tried to get off and I couldn’t. I remember that I called Andrés, and he didn’t answer. And well, I cried a lot. I went home crying,” he says while buttoning his orange shirt. That episode was the germ of Goodbyethe play in which she co-stars with Alejandra Chamorro, her best friend, and which recently ended its second season.
It’s almost eight o’clock at night. A hundred people are gathered on the first floor of the Petra Theatre. Tickets sold out within a few hours of going on sale. In the dressing room, Emmanuel and Alejandra are putting on their own make-up. Unlike the rows of trucks full of wardrobe assistants and hairdressers that she had while she was on the set, Rigothe production of Estudios RCN about the life of the cyclist Rigoberto Urán that occupied the first places of the national rating between October and April, on this occasion there are no luxuries. The expenses are on your account. After Alejandra wrote Goodbye —it is “a love letter” that he dedicated to her after her suicide attempt, he says—, Emmanuel financed the production with his own money. The plot revolves around an obsession that has haunted him for years: death. He plays Ernesto, a doctor who wants to request an assisted death despite not having any health problems.
Before going on stage, Emmanuel talks to EL PAÍS about his past and present, as well as the way he interacts with fame and his struggle to remain the person he was before fulfilling his dream.
Ask. How was the path from being on the verge of jumping to landing the idea of Goodbye?
Answer. One day I told Alejandra that I wanted to do something with Improvvisual (the theatre company with which they co-produced the play). We brainstormed and death came up as a theme. I have always thought that there should be a clinic where people kill themselves, but we wanted to give it a touch of reality and make it a real clinic, with the problems of bureaucracy and delays.
P. In that way?
Newsletter
Analysis of current events and the best stories from Colombia, every week in your inbox
RECEIVE THE
R. Yes, when we had a conversation in which I confessed to Alejandra that I wanted to jump off the terrace, I told her that I had been thinking for a long time about a place where one could commit suicide. It wasn’t just an idea on the day of the attempt, beforehand I imagined a place where one arrives and says ‘I’ve come to die. I’ve already said goodbye to my friends, they all agree’.
P. The Euthanasia already exists in many countries, including Colombia…
R. No, no. I imagine it as something that anyone can do, without having to suffer from a terminal illness.
P. Was it difficult for you to make the decision to contribute your money to turn it into a work?
R. The opportunity came during a very particular situation. If it had presented itself five years ago, there would have been no chance at all. Goodbye arrived in favorable economic conditions because I had just worked in The first timefrom Netflix. We did several readings and almost always we ended up crying, super moved. I was convinced that it was a great play. We had done another one before and Alejandra paid for it all. It was my turn.
P. The emotion I see in him makes me think that he enjoys this, the theatre, more than big productions.
R. I think the ideal place is a mix. I wouldn’t marry either of them, because they provide very different comforts. Television provides economic comforts and with that money I have been able to do theatre. And the emotional things that theatre gives me, for now, have not been given to me by television. Over time I have realized that I am quite polyamorous in many things and not only in relationships or friendships.
P. Also at work?
R. Now that you ask, it wouldn’t be bad to think that at work I am also polyamorous because I can’t decide.
Four days before the interview, Emmanuel was at Bogotá’s El Dorado airport waiting for a flight to Villavicencio. A few hours later, in the prison of the nearby municipality of Acacías, the closing ceremony of the VI Prison Theatre Festival was to be held and he would be one of the judges. Although it was five in the morning and the sun had not yet risen, dozens of travelers approached him to greet him, to ask for a photo. “It’s Carmelo, from Rigo,” shouted a girl, pointing at him. With his hair still wet from the shower and his eyes half-closed, he smiled, posed and even agreed to take some cell phones to send personalized greetings. He says that he thinks it’s nice, especially when people thank him with a “God bless you.” But the recognition is something relatively recent. After acting between 2015 and 2016 in I am FrankyNickelodeon’s , did not receive any more contracts for television productions in seven years.
P. Have you ever thought about giving up acting?
R. I went through very sad and painful things. I lived through horrible moments. Also good ones, because that’s where I was born. Circulate (the theatre collective that she founded with Alejandra). A few years before the pandemic, I went to the United States, to San Francisco, because my sister was there. I travelled convinced that I would never act again and my plan was to stay. One day at work, washing dishes, I realised that it was the first time, since I was seven years old, that I had not acted. It was a horrible feeling.
P. And it came back.
R. I knew I had to come back. It was an impulse from deep within. I told Alejandra that we should get together, and she agreed. Neither of us had a job. We put together Circulate and we teach free improvisation workshops. There is an irrational, intangible impulse, but this is the only thing that moves us a little. At that time, Alejandra used to make fun of me, telling me that the place where I lived was a rat hole because we had literally found rats.
P. What did it hold up with?
R. I was up for anything. I worked with TransMilenio (Bogota’s integrated public transport system) on an educational project to raise awareness among people who were sneaking in. They set up tents in the doorways and stations, and the offenders had to attend an improvisation workshop, which I took part in. It was nice, very powerful, to see how annoyed people would arrive and leave happy. I didn’t feel completely comfortable, though, because we had to go to dangerous areas.
P. Emotionally, how did you manage to persist? Sounds like a perfect scenario for collapsing.
R. My family, my friends and Alejandra (from the other corner of the dressing room, she says to her “your family, Emma”). My parents, who are in Envigado (Antioquia), paid for my entire degree in Bogotá. They have been there at all times. They are really attentive. My sister was also fundamental.
P. Now that you are recognized, do you find it difficult to deal with fame?
R. I don’t want it to stop surprising me. It surprises me and it’s nice. Sometimes it’s exhausting, but it’s also gratifying that people value one’s work. Every time they congratulate me, they send me good energy. Even if it sounds like hippieI genuinely believe that.
P. But is it difficult for you?
R. I have consciously fought hard to maintain spaces that tie me to who I am, beyond fame or success. I want to maintain simple routines. I once had a conversation with a famous actor. We were in a shopping mall and I asked him the same thing you are asking me. He told me that his image consultants recommended that he not frequent open spaces so that he would become unreachable to people. By being more unreachable, according to what they advised him, he would get more followers. That seemed scary to me.
P. I don’t know if this is right, but it makes some sense, doesn’t it?
R. If he’s doing it, it’s probably working for him, and good for him. I don’t want that. I like the idea of going out to buy eggs at the supermarket or coming to the theatre on a bicycle. I don’t want to stop doing things to become famous or get somewhere.
The first timefrom Netflix, was released in February 2023. Emmanuel was one of the protagonists. That opportunity knocked on his door unexpectedly. Several months of casting by the directors had not been enough to find the lead actor. Two weeks before filming began, his manager told him about the possibility. It seemed far away. When he was chosen, he faced a difficult decision. A play that he had created together with Alejandra and the members of ImprovvisualDavid Moncada and María Paula Franky, was chosen to participate in a tour of Spain. It was her dream, to travel abroad doing what she was most passionate about. The celebration was bittersweet when she found out that she was going to lead the new Netflix production in Colombia. She wanted to and, at the same time, she didn’t want to. Fortunately, she says, her friends supported her.
P. What was the breaking point, the upward curve?
R. I was on a bus entering Bogotá and my agent called me. He told me that I was going to be in The first time. I naively suggested that we cut the trip to Spain down to two weeks, so that I could get back to record. ‘You don’t know what you’re going to do,’ he replied. And he was right.
P. What was I not aware of?
R. Of the production levels. I was surprised by the chrome screens, the equipment they used, the motorhomes. Really, with everything. I had never experienced anything like that in my life. It was a moment of experiencing many things for the first time and of disappearing completely from family and friends.
P. It was difficult?
R. You go through a lot of emotions. We were filming 12 hours a day from Monday to Saturday. When we got home, we couldn’t rest because we had to study the next day’s scenes. I understood all the possible ways of experiencing success and happiness, where there are too many contradictions.
It is then that Alejandra intervenes, who has been waiting for her friend’s answers for some time. “Living a dream is not the same as dreaming it,” she says, looking at him. Emmanuel is absorbed in listening to her. He nods a few seconds later. And they go out to present. Goodbye.
Subscribe here to the EL PAÍS newsletter on Colombia and Here on the WhatsApp channeland receive all the key information on current events in the country.
