(Madrid) “Whatever you say, it’s Berlin who speaks.” Two years after the end of La Casa de papel, a legendary series followed by millions of aficionados around the world, the emblematic character of Berlín, played by Pedro Alonso, returns at the end of December in a “spin-off”.
Netflix was not going to let go of the story of the Machiavellian robber, who died quite early in the series, but never really left thanks to numerous flashbacks: Berlín was resurrected on the platform on December 29 in an ante-episode bearing his name.
Manipulative, psychopathic, going so far as to rape one of the protagonists, then touching and endearing, the character of the brother of the “Professor” has fascinated many spectators. To the point that the production had made it continue despite his death, a challenge at the time for the actor.
“I told them: I don’t know if I’m capable of doing a character who only lives in the past. Especially since he is a character who drew his strength from danger, the unforeseen, the unexpected,” Pedro Alonso told AFP during an interview in Madrid.
“It’s true that when you do a character that works well, a lot of people transfer in a pretty crazy way and so, whatever you say, it’s Berlín who speaks! And I cannot, nor will I, do anything about that.”
At 52, the Spanish actor does not deny that this character, “perverse, troubled, difficult, very dense,” sticks to him: “Is the seal of La Casa de Papel, the seal of Berlin, is a very strong seal? Obviously “.
And the eight episodes of this series derived from La Casa, as its fans call it, are not going to erase this imprint.
“There’s something of me in every character I play. Which means that the way the character thinks is in line with who I am. Of course I have a Berlin in me. As I have in me another character that I am playing this year who is a father, not at all alpha male, alcoholic…” he analyzes.
But, the fifty-year-old emphasizes, “I’m also not an actor who wants to do a completely different character every time. I do not care “.
On the other hand, he hesitated to start again in a project derived from a series with a disproportionate audience: La Casa de Papel was Netflix’s first global success in a language other than English and its last season accounted for nearly 100 million views.
“When they asked me to do this series, I wanted to have time to think. And I wondered, not about the character, but about the exposure that a phenomenon as big as this represents. The question was: “do I want to continue sailing in these exposed waters?” “, he said.
The new series takes up the codes of the heist: a team preparing a heist, this time in Paris, thanks to the catacombs and “with a little more comedy and romantic comedy”, including a romantic intrigue involving Berlín.
With his hoarse voice, one of his weapons of seduction in fiction, Pedro Alonso claims not to know “what we are talking about”. And to quote the Spanish actor José Sacristán: “at 20, we have the head that we were given, from 50, we have the head of what we have experienced. I imagine the voice is made of what happened to us.”
For him, La Casa de Papel has a little Iberian touch that distinguishes it in the production of series: “there is something of the order of the temperature of the characters, a type of vibration in the emotional, the sentimental, and even in the physical, very far from the Anglo-Saxon references that we have for heist films. Like an effervescence of the senses.”
