‘First Dates‘ celebrates its seventh anniversary this Monday four. The program presented by Carlos Sobera comes to this birthday after hosting 8,300 dates in his restaurant, gives more than 17,000 people of all kinds the opportunity to find love and makes visible the emotional and sexual diversity that exists in our country.
The day they celebrate these seven years with a special delivery, YOTELE talks to Carlos Sobera about his Warner Bros ITVP appointment (“The Circle of Celebrities”, “Kitchen Nightmare”)Having established itself as one of the most successful and important formats of the Mediaset channel’s programming, .
‘First Dates’ turns 7 in Cuatro. It is said soon because not many programs celebrate these anniversaries.
Television is a very difficult universe to understand and diagnose. Practically impossible. It’s the most empirical setting I’ve ever known. When you do theater and cinema and choose a project, you have a certain chance of success if you take good care of it and look for the right audience. You never know if they’ll like you or not as it’s always a generic product on TV. What you never think about is how long you can last because we are seeing a generation that is very competitive and we get tired of everything, and that consumes fast. By the age of 7, you see wonderfully. You want more, but whatever comes, it is welcome even if it is 7 months because it has already been a hero by coming here. This is so hard.
Matías Roure used to say that the key to your success is true love. Within the Mediaset universe, ‘First Dates’ is one of the few shows attended by anonymous individuals. Is that the key to success?
Undoubtedly for me in the cast. Very real, authentic people come with the ability to express their own reality. For good or for bad. There are people who come with traumas and weaknesses, and here it is shown to them for the first time because it is salvation for them. There are people who truly come to find love and express themselves in all sincerity, and that is appreciated because they are fresh and very natural people and that’s what brings it out. Even though we look the same, everyone is different and everyone responds differently to the same question or situation. This is what makes it attractive to have the same program outline.
There are over 17,000 singles with profiles that have gone through ‘First Dates’ and continue to amaze.
If you think about it, that’s great. The famous saying that the truth is stranger than fiction… In this case, it goes beyond itself. When you think no one will come to surprise you, they come because they exist, because of their past, because of what happened to them… And they surprise you. That’s what’s so good about this show.
Among these 17,000 singles, that boy who appeared on the show several times with different characters continues to draw attention. How do you remember that moment when you caught him?
The same morning they told me that the event would take place. He came by simulating a disease by putting flute sound. The first thing for me was to concentrate because I listened to her talk and I tended to laugh. Imagine a man standing in front of you and talking to you like that, even though you know he’s a fraud. The situation was hilarious, but I didn’t want to take it in a funny way. We were very angry because such things affect the credibility of the program. I told him it wasn’t his or me. Even the audience, maybe even amused, was not the people who came here every day hoping to meet someone. It’s a big fall for them to suddenly see people like him trying to trick us into taking it as a joke. I think he got it and we got over it.
He is back?
No, he hasn’t come back. If you did, you’ve perfected your camouflage art and made yourself unrecognizable even to the CIA.
What has surprised you the most in these 7 years of ‘First Dates’?
This surprised me a lot, but there have been other cases that have done this. For good or for bad. I remember children with Down syndrome because they taught us a wonderful lesson in compassion and emotion. I don’t want to get into 11 vara shirts. People with Down syndrome experience the world differently than other people, but with the same intensity and reality. They were here and they had the capacity to love and feel and be affected that you realized there was nothing more original than that.
Then there are the people who are funny and leave a good memory for you. More time passes, but it’s good to have. An example is a 72-year-old man who has three girlfriends and is looking for a fourth. He was showing the phones when I asked if he was joking. He told me he was going to call one of them and he called her. I asked him how he was organized with the three of them, and he told me this in the morning, another in the afternoon, and the third at night.
It’s also interesting how many singles come to the restaurant and say whether they’d rather meet up with Matías or you. How do you live those moments?
Actually, it’s not about them loving you or falling in love with you. What happens to them is that they are looking for a point of complicity with someone. You are the first face they see. They’ve known for years and they want to find that complicity because they come with insecurity and even a little trembling because they don’t know what to find, how to react and how to react. . So, they find that balm with it. What they are really looking for is that you give them peace of mind and balance to face it because it is very difficult for them. They do not know what will happen and everything is recorded. Everything you say can be used against you by your family, friends… You should have a lot of respect because it takes courage to come to ‘First Dates’.
Another thing about “First Dates” is that it gave visibility to a wide variety of relationships. What have you learned about it in these seven years?
Respecting all different forms of love and sexual orientation. I also want respect to go in different directions. We at ‘First Dates’ participate in various pro-LGTBIQ+ movements. I was even giving the notice and they ‘pushed’ me for being straight. My thinking at the time was what we were trying to convey to heterosexuals that all forms of sexuality are basically the same. These are different ways of expressing a reality that needs love and having a life partner. It should be in all directions. We cannot stop any of them. For me the best teaching of the program is its normalization and integration, and I hope young children are learning and doing it by heart because it will change us all. This is great in this country. I see what’s going on around us, we’ve changed a lot, but even that could happen in 30 years…