Valeria Vegas (Valencia, 1985) He is best known for writing his biography. Cristina Ortiz, Poison, with a very clear title: ‘I say! Neither a bitch nor a saint’. It was the book on which the Javises formed the basis for shaping their successful series ‘Veneno’, where the journalist also worked as a screenwriter. She is now publishing her first novel ‘Best Supporting Actress’ (Temas de Hoy, Planeta), while her sequel ‘Vestidas de azul’ and her documentary about another woman breaking the mold are waiting to premiere in 2019. Atresplayer Premium, Nadiuska.
Her debut novel again features a woman, an assistant, and an actress during off-hours and touches on one of her fetish themes: the dark side of fame.
Yes, there are many things in this novel that fascinate me. I walked into a video store, the turn of the millennium, a lot of Spanish movies… I’m so obsessed with actresses, sunsets, anything to do with rising and falling. I wanted to do it from an outsider’s perspective. And who from the outside but a servant who goes to many houses! Readers can put themselves in the maid’s shoes to observe the actress.
There was also a piece of his own life in ‘Venom’ because we saw his relationship with him. What was the inspiration here?
The germ was news years ago when Gracita Morales died. They said that in recent years, they have had very bad times both financially and morally, and they even paid for a maid. Neither the assistant nor the player was chosen by Gracita. With this information, I thought it would be interesting to meet that assistant, that woman who could continue here.
Now you also know what fame is for collaborating on shows like ‘Rocío, tell the truth to survive’ and ‘And now, Sonsoles’. Are you afraid of being forgotten too?
I’m aware that when you go on TV or on ‘Veneno’ you become more of a character. And I enjoy it, but I also know the pros and cons. I think about it every day and I’m super prepared. The media exposure I have comes from work, but I will never be able to get into a ‘reality’.
La Veneno has given you visibility as a writer and screenwriter. First with his biography, then with the Javis series. Don’t you think it was a reference that could backfire at the time?
With today’s eyes, Cristina would be a counter-reference as she was in her own instant, because we’re talking about someone who doesn’t even have an opinion about herself. But I’ve always been fascinated by flawed people who deviate from the norm and double-read from there. The significance of this reference to me was that when La Veneno was featured on television, what he was talking about was that his people had mistreated him at the end. It was his own town and family, but he was talking about many towns and families in Spain, where the same thing happened with many trans women or people from the collective. She embodied many truths from her case.
Was it your first reference?
It wasn’t the first time, but it was a reference that fascinated me as they wouldn’t let me see ‘We Crossed the Mississippi Tonight’. I was 11 years old and I knew it was a certain Venom because they were talking about it in the schoolyard. It was precisely this mystery that attracted me the most.
‘Vestidas de azul’, a sequel to ‘Veneno’, which is also adapted from a book by the author, is waiting for its premiere with Javis. What will we see?
For the 2019 article, I took the 1983 documentary ‘Vestidas de azul’ as a reference. Now the series revolves around the character of Valeria as in ‘Veneno’ and the common point is the writing process of that book. It serves to travel back in time and learn about the history of the six women featured in this documentary, which is the first commercially broadcast documentary in Spain discussing transsexuality.
Have you ever thought about how lucky you are that you were born decades later and didn’t experience what the women in ‘Dressed in Blue’ went through?
Completely. The new generation, who says everything is bullshit, does not know how to compare. I know I’m so weird because I look back so much, but it makes me conscious and positive: Retrospective people have always been and will not cease to exist. But at the health, legislative, rights and social level, his 83 years were dreadful.
He says he was lucky with his family, they accepted very well that he was a man. trans womanbut he had a bad time at school.
I was very lucky to be born with my family and in this country. I didn’t like going to school, it was too cumbersome, without being a victim of ‘bullying’. It wasn’t because I knew how to sneak in. I was always very neat and when a boy insulted me, I said to him: Shut up, pimp! You see, it’s a ridiculous answer. But for me he was saying something very strange to destabilize it. As time went on I realized that the resentment felt towards me was because I was different, and the same happened to the fat girl and the short boy or the boy with the glasses. Anyone who deviated from the norm eventually became a victim. I accepted this very quickly and said: I am out of the ordinary, but I will not hide.
In ‘Veneno’, more private situations emerged from his own life. Was it hard to show them?
I got in a lot of trouble, but I realized that it was necessary. I actually didn’t want it to be a Valeria character, it was a Javis decision. I would have preferred them to adapt La Veneno’s life by the book, but they made me realize that seeing another generation is beautiful and necessary, and they made me see it so that I could see it in a certain way through the person who played La Veneno. making this parallel of one generation and the next.
Has history ever been fair to La Veneno?
He hadn’t been fair to her, but he hadn’t treated almost any icon fairly either. Cristina was always a “stranger”, outside of everything, even the collective. The show was legendary by younger people for putting him there, but some of the things he said were very powerful and I think he would have been given a lot of walking sticks and punished a lot today. She was controversial in itself, she.
He says his references are always sinful women.
Not because I saw them as sinners, but because I understood that they were sinners in the eyes of the people of that time. Raquel Welch, Pamela Anderson, Alaska, Bibiana Fernández, Maruja Torres… Women who broke the norm and didn’t apologize didn’t regret it. I’m fascinated by actresses in transition, but I get upset when they have to apologize or justify that their movies are bad. They didn’t make the movies, the director made them, let’s put the blame on that man!
Definitely, a documentary about another forgotten diva, a debuting actress, Nadiuska, has a premiere pending.
Opens in the spring in Atresplayer Premium. I wanted Generation Z to discover this icon. She wasn’t just an actress, she was a social phenomenon in Spain in the ’70s and had a tragic ending befitting a novel.