Inside the auditorium of Barcelona’s grand Teatre Tívoli on a windy autumn day, a tall, slender figure in a pink jacket and black skinny jeans elegantly winds his way through the aisles. Mario Vaquerizo is already half way into a morning press tour but it doesn’t show. He only has a second to flick back his shoulder-length hair before the questions begin, but Vaquerizo remains eager to chat and delivers consistently engaging answers. It seems effortless, but then Mario Vaquerizo has made a career out of being a public persona.
Despite the grey streaking through his black mane, there’s something of an eternal adolescence about him, not just in his rock-star look, but in the way he bounds up the steps to shake my hand and settles into his chair. He’s not as well-known outside of Spain, where he’s ubiquitous in the local media, so I ask him to describe himself for Metropolitan readers. He thinks for a second, perhaps trying to figure out how to condense such a large CV.
“Well, as a really hard working person above all else,” he says. “And a person who, at 43 years old, is finally feeling confident; I’ve reached a place where I’m able to make a living from all of my interests.” He reels them off: journalist, singer, and now he’s doing theatre too. “I consider myself a multidisciplinary person,” he explains. “I work as a talent manager [for several Spanish acts, including Fast and the Furious alumni Elsa Pataky], I like to collaborate in television and radio programmes, I like to act. I do everything, for better or worse.”
"I actually find theatre acting pretty addictive... the idea of playing live to an audience has always excited me."
He grins, but he also concedes this fluidity is not always so readily accepted. “Here in Spain we’re very dogmatic, professionally speaking, and it’s generally accepted that if you’re a journalist then you can’t be in a band. But I think you can.” He gets past this resistance by looking outwards and following an international career model. “For example Keanu Reeves—who I think is a great actor—also has his own band. I try to do things that I want to do, and I’m certainly a guy who will fight to do what I want.”
It’s Monday morning and Vaquerizo is fresh off a weekend gig at Razzmatazz with his band, The Nancy Rubias, and is here to promote his theatre role in musical comedy, El amor sigue en el aire. Originally debuting as El amor está en el aire in Madrid in January 2015, starring Manuel Bandera and Bibiana Fernández, the show found great success on the Spanish theatre circuit and now returns to Barcelona after a sell-out run earlier this year. “It’s a comedy that leaves a sweet taste in the mouth, with popular songs everyone loves and a strong message,” he enthuses. “Love is something we can all relate to, and the show is basically about the different stages of love. As a man who has been in a relationship with a woman for 18 years, that concept resonated with me.”
He’s talking—as anyone who’s ever seen an episode of their self-titled MTV reality show (2011-2015) will know—about Alaska. The Mexican-born actress and singer shot to fame as one of the founders of La Movida Madrileña—the hedonistic cultural and artistic revolution that started in the late Seventies following Franco’s death. Her irreverent personality and catchy Eighties hits, including ‘A quién le importa’, had already made Alaska a household name in Spain when she met Vaquerizo, who was working as a publicist for her band, Fangoria, in 1999. The couple married soon after, and the whole country was granted a full exploration of their colourful relationship through four seasons of reality TV. Outside of the show, they have remained frequent collaborators over the years, and are co-starring in this month’s musical.
Vaquerizo stresses that he never considered himself an actor, so how did they first get involved in the show? “The director, Felix Sabroso, is a friend of ours, and also good friends with Manuel and Bibiana. He suggested that we all come together and do a sporadic thing for five nights or so.” And they’re still going, a year later? “Yes,” he laughs, “because we are just having too much fun.”
Was he intimidated by the jump to acting? “At first I was a little scared,” he admits, “because I had to commit to the discipline of working with a script, and playing the part.” Appearing on TV and radio is something that comes naturally because he is just being Mario Vaquerizo, but acting requires a different skill set. “To change myself into a different person, in this case a hippie traveller just back from India who’s totally different from me, was a big challenge.” His love of trying new things eventually won him over, and he hasn’t looked back since. “I actually find theatre acting pretty addictive. It’s not that different from playing a concert, because you have the public there, and the idea of playing live to an audience has always excited me.”
While he wouldn’t always consider working with friends on a professional project, in this case everything went smoothly. “I had the luck of going to work with my girl and with my best friends,” he marvels. “It was like the cosmos had put everything in place.” And while it would take the right project, he’d be keen to follow up the experience with more acting. “I’d love to take on another comedy role similar to this, in any medium. I love Netflix, I’d love to do a show on there.”
For a busy man so often on television, does he actually get much time to kick back and watch the box himself? “Oh, yes, I love TV, I watch everything,” he laughs. “I’m really not picky when it comes to watching television. All genres are welcome in my house. I watch series, documentaries, telenovelas, programas rosas—things that other people might consider trash—I love it all.”
Given his love for comedy and romance, his favourite series might come as a surprise. “Right now, it’s American Horror Story,” he reveals. When I say I’m also a big fan he nodded enthusiastically. “The latest season, Cult, is marvellous.” You mean the twisted satire of Trump-era America in which a sect of killer clowns terrorise the population? “Yes, I think it’s fascinating, anthropologically. It’s about how people in power play with us, how they manipulate us, how political powers find a way to drive people who love each other apart. I think these themes are very current and important to explore.” And dark. “I can be very melodramatic,” he laughs.
So would he like to perhaps act in a darker role himself one day? He lets out a jet of air and seems uncertain. “I don’t know, I’m not sure if I have that capacity. I think that you have to be very honest, very humble to be a dramatic actor. But then,” he grins, “if a dramatic theatre director called me and said he wanted me for a role, I wouldn’t necessarily be opposed to it.”
El amor sigue en el aire returns to Barcelona’s Teatre Tívoli from December 1st-3rd.