“‘To be or not to be’ isn’t about teaching or giving speeches, it’s about empathizing with transgender people”

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It has just premiered on Playz, the RTVE platform, this story that follows in the footsteps of a young man in full transition to which Ander Puig embroiders

Playz, RTVE’s youth platform, has just released ‘Ser o no ser’. Created and written by Coral Cruz (Santoña, 49 years old), screenwriter of films such as ‘Uncertain Glory’ and series such as ‘Hierro’, the series focuses on a young transgender man, in full transition, who attends the baccalaureate or Performing Doctor, who embroiders Ander Puig. The fiction, structured in six episodes, avoids describing the physical changes and strives to “show the emotional side,” Cruz says.

– Did you already know trans-reality?

-I knew her because she had LGTBI friends, but two and a half years ago a friend told me her son was just passing through and I thought there was a powerful story to tell. I immediately thought of a series because it’s where the young audience is and I thought it was important to target it to the young audience, even though it has a cross-sectional reading and can interest the adult audience, especially moms and dads who are interested in knowing that reality.

– How is it documented?

Well, the truth is, this has been the most documented time for a project. I’ve read a lot for months, watched a lot of documentaries, videos on YouTube… There are a lot of people explaining their own experiences. I also have a close trans friend, Damian Díaz, who is one of the professional advisors we had on the project. He explained to me not only his own experience, but also that of an educator; has guided many young people in their transition.

–How did you find Ander Puig?

-It is a gift that has fallen to us. We saw seventy trans men. From the start, it was very clear to me that the series had to be starred by a trans actor or a young trans person, even if they had no experience in front of the cameras. What happens is that for me the biggest challenge of the project in putting it together as executive producers was to get a priori an inexperienced actor, because we didn’t know a guy who was already engaged in audiovisual who could take on this role, could play a role with quite a complexity, with many registers, with moments of comedy, drama, and that I also had to be a good actor in the series. We are super happy that we found Ander. Aside from putting his soul into this project, as there is a lot of reality in the series, he has a look that goes across the screen and is sassy. It’s a diamond, no longer in the rough shape, because that’s what it is, but we started polishing it ourselves because with ‘To be or not to be’ he learned everything from scratch.

–And now it goes to ‘Elite’.

-He’s a very good actor and to me he’s way above the average of many of the young actors who star in silly series. No wonder they caught him.

-He will also give birth to a trans boy.

–As he himself said in ‘Shangay’ magazine, it’s hard to see him as anything more than a trans actor right now.

-Real equality will come when they call you for other roles, right?

-Secure. I think it’s an opportunity I couldn’t turn down because how can you turn down the sight of millions of people around the world? Having financial security, growing as an actor… But the risk of being pigeonholed is there. We have a very special relationship because we did the series together. We keep in touch, we text almost every day and I think Ander is interested in audiovisuals as well as being an actor. On set, he watches everything, asks which lens you’re using, and one of the most glorious moments was when he got to pick up one of the cameras. I think he will eventually direct. For me, it would be a really cool process because it’s true that as a trans actor, you’re always going to have certain limits to interpreting characters that aren’t trans. But I don’t think we will forget him.

-A few years ago, such a role would have been played by a cisgender actor. Let’s get better, right?

– In fact, very recently it happened with ‘La casa de papel’, which caused a big scandal because Belén Cuesta played a trans woman. I think this will be the last scandal. I also tell you that it is not easy to find profiles of trans actors, especially of certain ages, and especially not in series development. Because if you make a feature film, for example, where you can look for a more natural interpretation, as is the case with ‘Las Niñas’, that is easier, but a series requires a more professional work dynamic and is more complicated. There are, but there aren’t many of this quality. You have to do a very conscientious casting like we did.

–And this evolution is for the better, is that due to the wider range of platforms? To social movements?

– It’s a combination of both, but I think the trans movement has grown quite a bit in recent years. And I haven’t told you about the whole issue of the trans law debate for a year now. It is true that there is a lot of information and a lot of misinformation at the same time. One of the goals of the series was to approach it in a very realistic way, well documented and so that you could understand this phenomenon from a particular dramatized case. Because I believe that to understand the phenomena, you must first understand what the protagonists of these phenomena feel, that’s what we forget the most when we talk about the trans law and we don’t talk about people, we talk about laws and conflicts and debates. It is a series that absolutely naturalizes the phenomenon, without opening any debate. We’re just explaining a story of one of those many thousands of trans guys out there.

– ‘To be or not to be’ is also a teen series, which tells about the fears and insecurities that all young people have to deal with, only on a larger scale of course. Was it hard not to fall into the drama?

-It was my main goal and my obsession from the beginning not to fall into drama or victimization. I think it’s a very clear series, very inspiring. I didn’t want to create a portrait in which a trans boy takes a prominent place on screen for the first time, and he becomes a benchmark for slitting his wrists. I also avoided a lot of chronicling the physical changes they make because I wanted to focus on the emotional change because before that you have all the YouTube videos where they capture the changes every day. But yeah, the intent was to do it from the point of view of a teenager who, as you say, is full of insecurities. And her point of view is tragicomic because a teenager’s life is a rollercoaster and one day they want to die and the next day they’re horny because the girl or guy they like said hello.

What advice would you give to someone going through something like this?

Well, let them watch the series, because I think the advice is trapped in it. Before we started shooting, I told Ander that if there was anything he found unrealistic about the transition, he should tell me, because my intention was to be as honest as possible. He told me everything was fine, so I was very calm. I think fiction can help a trans boy or girl because they get to see the emotional process. I also think it will help some parents a lot to understand what’s going through their son’s mind that if he’s a teenager they can’t reach him directly. Above all, it helps to empathize emotionally. The cinema or the audiovisual helps you to get in touch with some emotions and from there the world can change little by little. It’s not about teaching, it’s not about giving speeches, it’s about them feeling what this child is feeling and through that connection, because they understand certain things better.

‘To be or not to be’ is available on Playz.

Source: La Verdad

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