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Los Angeles Times
4 days ago
- Entertainment
- Los Angeles Times
Pablo Cruz Guerrero didn't grow up with ‘El Chavo,' but Chespirito became his purpose
Unlike generations of Mexican children before and after him, actor Pablo Cruz Guerrero didn't grow up watching the hugely popular sitcoms created by Roberto Gómez Bolaños, the late writer, producer and performer better known as 'Chespirito' or 'Little Shakespeare.' It's a wonder, considering that at peak, Gómez Bolaños' family-friendly programs were watched by over 300 million people worldwide, and they remain pop culture pillars across Latin America — even in Portuguese-speaking Brazil — 50 years after they first aired. The programs' influence also extends to the U.S. among diasporic communities, enduring through reruns that periodically introduce his characters to new viewers. The catchphrases Gómez Bolaños penned have also become ingrained in the vernacular of many countries. His most popular creation, 'El Chavo del Ocho,' centers on an orphan boy (which he played) living in a courtyard apartment complex filled with peculiar neighbors. Then there's 'El Chapulín Colorado,' a satirical take on tights-wearing superheroes, where Gómez Bolaños plays an inept though goodhearted paladin (chapulín means grasshopper in Mexico). That Cruz Guerrero, 41, wasn't familiar with these landmark shows or characters is all the more shocking because he's now embodied Gómez Bolaños in the new bioseries 'Chespirito: Not Really on Purpose' ('Chespirito: Sin querer queriendo'), streaming on Max starting Thursday with new episodes weekly. The actor's lack of nostalgic attachment for the universe of physical comedy, wordplay and social commentary that Chespirito created gave him a leg up when auditioning, he believes. 'I want to convince myself that this was the one thing that allowed me to gain objectivity about the story,' he says in Spanish during a recent video call from Mexico City. 'Had I been a fan, I would have been ridden with nerves when approaching the character.' It was casting director Isabel Cortázar who first saw Cruz Guerrero's potential, and in mid-2023, asked him to audition for the part. 'Before receiving her call, I would have never seen myself as Chespirito,' he says. 'No one had ever told me before that I looked like him.' Cruz Guerrero has been consistently acting for over 20 years in films ('El Estudiante,' 'From Prada to Nada') and TV. More recently, he played a memorable antagonist in the second and third seasons of Netflix's 'Luis Miguel: The Series,' another bioseries about the famed Mexican singer played by Diego Boneta. As to why he didn't watch Chespirito's work during his childhood, Cruz Guerrero hypothesizes that because his parents lived in Los Angeles for three years before he and his siblings were born, they were more interested in culture produced outside of Mexico. Instead, they took them to the cinema, to outdoor concerts and museum exhibits. Ironically, Cruz Guerrero has appeared on several Televisa productions over the years, the same storied network that produced Chespirito's work. 'In middle school, I had a social and comedic disadvantage because many of my friends knew all of Chespirito's jokes and imitated the characters' voices, and I couldn't follow along,' Cruz Guerrero says. When offered a chance to vie for the role, he consumed as much Chespirito content as he could find online, whether it was of Gómez Bolaños playing his characters or interviews he gave. The arduous audition process required Cruz Guerrero to appear every Tuesday for about seven weeks for a variety of tests. Beyond doing scenes from the episodes of 'Chespirito,' each meeting would add more elements that got him closer to Gómez Bolaños: He tried on the costumes, interacted with the actors who would play his children, he shaved his beard and tried on the prosthetic nose, contact lenses and receding hairline required for the role. And even then, as the weeks dragged on, Cruz Guerrero wasn't certain he'd be picked, especially after sharing with the family of Gómez Bolaños, who are involved in the production, his neophyte status on everything Chespirito. 'I could read on their faces they were thinking, 'Are we making the right decision with someone who doesn't genuinely love our father's legacy already?'' the actor recalls. Ultimately, Cruz Guerrero won them over because he was able to closely replicate the mannerisms and voice of the real Chespirito. Gómez Bolaños' physicality called to mind silent film era icons such as Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton. 'I felt like if I tried to play around with my feet and knees when I walked, not only did I lose a little bit of height to get closer to Roberto's height, but it also put me in a position to feel a little more playful with my body,' says Cruz Guerrero while wiggling his arms. Roberto Gómez Fernandez, Chespirito's son, admits he initially had doubts about Cruz Guerrero. The show had been in the works for about four years at that point, two of which had been spent searching for the right actors to recreate Gómez Bolaños' world. Slowly, as Cruz Guerrero refined his performance and the makeup got him closer to Chespirito's image, Gómez Fernandez became convinced they had found their man. 'I saw my father in him,' says Gómez Fernandez on a recent Zoom chat, 'during complex situations in a scene and in a little wink or a glance that Pablo did.' The family's approval fueled him. 'They would say to me, 'I just heard my dad through you. I just had a conversation with my dad. I just shook his hand and gave him a hug,' says Cruz Guerrero, who recalls being deeply moved. 'That empowered me to feel more in his skin and not feel self-doubt because of my previous distance.' Once he officially landed the role, Cruz Guerrero immersed himself in Gómez Bolaños' personal and professional life via his autobiography, 'Sin querer queriendo,' which lends the series its title. It functioned as a link between the actor and the creator, who died in 2014. 'I was trying to establish a metaphysical dialogue through the words he had written and edited himself in the book,' Cruz Guerrero says. 'I asked him questions, and I feel like we had very beautiful conversations thanks to the book.' Many of the pointed questions that Cruz Guerrero sought answers to in the text revolved around fatherhood, namely the elusive notion of work-life balance. 'In our careers, there are moments of beautiful enlightenment where you're creating and having a great time,' he says. 'However, you're also aware that you're fulfilling a contract, and chasing financial compensation. This means that you're investing time and energy and you often prioritize the professional instead of being at home and you miss your family.' That struggle became rather personal for the actor during this process. 'I found out I was going to be a father for the first time the same week I found out I was going to play Roberto,' recalls Cruz Guerrero. 'I wanted to absorb knowledge from him about his experience as a father and the experiences I was about to embark on playing him.' While the series features moments where Cruz Guerrero dons the emblematic attire of Chavo del Ocho and Chapulín Colorado, the focus is on the real man behind them. The book also served as the foundation for Gómez Fernandez and his sister Paulina to write the episodes' screenplays. The two are also producers and were involved in every decision about the project. For Roberto Gómez Fernandez, the challenge was for the series not to become a solemn, saintly tribute to the larger-than-life figure their father was. 'I had to remember that I wasn't thinking about my dad, but about the character of Roberto Gómez Bolaños,' he says. 'They weren't real-life people because you have to transform them into characters, and sometimes you have to pull some strings to make the dramatic dynamics more effective.' And yet, despite having fictionalized aspects, Gómez Fernandez believes that the series offers truthfulness about his father's essence as a person. 'I think we achieved it, but along the way, we had to undress the character's successes and failures, many of which had consequences in his life,' Gómez Fernandez says. 'Some things turned out alright for him, but others went wrong, and he also hurt people.' It's not lost on Cruz Guerrero that someone like him, who didn't previously revere Chespirito's genius, wound up taking on the task of bringing his story to the screen. 'In moments of fear, insecurity and doubt, I would ask myself, 'Oh, man, how did I end up here?' And then it was all resolved with laughter because in front of me I would read the title of the show, 'Not Really on Purpose,'' he says with a knowing smile. After more than two decades mostly appearing in supporting roles, Cruz Guerrero is basking in what's undoubtedly the most important credit of his career so far. 'I'm especially grateful to the family, who chose me to play this beloved character, who is obviously part of their personal story,' Cruz Guerrero says. 'I live this moment with great gratitude, so thank you to Roberto Gómez Bolaños.'
The Guardian
15-03-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
Last chance for Darwin Núñez to turn laughter into legacy
The prevailing sensation while watching El Chavo del Ocho is to wonder how this thing ever got made in the first place. It's a low-budget Mexican sitcom that ran from the 70s to the 90s, centred on an eight-year-old orphan who lives in a barrel in an apartment complex. The boy is played by Roberto Gómez Bolaños, who was in his 40s when the series began and his 60s when it ended. Pretty much all the humour is derived from slapstick: situational farce, physical jokes, people getting their heads trapped in buckets. That kind of thing. Try to imagine ChuckleVision gone global, to the point where it was a genuine cultural touchstone for hundreds of millions, to the point where Paul and Barry Chuckle have a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame and are unable to walk through Manhattan without being mobbed. That's El Chavo. Even today it remains one of the most famous comic creations in the history of television: syndicated across the Americas, enthralling successive generations long after it was decommissioned. Including – at some point in early 2000s Uruguay – a young Darwin Núñez. El Chavo del Ocho (The Kid at No 8) is Núñez's favourite TV programme. Naturally, I have my own theories about this. El Chavo – whose real name is never revealed – is a clumsy, oversized agent of chaos, often entirely oblivious to the mayhem he creates, pursued wherever he goes by comedy sound effects but possessed of an essential purity, a credulity, a heart of gold and a homespun wisdom that makes it impossible not to root for him, even when he's doing incredibly stupid things. El Chavo, meet thine real-life avatar. His name is Darwin. Often you will hear it said that Núñez divides opinion. In fact the basic outline of Núñez is pretty much a consensus view at this point: entertaining, endearing and erratic, a richly talented player for whom Liverpool paid slightly over the odds, and who probably needs to be replaced with someone more reliable sooner rather than later. We can pretty much all agree on that. In a sense, there is perhaps no player who divides opinion less than Núñez. What people are really talking about when they talk about Núñez dividing opinion is his inconsistency. The spectacular finishes, the spectacular misses and the vague whiff of slapstick that seems to follow him wherever he goes. There was a moment during Tuesday's Champions League last‑16 second leg against Paris Saint-Germain when Núñez out-sprinted Luis Díaz in pursuit of Virgil van Dijk's long ball, only to remember about the potential offside flag and start running away from it, with Díaz already having stopped. It's the 81st minute. You're 1-0 down. And now, for the first time in your life, you decide to worry about offside? The orthodox view of Núñez's Liverpool career is that he is simply a poor fit for what Arne Slot is trying to do: a cat trapped in a grand piano, a maverick in a team seeking immaculate control, of emotions as well as the ball. Virtually all his metrics are significantly down from the Jürgen Klopp era: goals, expected goals, expected assists, key passes, dribbles, touches, shots and shots on target. This season Liverpool perform a goal a game worse when he is on the pitch than when he is not. A big Liverpool clearout is expected this summer and the word is they will listen to a serious offer for Núñez. And so to Wembley on Sunday and a game that feels – for Núñez and Núñez alone – like a kind of last chance. Núñez may not start the Carabao Cup final against Newcastle. Diogo Jota could easily slot in up front; Díaz has intermittently impressed as a false No 9. At some point, whether it is for 90 minutes or 90 seconds, the skies will darken and Núñez will make his appearance: a one-man forcefield, a player who somehow bends the waves of the game around him. He was born into poverty, suffered a cruciate injury at the age of 19 that put him out of the game for a year and a half and convinced him he would never kick a ball again. If there is any kind of vulnerability there, it is one driven by pure hunger, the high-stakes caprice of a man who still expects nothing good to last long, who will make every moment count or die trying. There is one metric in which he has significantly improved this season: tackles and interceptions. With his minutes restricted, Núñez has tried to make every single one count. His goals against Brentford, Southampton and Aston Villa have been crucial in the title challenge. And for all the focus on his missed penalty in the shootout against PSG this week, his contribution to Harvey Elliott's winning goal in the first leg has been almost forgotten. Sign up to Football Daily Kick off your evenings with the Guardian's take on the world of football after newsletter promotion Largely, you suspect, this is an issue of personal branding. Signed in the wake of Erling Haaland joining Manchester City, Núñez quickly found himself fitted for the role of talisman, immediately judged by goals and goals alone. Roberto Firmino, the man he partially replaced, went 13 league games without scoring in the 2019-20 title-winning season and it was fine. Núñez has never gone that long without a goal in his life and yet the perception persists – fuelled by a projection of the player people want him to be rather than the player he is – that he is some kind of gilded failure. He misses big chances. But so does Haaland, so does Ollie Watkins, so does any striker with the faith to put himself about, to make the right runs, to try. The Premier League has only been collecting 'big chance' data since 2010 but in that time the three players with the most big misses are Mohamed Salah, Harry Kane and Sergio Agüero. Maybe we need to chill out a bit about the missing, particularly in a team evidently scoring more than enough for now. Is El Chavo del Ocho a comedy or a tragedy? On first viewing, El Chavo is quite clearly a ridiculous comic figure. But, of course, over time, you begin to suspend your disbelief, to invest in the story, to embed yourself in the universe the writers created. He, too, grew up in poverty, was forsaken and ridiculed, and yet despite spending most of his time in a barrel has made himself a viable life, a reason to get up in the morning, a network of friends. For all the mishaps and chaos, the bonds between them endure. The real business of any football club is not the pursuit of numbers but the pursuit of memories. Divock Origi is still remembered fondly for the big goals he scored and Sunday's final offers a similar chance for Núñez to write himself into the club's folklore. He may have been signed on his numbers, but will bequeath only memories. His Liverpool future may well be beyond his control. But his legacy is not.
