Malcolm Trevino-Sitte (Malabo, Guinea, 41 years old) has been the only one for too long. “He was the only black person in class, in basketball, at school… and that was cool, until I became a threat.” He is now also the only black protagonist of a Spanish television series: Detective Toureproduced by RTVE and ETB, two public chains and powered by Litmus. It is never too late, but normalization is slow. That does not dampen his enthusiasm and his faith in a profession in which he always believed and that took him from theater to cinema and now to television, that is, to become someone popular like this professional survivor who became a researcher in a multicultural neighborhood of Bilbao. . A series that successfully mixes intrigue, immigration and humor at the hands of this versatile and charismatic actor who is on his way to stardom.
Ask. Her mother did not want you to grow up with her father so that you would not get the two marks on your face with which the Annobonese are recognized in Guinea, but wouldn't they have been useful as scars for your detective Touré? ?
Answer. My mother had other plans for me. I like to think that she didn't want my face to be slashed to be an actor. I love my father's ethnicity, but… my mother, who belonged to the Bubi ethnic group, didn't like the idea of being hurt.
Q. How did she get to Spain?
R. I was raised by my brothers, my grandmother, my aunt Elvira who is like my mother. My sister Mari married a Spaniard and I came here with them, first to Vallecas and then to Ciempozuelos, when I was eleven years old.
Q. Did you want to be an actor soon?
R. That comes from the fact that my older brother started the first video store in Malabo and I became a fan of Eddie Murphy, Super detective in Hollywood and the films of Bruce Lee and Jackie Chan.
Q. Well, he ended up like the first, except instead of in Hollywood in Bilbao.
R. Total!
Q. Between you and the Williams brothers triumphing in Athletic, you are on the way to the prophecy that you advanced Juanma Bajo Ulloa in Airbag with that black lehendakari.
R. I remember… Touré is going to tandem with the Williams brothers, at least.
Q. What idea did you have of Spain before coming?
R. I went to Spanish school in Malabo. They had brought me to visit before, but when we settled in Ciempozuelos I began to notice, every time I went out, those looks, comments, rudeness, bad manners and lack of respect.
Q. How could we specify it?
R. Racism, a word that I want to eliminate from my vocabulary because it means giving importance to a few people who do a lot of harm.
Q. Curious, until two days ago we Spaniards did not think that racism would spread here as it has. What is worse within this scourge: the conscious or the unconscious?
R. It's still embarrassing to admit it. But you hear atrocities. I am a big soccer fan and I hear them in the fields, I see that they still even excuse them. Both racisms are equally harmful, but I understand something more, or even forgive, unconscious racism.
Q. Are we factory racists and we cure it with education and culture or are we good by nature and we bend?
R. I think we are good and education and culture help a lot to fight against that. Also self-awareness and introspection.
Q. Do you think this will become normal the day you are interviewed to talk about your acting method and the topic does not arise? How it started?
R. At the Metropolis school, also in Boato, Alcorcón and later in Replika, that changed my life. I trained with different teachers, I studied a lot. I focused on African theater, a world to which reading The empty space, by Peter Brook. According to him, great theater is made in Africa because the fourth wall is broken a lot. I had to understand from my difference what I could contribute to my profession.
Q. Less Stanislavski and more Peter Brook…
R. Both, of course. Nourish and root me to create my own path. Until there was something that I understood when rehearsing with Miguel Narros The blacks, by Jean Genet. I saw that man overwhelmed and I asked him: Miguel, what's wrong? Don't know how to direct us? He responded that we had a lot of energy and I told him: Of course, we are black, Miguel. Uncontrollable. I saw him exhausted. And he verbalized it to me.
Q. Let's go back to Ciempozuelos and those looks. Did they mark you?
R. I was the only black person for a few years of my childhood: in class, on the basketball team. And that was cool.
Q. He has been the only black man so far who is the first to star in a series in Spain. Let's go slowly on this.
R. Notice! I have an association of multicultural artists we call Limbo. We are getting help for projects with open castings. The casting directors are doing a good job. I make it very clear. The more ethnicity, the more public.
Q. In your integration process in Spain, when did being the only black person stop being cool?
R. When I was a child and the only one, it was different, it was the attraction, but then I was a threat. As a teenager I came face to face with that. I had to prove that I was Spanish and a good black man, that I didn't get into trouble or drugs, that I was an athlete. My conflict arises with what people wanted to see in me. I had no references, no one told you, you are good enough to be an actor, although there have been pioneers here. Until a literature professor, Serafín Turío Murillo, told me one day: haven't you thought about being an actor? If I win an award, I will thank him and all my teachers.
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