Among the multiple characteristics that define people with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD), sas explained by the Spanish Autism Confederation, there is an inclination towards honesty and directness. When this particularity is transferred to journalism, questions arise from interviewees such as: exactly how much money do you have in your bank account? Did you feel guilty when you started dating her while you were still married? Have you had affairs with celebrities that have passed? for your program? These are some of the direct and unfiltered questions that 60 people with autism ask various personalities (Díaz Ayuso, Antonio Banderas, Mercedes Milá…) in the program 100% Uniquewhich airs again this Monday at 11:00 p.m. after six months and with the transfer of the Telecinco broadcasting house to Cuatro.
“What has caught my attention the most is that you thought that famous people were going to be one way and in reality they are completely different. With Albert Rivera, at first I thought he was the typical spoiled posh who has had everything, but he surprised me because, as a person, he seemed incredible to me,” says one of the reporters with TEA, Violeta Díaz, 21, from the farm. from El Soto de Mónico, where the program was recorded, 46 kilometers from the center of Madrid. Innocent sincerity is usually one of the several impediments for people with different abilities to coexist in society. “It’s difficult to keep a job when you say your opinion without filtering, because no one says things to your face. Socially we say that the truth is a value, but it is a lie, we teach that the truth is, but as long as it suits us. It is a social construct,” explains psychologist Luis Pérez, from the Aucavi foundation, after accompanying the participants on the last day of recording, last December, in which Dabiz Muñoz and Rozalén were present.
The group of interviewers is heterogeneous in age – from 16 to 62 years old – and in types of autism, say Shine Iberia, producer of the program. They are represented the three known levels of ASD, from the first, which includes people with two degrees and a master’s degree, to the third, who may be non-verbal and need support to communicate through pictograms or electronic tablets. “We wanted to show people how broad this spectrum can be and how each one has such specific quirks. It is daring and risky, but we were looking for something different and from the first minute we announced the purchase of rights, Mediaset was interested,” says producer María Salcedo.
The original idea comes from the French program The A Talkswhich is broadcast on the France2 channel, which in turn is inspired by the newspaper Le Papotin, a newspaper founded more than three decades ago in the Antony hospital (Hauts-de-Seine) whose editorial staff is made up of a group of volunteers with autism spectrum disorder and directed by the medical center’s psychologist. In it, patients publish articles, drawings and interviews with writers and cultural and political personalities. The television version had great success in Francewith an average of 20% Compartir (screen share in relation to the total viewers watching television at a given time) and a peak of 4.6 million viewers when Macron was one of the guests. The format was sold to Italy, Germany, the United Kingdom and Poland, but in Spain has not had the expected impactat least in its first two broadcasts at the end of last year.
100% Unique achieved only 7.4% of Compartir and some 754,000 viewers, data that Mediaset seeks to reverse with its transfer to Cuatro and thus reward an effort that begins with the program’s own reporters. They respond best to structured, predictable and rigid environments, so taking them out of the different cities they come from and bringing them together with people they have never met could cause anxiety and stress. “It was important that they know their surroundings and we didn’t mix them up. There are two groups of 30 people and we do not put them together, they feel safe with the people who have been in all the recordings,” explains producer Salcedo. For him castingreceived the videos of 170 interested parties and were advised by the Confederación Autismo España – an organization that seeks to improve the quality of life of 450,000 Spaniards with ASD― so that they would know the hours they could work, how much the spotlights, the noise would affect them, or what textures and tastes they were sensitive to.
The intention to obtain information to achieve a better interaction also came from the host, Guillermo Fesser, who took a break from his life in New York for two months to present 100% Unique. She had already worked with a group of autistic people and had a character with the same characteristic in his children’s stories, but in this filming she learned that “it is important to know that being autistic is not a disease, it has no cure, they are like that. It’s like another type of personality, just as there are more nervous or calm people, only they don’t interact like we do, they have another way of processing their thoughts and emotions, they don’t verbalize them in the same way.” He remembers that in the first recording with Antonio Banderas, she stood next to the artist and led the reporters’ questions, but that on the last day of filming “I barely noticed it.”
Interviews with Díaz Ayuso, Daniel Guzmán, Carmen Maura, Enrique Cerezo, Javier Gutiérrez and Mercedes Milá remain ahead. Between programs, the reporters state their demands: that public transportation be adapted with cars for them in which there is not so much crowding, job opportunities, more specialized education centers, and that they themselves be the ones who represent themselves in the television and cinema. Fesser takes away his own learning: “If you ask an autistic person something and they are slow to respond, don’t lose patience because they have a hard time finding the words they want to tell you. They’re not nervous about being autistic, they’re nervous about you being like that. “They are not idiots, they are autistic.”
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