For a good cause, Jesús Vázquez (Ferrol, 58 years old) is the master of ceremonies of ‘Desnudos por la vida’, the program that Telecinco broadcasts this Wednesday (10:50 p.m.) in which they remove celebrities’ clothes to raise awareness around cancer prevention. In this way, the presenter adds a new project to his extensive professional career at Mediaset, a communication group to which he has been linked since the beginning of its broadcasts.
–What did you think when they offered you a nude program?
–A little scared at first, but when they told me that there were celebrities from different fields who had to do a ‘Full Monty’ to fight cancer, I said: “That’s it, don’t tell me anything else.” It wasn’t difficult for me to decide.
–Has it cost more for famous people to open themselves inside or to get naked?
–I think the most difficult thing has been learning the strictly technical part. The other thing came later because we surrounded them with love and wrapped them up so that they felt good, even if the situations were uncomfortable. We wanted them to experience taking off their clothes as a party and fun. And they have done that almost naturally when it was time to talk about cancer. We all know a story that has scratched our hearts. I think the most difficult thing has been that they learned to dance and undress with grace.
–You have also decided to get naked.
–It was out of empathy, sympathy, affection and gratitude because they have been very generous. I will say it again and again: changing in the gym locker room or being on the beach in a swimsuit or topless is not the same as getting on stage with a bunch of people and letting your hair down. And do all this synchronizing a choreography and taking off your clothes with grace. For them it has been a very big challenge. That bravery caused me so much admiration that, at the end of the recording day, I told them: “Now I’m the one who’s going to get naked.”
–However, he already starred in the first nude of a man in the magazine Interviú. How does he remember it?
–I was the first and I did it for a good cause. I asked them for a lot of money and they gave it to me. I allocated the entire amount of what the magazine paid me to UNHCR, for which I am an ambassador, for refugee camps in Somalia. We were building schools and we needed money because the situation was very dramatic. The situation on Somalia’s border with Kenya has not been resolved and will not be resolved because Somalia is a failed state. Hundreds of thousands of people live poorly in the desert. I got naked, the money arrived and we started the schools. Sometimes getting naked is wonderful.
–You can boast of having presented the major international formats in Spain.
–Not all formats. If I have made them, it is because I have been working for many years and I have been extremely lucky that Mediaset has acquired them and wanted me to present them. That is a gift of life. When I saw ‘Operación Triumph’ for the first time, I banged my head against the walls because TVE was showing it and I said: ‘Why didn’t we buy it? This is my program.’ And then Telecinco bought it. Then ‘The Voice’, ‘Survivors’ appeared… There were thousands of formats that I saw that were broadcast abroad and I thought that if I presented them, I could retire. For now, I’m still here. It will also be because I give my bosses few problems and I try to be a good colleague.
–Having been a presenter on Telecinco for so many years, haven’t you been tempted to let yourself be signed to another channel?
-The truth is, no. People believe that I have been at Mediaset for 33 years, but for a while I went to do theater and those silly things that you think about when you are young because I didn’t want to pigeonhole myself. Then I took a tour of the regional networks to do very funny programs like ‘Gente con spark’. I had a great time but, when Telecinco called me to come back, I came back. I have always felt that this is my home.
–With so many television programs, do you have time to rest?
–I organize myself. When it’s all over, I’ll go to Antarctica. I’m going to welcome the new year there because things are getting very bad with climate change and it’s already ceasing to be what it was. It’s a place I don’t want to die without seeing.
#give #bosses #problems #good #colleague