Jedet, singer and actress: “Those who fought before me have allowed me to do what I want”

An hour before the interview, at around 9:30 in the morning, Jedet (Girona, 31 years old) shared with his thousands of Instagram followers a video in which one hand applies makeup to her right cheekbone and another hand applies makeup to her left cheekbone while the hands of another third person iron her hair to the rhythm of the song Oh ho of Snow White's dwarfs. The dwarfs sang it when they finally finished work in the mine and went home for dinner, but Jedet and his team have it as their soundtrack when the day has only just begun. It's Friday, April 5, and just a few hours ago has been released Mob Wives, the new song that the Catalan sings with La Zowi. “This release was the most important for me because it is my favorite song,” says Jedet from the hall from a hotel in Madrid, coca-cola Light in hand. This song is just a preview of the album that he intends to release in June, with other collaborations such as Villano Antillano, with whom he will record the video clip next Monday.

The one that Carmen and Zoe, which are the real names of Jedet and La Zowi, have recorded together, is considered “a five-minute film.” They play two hitmen who seduce her victim and then brutally murder her. “It was very hard because we had to spend 11 hours in heels, she came from two previous shoots, it was cold, we had to smoke 400 cigarettes for each take… But the result was very good,” he celebrates. In 2022 she released her first musical album, To the men I have had to forget, full of ballads and melodic music, nothing like the one that is coming now ready to rock the clubs. “Years ago I started to feel very sad because of heartbreak and I started working on that album, which is a classic heartbreak album, with guitar, violins, flamenco choirs… And I loved it, but once I got that off my chest, I no longer It vibrated in that tune. That's why I've returned to my friends, to my way of life, to having fun, to feeling empowered, to enjoying my sexuality, all of that. I no longer felt comfortable in that classic thing, because I didn't have something to express in that way, and I returned home,” he explains.

Love smiles on him now, but, above all, what he values ​​greatly is friendship. “We don't compete, we share,” they warn at the end of the new song. “Although the song talks about a trio, it is actually about sisterhood between women, between friends. That we do not compete, much less for a man, that we are the important ones, we enjoy our sexuality, we speak freely about it, even if they still feel uncomfortable. But the important thing is not the man, it is our union,” says the Catalan.

Even so, she recognizes that competition exists and in her case, she says, even more so: “I feel the competition as a trans woman against the rest of the music industry. I have many songs that I consider objectively good and I know that if a cisgender singer or a man had done them, they would have hit. In the end I am an independent artist, I produce everything myself, and I am also transsexual. If this industry is much more complicated for cis women than for a man, for a trans woman there is still a lot to fight for. But I have always liked challenges, and not just for myself, but because I think that if I work hard now and show that I can make a place for myself in this, it will be easier for those who come after me, just like the others. “Those who fought before me have allowed me today to occupy this space and be free and do what I want.”

At the end of March released another song, The mommy, along with Tony Grox, which in the end was dedicated to all those “trans sisters” who accompany her or accompanied her. “This is for Marsha, Carla, Bibiana, La Veneno, Isabel, Indya, Lola, Alex, Amor, Wendy, Valeria, Ángela, Topacio, La Villana, Paca, Selena… For those who left me and those who will come,” he recites about the music of the song. “I do all my work with that motivation, I don't do it thinking so much about myself, that I am happy with what I do, but I am very hard-nosed, to say: 'for my pussy!', so that The next ones may have it easier,” she confesses while from time to time she rearranges her neckline or her long hair a little.

Jedet is happy to have returned to music because it is something that she had left a little behind in the world of acting. She started with small supporting roles in series like Paquita Salas and ended up winning the Ondas Award in 2020 as Best Female Performer for her performance in Poison, in which she gave life to Cristina Ortiz. After that, she has a hard time lowering the bar again. “The last series I did as an actress was Killer women, in Mexico, and I stopped there because the roles that they offered me later did not seem to me to have much to contribute to me as an actress. “I want to be part of iconic things and seeing that they didn't reach me gave me the pleasure of being able to fully dedicate myself to my musical career,” she defends without closing the door to directing her own project written by her. “I don't know if she's going to come out or not, but I'm already planning it,” she says.

The trial is also still pending for the complaint he filed against the producer Javier Pérez Santana for sexual assaults at the party after the Premios Feroz 2023. “I didn't want it to become public, I didn't do it thinking of claiming anything, but they leaked it. It was a huge pain because I had projects that I didn't want to be overshadowed. It hurt me at work and it hurt my mental health because everything was questioned a lot, it was complicated,” she laments. Following the accusations of sexual violence leveled at the filmmaker Carlos Vermut that EL PAÍS reported, Jedet assured on the red carpet of the 2024 Feroz Awards that “the #MeToo in Spain” was going to arrive sooner rather than later. “We have already been silent many times and we should not be afraid, we have to end this now,” she answered in January.

In an interview with this newspaper in 2022, Jedet assured that she was trying to stop being a slave to her own image. More than two years later, when asked if she has achieved it, the answer is a resounding no. “I'm more relaxed, but no, on the contrary, I think I'm even more of a slave because as time goes by you are punished more for getting older. I have even talked to my friends about changing our Wikipedia entry so that our age is not known. It's like: 'how ridiculous!', but at the same time they subject us to it. We puncture ourselves or have surgery and they criticize us for having surgery; If you don't have surgery, they criticize you for being wrinkled, if you have an age complex they tell you that you're superficial, if you don't have one, they won't give you a job… that is, they're going to take you in the ass. But no, I haven't achieved it, not really,” she admits.

What she has achieved is that this image is how she likes it and not how others like it. She “she came from being very sexualized. When they wanted Jedet they wanted that Jedet, not the one where she can come with a turtleneck. I reached a point where I became saturated. It seems that trans women only want us sexualized to spare our lives. And women in general. But women age, we gain weight, we lose it, we wear cleavage, we wear turtlenecks, we are without makeup, we wear makeup… it's not just a single canon. I was at a point of 'screw you, I don't want to wear a low-cut anymore and if I do it will be when I feel like it'. And that's what I've done. I have learned to set limits and have my voice and to say, 'I'm not going to stop by here, I'll stop by with what I want,' she is sincere, standing tall and showing off the very generous neckline that she wanted to show off this morning.

The release of the new song coincides with the weekend and Jedet is promoting, yes, but also celebrating. “I'm not a party animal, really, now I celebrate more with a dinner or a meal. Yesterday, after several interviews, I came home, I did couples therapy with my boyfriend until nine at night, and we do online couples therapy,” she says until a small coughing fit interrupts her. “It's just that I smoked, I I've stopped, but I smoke one a day, or two” – and picks up the thread again: “She made me dinner, we prepared a strawberry dessert with chocolate and that for me was my celebration. Today I might go out to dinner with my friends. “I like to be calm.”