“I was not an actress and being myself has brought me here. And I haven’t always been proud of how I was. In the film they ask my character if he has received a prize and he says yes, the prize of being a faggot.” In 2024, La Dani gave one of the most applauded speeches at the Feroz Awards, in which he was recognized as Best Supporting Actor in a Film for his work in I’m loving you madly. Alejandro Marín’s film about the first Spanish LGTBI activists, for which he was also nominated for the Goya for Best New Actor.
A year later, La Dani has participated in two series, she has set up her own hair salon in her native Malaga and this Saturday she is going to take the reins of the gala where the awards from the Association of Cinematographic Informants of Spain will be presented. The ceremony, which will be held in Pontevedra and will be broadcast live on La 2 and RTVE Play, starts with the film House in flames and the series Want like the big favorites.
Dani assures this newspaper that the first thing she thought when she received the “gift” of the proposal to present the Feroz was: “These people are crazy.” And that, since then, it has gone through “many processes” that have encompassed “a lot of emotion and nerves.” “I go without a earpiece, cards or teleprompter. Just with my memory, and that scared me at first, but after all the rehearsals, I’m having a lot of fun,” he adds.
Beyond the “rogue tone” that characterizes the Feroz, he affirms that, “of course, there will be room for vindication” at the gala and that, of course, what will have no place are “machismo, patriarchy nor homophobia. Only for good people, girls and gays.” He also highlights the importance of being able to see it on television, for cases like that of his aunt, who does not have internet or a computer, and that in this way “he will be able to see it”: “It will have a different scope.” which is going to be very interesting.”
Furthermore, he indicates that RTVE “has not vetoed anything” about the script. “I was more the one who removed a joke because I didn’t feel comfortable saying it, because maybe it was a slightly unnecessary joke,” he admits.
Contemplate (or not) a new Carlos Vermut case
On the morning of the day in which these awards were presented last year, the newspaper El País published an investigation that revealed the alleged attacks suffered by three women by the director Carlos Vermut.
The report shook the world of Spanish audiovisuals, which that same night would meet for the presentation of these awards at the Palacio Vistalegre Arena in Madrid, whose red carpet was marked by the guests’ statements about what at that moment seemed like it could be the beginning of the Spanish MeToo. Brays Efe and Coria Castillo were the presenters of that evening, and among the first to speak out on the matter. “What should happen is that people who have something to say get the message that people will be by their side, that they can tell us their experiences without fear of reprisals,” they told this newspaper.
“Let’s hope not, but if a misfortune like this happens, you will be given a voice and you will report it. I have no doubt about it,” says La Dani, although she indicates that it is not something they have contemplated in the ceremony script: “The gala is something that is alive. The script is closed, in quotes, just as depending on the confirmations of people who will or will not be able to come, there are jokes that have been dropped.”
“No precariousness, but I don’t make a living from acting”
After 2024 in which I’m loving you madly took her to the Feroz and the Goya, La Dani affirms: “It has been a very cool year, but it is not that my life has changed radically and this is now Hollywood.” Since then he has recorded a couple of series in which he describes “three seconds” coming out and a couple of shorts.
“I don’t like to talk about precariousness because it was precarious when I was a shop assistant and didn’t have anything to eat. Now wouldn’t be the word, but because I have another job. I couldn’t live just being an actor. Imagine what they would have to pay me to be able to make a living doing two episodes of two series in one year. No precariousness, but I don’t make a living from acting, far from it,” he reflects.
“I’m not complaining at all,” he still says about the titles in which he has participated –Dating Barcelona and An Andalusian dog–, because “thanks” to these papers he has been able to set up his own hair salon, another goal he had been dreaming of for a long time. while rolling I’m loving you madlyLa Dani worked as a receptionist for a business of this type, and continued to do so once the recording was completed.
“I had a moment of considering what I wanted to do with my life and I wanted to have a job, to work a little for myself,” he explains about how he finally made the decision to study this profession. In fact, he remembers that he was teaching when they called him to tell him that he had been nominated for both the Feroz and the Goya.
What he does seem to rule out for the moment is his career as a singer, which began in 2017 with the songs Like Beyoncé, Gordo y apretao and Feline Party. Since then he has published three epés (Banana Split, Greatest Hits and Xiaomi). “I’m not going to say ‘I’ll never make music again’, Sara Fantova, the scriptwriter of I’m loving you madlyasked me for a song for the soundtrack of her first film as a director, and I made it for her. Or if suddenly an artist I love wants to do a collaboration, I would do it. But I start making records and bowling, what’s up! That was it, I had a great time, it brought me here, but that’s it,” he says.
Explaining your gender identity eight years later
With her Goya nomination for Best Newcomer last year, La Dani became the first non-binary person to opt for a big head, or that was what made headlines, because she remembers that, in the same category, she was up for the award. Julio Hu Chen, from the film Chinese by Arantxa Echevarría, which is also one. “I completely understand being asked, but since 2017 I started making music talking about gender identity. We are in 2025 and eight years have already passed justifying and explaining it,” he laments.
I have been talking about gender identity since I started making music in 2017. We are in 2025 and they have already spent eight years justifying and explaining it. I also don’t have to be an example of anything or be educating.
“I don’t have to be an example of anything or educate. It’s also a little tiring for me because, as I’ve said many times, I may be the first person visible. I didn’t want it to fall on me, but so as not to take merits that do not belong to me,” he values.
This ‘responsibility’ of having to respond to certain issues that La Dani has felt is shared with that of the actresses who are continually asked about machismo and cases of sexual abuse within the audiovisual sector – the actress and director Marta Nieto is one. of the last examples–: “The actors are not asked anything about personal things about which they have to explain or justify themselves.”
Beyond acting, music and hairdressing, La Dani rules out opening the door to going behind the cameras, given her multifaceted profile. “I don’t have talent, what I have is very little shame,” he points out. “The logical thing would be to combine hairdressing with cinema, and do ‘pelu’ in films or series, but I’m not very interested either. I only cut, I don’t comb my hair or highlight it, which is something that is needed in the cinema,” he points out.
“The truth is, right now, I love my life. What I am, what I do, I have the perfect balance. Hairdressing is my grounding and my dream, and being an actor is something that I love, it amuses me a lot, it makes me prosper financially, I want to continue learning and advance. Do projects that fulfill me, but I’m fine the way I am. All the time it seems like we have to be from NASA, and it’s no small thing to be a hairdresser and an actress, with that already…”, he reflects and claims.
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