Paula Vzquez returns to RTVE: “I forgot to live and my mental health has paid for it in a grotesque way”
On the 30th anniversary of One, Two, Three…, the Galician presenter premieres The Bridge of Lies, a contest starring celebrities
30 years ago, Paula Vzquez he got into a car with his parents and his brother, they loaded the trunk with bags and they went to Madrid. Destination: the One two Three… When they were driving along the M-30, an elongated shape appeared on the horizon that would change everyone’s life. “I saw the Pirul and thought: ‘Wow! It’s real… Someday I’m going to work there,” he recalls, indeed, from the building next to the mythical Pirul.
Paula Vzquez go back to RTVE 16 years later, and it does so with an apparently simple contest but with many turns of the page. the bridge of lies is an original format from the BBC that premieres today, internationally, on Spanish public television. A group of celebrities, four per broadcast, will answer true or false questions that will make them move along a bridge.
“You learn from lies, as in real life. And the truths… The truths make you go forward,” says the presenter. In the era of fake news, the distinction between reality and invention has never been more necessary. “Can you imagine a debate in which the candidate who lies loses half the budget?”, she jokes, “it would have to be proposed.”
I turned off the TV 15 years ago for mental health. What I see hurts me. It’s like watching TV with misspellings.
Each program raise 22 truths and 10 lies of the most varied topics, which reveal the less obvious knowledge of celebrities: “suddenly, someone you don’t expect knows a lot about exotic animals, or gastronomy… There are also those who don’t know anything and are very angry, eh?”, says Vzquez.
In the United Kingdom, the first season with anonymous contestants was such a success that it was renewed for a second, this time with celebrities. Spain opts directly for the second option. “It’s summer and people are on vacation, what they want is to have fun watching others work”says the presenter, “and in the last part, where they all play together, is where the sprawl arrives: they take off their shoes, dance, complain… Characters used to cameras give you that.”
Comes back Paula Vzquez to RTVE 16 years later, and it does so when three decades have passed since that mythical television program Chicho Ibez Serrador that launched her to stardom. How does someone who helped create it view television? Easy: you don’t see it.
“I turned off the TV 15 years ago due to mental health. What I saw hurt me,” he says, “things like it becoming fashionable to show the scenes, or that the guest is in terrible light and the presenter thinks it’s fine… I believe in true entertainment, in making magic seem to exist., where the prepared things were improvised and the improvisation was prepared”. For her, today’s television is “very easy”: “Anyone can do that. It’s making TV with misspellings.”
The Galician presenter has been somewhat removed from the spotlight. Not for lack of offers, but rather for self-care. “It’s been 30 years on sets without windows, and that means you don’t have a life: you don’t interact with anyone other than your cameras, your operators, your scriptwriters,” she explains, “I lost an important part of my life, I forgot to create a family, have something stable… Sometimes, when journalists ask me about my hobbies, I think: but what hobby? All the spare time she had was spent sleeping.”
I have been away from the spotlight because I have forgotten to live and my mental health has paid for it in a very grotesque way
“I had forgotten to live,” she continues, visibly moved, “and my mental health has paid for it in a very grotesque way.” The three years that Paula Vázquez has spent away from the spotlight, recovering from a severe depression and taking care of her father, have sparked all kinds of speculation in the press about her physique. “I am not miss, during this time I have been involved in the formats that I have wanted, such as the Stallone program for Netflix. In Los Angeles, what they told me was that they had found me because of my career, because of my experience as a specialist in adventure programs, nobody ever talked about my body, whether I was prettier or thinner.”
Go back home” Paula Vzquez with the bridge of lies, and could almost speak of home literally. A few days ago she met his brother, a camera operator in The hunter: “We have never met because he has always done fiction. When you meet, you relax, perhaps too much. You let go a lot and sometimes you have to remind yourself that you are the presenter!”.
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