Roly Serrano talks about Claudio Rissi, his partner in El marginal, with whom he disagreed: “As an actor he was a jet and I was a helicopter”

Attractive and popular, Roly Serrano He answers the phone with his characteristic style: “What are you doing, brother?”, he says to the journalist from Córdoba, where he tours various theaters with his work. Rolando. The masterful actor shines a one-man show that alternates humor with profound existential reflection.

Directed by Alfredo Megna, Serrano says that the idea for the opera was born two years ago, when he had to enter an operating room to have a prosthetic placed on his right hip.

“All the fears, the possibility of not coming back from the anesthesia. I had never had surgery for anything. And at this point in the game we know that an operation can be dangerous. My life was at risk and there was that fear: ‘Will I come back after the anesthesia?’ And then you come back, then everything you think about comes. You think about your life, how you led it and what you should correct,” says the man from Salta who interrupts the interview several times to silence the barking dogs around him.

And so the work took shape. Rolandowhich is obviously called that because of the actor’s name.

“My name is a mistake. My father was the midwife at my birth, in Guachipas, Salta. He was a postmaster and when I was born he asked his clerk to register me. He just had to cross the square, but the boy met many people along the way to whom he told them that the master’s son had already been born, and when he arrived at the registry office he had forgotten the name they had told him. “Something ‘land’,” he recalled. And the registrar said: “It will be Rolando.” But he was Orlando (more laughter),” Serrano says.

“The work is quite autobiographical. The image on the poster, where I am dressed as a nurse, represents this I am my own nurse. “No one will heal me better than me,” says someone who has needed to close many wounds in his life.

Depression, overweight and constant struggle

When he was 7 years old, his mother moved to Buenos Aires and he lived in Salta with some uncles who mistreated him. At 13 he ran away from that house, did his military service in Córdoba and years later arrived in Buenos Aires.

After 20 years of relationship, his wife Claudia died in 2004 and Roly started gaining weight. And to this day, this is one of the most difficult battles he has to fight.

“It’s not easy, little black man. It’s a constant struggle, there I feel like I’m relaxing and relaxing, and suddenly I realize… And I’m back on track: having fun, feeling good and relaxing again. And I make the same mistakes. It’s something that I think it will always be like this for the rest of my life. A constant struggle“, he says Clarion.

And he adds: “Thank God I don’t have any other health problems other than this. Neither with drugs nor with alcohol. Yes, I have to stop smoking, this is already clear to me, because my body is no longer the same. I’m old, close to seventy. And when I see eighty- or ninety-year-old actors who look amazing, I get this little thing to think, “Why can’t I be like that?” I can be like that, I have to work for that.

Abandonment, loss and resilience

-From a childhood of abandonment and abuse to the death of your wife, you have been through different hells… But your new version is a kind of reward.

-I have gone through many phases: first there is the pain of loss. Feeling the abandonment of a grown child only from the age of 13… Later, when someone dies, you feel angry, as if you think they are abandoning you again. I went through that thing of hurting myself, of hurting myself. Since I couldn’t throw myself off a bridge, I started doing it in a thousand different ways. And then you say, “Damn, I’ve been living next to that wonderful, unique being for the last 20 years…”

“Before she died, Claudia took my hand… Poor thing, she couldn’t even move anymore. And she said to me: “Thank you, because I lived the last 20 happiest years of my life next to you. I leave you my son, know that you will take care of him better than anyone else.” I can’t have children and she, somehow, gave me one (Dante, the result of a previous relationship, is 39 years old and lives in Barcelona )…

-How strong!

-Then I came to understand that moment as a matter of happiness from pain, but it was a long journey. Thank God I was able to do it. How could I do other terrible processes: go, for example, from hating my uncles because they beat me to feeling sorry for them. I’ve learned not to hate them. These are very crude learnings.

Loneliness and a new bet on love

-Many years have passed since you became a widow. Do you want to fall in love again?

-I had the honor of having lived with a woman who had that moment in her life. I was rewarded for accompanying that wonderful being, but that’s all… I experienced many things and it remains a beautiful memory. I had to start over.

Today I want to reunite with a couple, be happy with a woman again. I am a very family oriented man. I like being and doing things for someone. When I am alone sometimes, I realize that it hits me very hard, because I have beautiful achievements and I have no one to share them with. Besides this there are my family and my friends, but…

-That loneliness is hard to bear.

–Sometimes I come home and only hear the chirping of crickets. And I don’t like this. I don’t live it well. But I’m careful: I feel that at any moment that someone, that new love will appear without warning. Confidently. There I give you the signed 08 (for the form required when selling a car). And I tell him: “Here, do whatever you want” (Laughter).

Your true success

Roly Serrano has worked in more than 60 films. He played “Don Chitoro”, Diego Maradona’s father The hand of God, Italian-Argentine film by Marco Risi (2007); and the footballer himself inside Youth (2015), by Italian director Paolo Sorrentino, which earned him international recognition.

“When Diego died, because I had played him in the film that went around the world, the international media paid a lot of attention to me. Once on French television they asked me what I had about Maradona. I told them what united us was a very hard, terrible childhood, with dreams that could have come true. Because I feel that that boy who was Roly, over the years he has earned the affection and respect of people,” he says.

And he continues: “After everything I have experienced, my real success is being able to be a good man, with good thoughts, with good concerns, who loves what he does. This is my real success, then everything else comes and goes,” she confesses.

Serrano has shone on TV with anthology dramas such as The marginal (He won the Martín Fierro 2019), where he played Sapo Quiroga; AND Tumberos, with his remembered character of the guard Galtieri. In the theater he has worked on works by authors ranging from Samuel Beckett to Ibsen, Roberto Cossa and Armando Discépolo.

The death of Claudio Rissi

When the famous actor Claudio Rissi died on February 2 at the age of 67 after a serious illness, scenes from The marginal, where the character of Rissi (Marito Borges) had fierce and brilliant duels with El Sapo (played by Roly, inspired by Marlon Brando and his character in Apocalypse Now).

Serrano had also shared a play with Rissi called The American buffalowritten by the famous American playwright, essayist, screenwriter and director David Mamet, who directed it Luis “Indio” Romero.

-How did Rissi’s death affect you?

-I’ll be honest with you: I was at enmity with Claudio. We had a couple of episodes that I didn’t like… But on the other hand I recognize the pain of this terrible loss, for the immense talent that Claudio had. Regardless of any stupidity or anger, all of this passes. His death hurt me a lot. She made sure no one knew he was sick. He experienced it alone, poor thing, something I wouldn’t want to happen to me.

-You worked so much with him, I imagine all the memories you keep in your memory…

-Not so much from the moment The marginal, because we didn’t see each other much, but we saw each other when we rehearsed David Mamet’s show. It was an amazing experience. It was a work that required at least four months of rehearsals and we had to publish it in a month and a half. We rehearse six or seven hours a day. There were times when we wanted to kill ourselves and others when we laughed a lot.

-How do you remember Rissi?

-I felt like I was next to a jet. And I was a helicopter next to him, you know? I am aware of my capabilities, but I know that there are vehicles that can reach the same speed but with different times. Claudio was a gas fitter and I was a gas fitter. I’m late, late, late, but I never give up. But Claudio was a boy who did everything with enormous passion and sometimes it went over your head.

Signs of affection

Roly Serrano’s projects include the title role in a play by Rubén Pires “Osqui” Guzman; and will direct a one-man show starring Guillermina Valdes.

When he stops to analyze the difficult moment that the entertainment industry is going through in the context of the socioeconomic crisis in Argentina, he says: “Maybe it’s a good time to reflect and not just try to entertain. I remember that when the dictatorship ended, the Open Theater was born. It was a rebellion where it was really about freedom, not about a mess,” he says.

-What is the most common reaction of people when they pass you on the street?

-He usually expresses a lot of affection for me. They hug me. Sometimes some people apologize because they call me: “Toad!”, but they don’t remember my name (Laughter). It’s like asking women their age, well, you should never ask actors their names (more laughter).

-What do you think they appreciate about you?

-My capacity for resilience. They take me as an example that you can let go and move on.