“And then Cris Miró appeared on television. In the most important programs of those years, because she was the first transvestite star in Argentina, the first that the media recognized. Cris sat in the most expensive armchairs on the screen, with the blondest, silliest, most conservative drivers of the moment. And she was the most beautiful.
This excerpt from the book The evil ones of Camila Sosa Villada was the first thing that Serrano Mine (26) read and learned about Cris Mirowhom he now plays in the series Cris Miró (She), which will premiere on June 23 on TNT (every Sunday, at 10 p.m., a new episode) and from June 24 it will be complete on Flow.
She was in Berlin, where she worked in different cabaret shows, and she was shocked by those few lines in which Sosa Villada narrates the pain she and her trans friends felt when they found out, through the television of the pension where they were staying. was in Córdoba, after the death of Cris Miró. Mina Serrano immediately stopped reading and Googled her name. There she found some information: some photos from the magazine that Cris starred in in Maipo, a hidden camera in VideoMatch and the interview with Mirtha Legrand, in which La Chiqui recognizes her: “I don’t know how to treat you Cris, I’m telling you the truth…”.
“Camila dedicates some beautiful words to him. Something moved me when I read it, because it makes a very poetic description.”Mina acknowledged in dialogue with Clarion during the last Xcaret Platino Awards ceremony.
Mina was born in Granada, “a very small city” in the southeast of Spain.
His childhood and adolescence were not easy: “I suffered bullying, They ignored me in high school. They looked at me so strangely that no one talked to me. It wasn’t just because I ‘had a pen’ or they saw me as feminine, it’s because I was also gothic, but in my own way; I didn’t even fit in with the goths. “My tastes were strange to them, they considered that I spoke strangely… There were so many things that they didn’t even know where to attack me, so they simply displaced me and pretended that I didn’t exist.”
At 17, her fanaticism for theater took her to Madrid to study dramatic art. There “I explored non-binary and gender non-conforming; “I discovered the spectrum of transness and began to move.”
Mina Serrano, on the red carpet of the Platino Xcaret Awards.
In the Spanish capital she joined a modeling agency and discovered the performancean artistic activity that would later take her to work in the German capital.
Find a reference
-What made you learn about Cris Miró?
–It became a reference, a lighthouse, an inspiration… “If I can be a little bit like her, I can be happy.” She represented a model of femininity that inspired me, something about me resonated with her. When I met her I was at a very early age of my transition and she was not clear about things. For those moments we need references. Those of us who, for some reason, are a bit dissident, need that so as not to feel othered, so as not to feel like we are aliens. And women like Cris, I believe, have done that work in a later generation like mine. And they have made things easier for us by simply being, being visible, existing.
Cris Miró became a reference, a lighthouse, an inspiration…
After a first stage of castings, Martín Vatenberg and Javier Van de Couter, directors of the biopic Regarding the first trans star, they couldn’t find their Cris Miró and decided to make an open call.
Immediately Argentine friends, encouraged by her physical resemblance to Cris Miró, wrote to Mina, who at that time was in Paris working as a model after the Italian designer Ricardo Tisci discovered her and gave her an exclusive contract with the British house Burberry.
“I immediately started writing to the casting people and we started with the first tests over Zoom,” he said. And he added: “I came into contact with Martín Vatenberg, the director, and we connected a lot, we had many conversations. “It was a long selection process until it was finally confirmed.”
Video
The series will tell the story of the first Argentine trans woman to become a star at the Maipo Theater in the 90’s.
-What did they tell you that they liked most about you?
-It was a set of things. While there is something physical, we also have an essence, a world view that I think is similar. And then many things happened… In the last audition phase, I was already in Buenos Aires and many magical things happened that led us all to understand that it was the right decision. Or so I hope.
-Tell me a situation…
-(Laughs) I can’t tell you. I keep them to myself. There were magical things, but I’ll leave it there.
Mina Serrano, on the set of “Cris Miró (Her)”. Photo: Instagram.
-What are your expectations for the premiere of the series?
-I try not to have them. I think we have made a very sincere series, which lives and breathes with Cris. People who see her will understand all the decisions she made, all the things that happened in her life and why she became this icon that she is for all of us today. That’s my only expectation. I want it to be a series that helps us understand her, from a personal perspective, from her. And I think that’s it. The expectation I have is that, that people connect with Cris.
The series completes its cast with great actors including Katja Alemann, César Bordón, Agustín “Soy Rada” Aristarán, Vico D’Alessandro, Marcos Montes, Toto Rovito, Manu Fanego, Campi and Adabel Guerrero.
Pay the debt
-Do you feel that this series comes to settle an audiovisual debt with the figure of Cris and with the trans community?
-Yes, we talk a lot about a historical debt with the trans community and I think that is true. We have been an oppressed group, expelled to one side of society, and it is time to tell our stories and not from one side of a typical story of a trans character, but to focus on the diversity of our experiences, because in the end we are different people , there is no reason to put us all in the same bag.
And with Cris… when I discover her I see an exceptional person, but through interviews that did not do her justice, that they treated her in a way that was not right, and I believe that the debt is saved that way. With the book (Female, Cris Miró – Living and dying in a country of males, of Carlos Sanzolon which the fiction is based) and now with the series we begin to get to know Cris from a purer and sincere point of view.
Mina Serrano as Cris Miró.
-Now a new panorama has opened up for you… What is your dream at a professional level?
-I am very fond of my mysteries… Now the world of audiovisuals has opened up, something that I had not allowed myself to dream of. And now there are possibilities and I’m starting to have other projects. That encourages me to dream more and dream bigger. There is something about my generation, that we are very multidisciplinary. I have projects more linked to performance and contemporary art, also cabaret, and now we add this entire audiovisual world.
Mina Serrano, during its time in Mar del Plata. Photo: Instagram.
-And what connection did you achieve with Argentina?
-It was a magical connection and I would love to continue going to work. It is a country that since I arrived made me feel very comfortable. My arrival in Argentina is a little particular, because I come directly to embody an icon that is very important for many people. And I did it with respect, transparency and the humility of saying ‘well, look, I know that it is very important, for me it is also very important, so I am going to do what I can to do it as best as possible for May the series do justice to Cris’. I share that It’s a great icon and I don’t want to put myself ahead of it.. I did my best like anyone else in my position.
