The actors were friends before and their on-screen relationship would become one of the most iconic on Spanish television.
The filming unites a lotIt is not for nothing that they say they are a big family, and even more so when you have a television series as long-running as ‘Aquí no hay quien viva’, with roles and a relationship as intimate and as funny as that of Emilio (Fernando Tejero) and Belén (Malena Alterio).
In the book ‘There is no one here who lives Behind the scenes: the delirious history of our community’ by Javier P. Martín there is a chapter dedicated to how the series changed the lives of the actors. From interpreters coming from acting schools to ringing bells like some of the most famous personalities in the country in a matter of a few months.
But during the first season these iconic characters and plots were still being forged. There is no community of neighbors without couples, and one that they discovered with the series underway was that of Emilio and BelénAt first they admit that getting involved was a matter of trying “to see what happened” and how the audience received it, but ultimately it worked for them.
“For us the story of Emilio and Belén was born with the idea of taking lifelong sexual tension and breaking it“said David Abajo, one of the scriptwriters of the series. The intention here was to reverse the cliché, to have them start sleeping and then scratch if there was love there. It turned out to be very easy to find that with the actors, since they both had a lot chemistry.
Tejero and Alterio had met some time ago while studying at the Cristina Rota acting school in Madrid, and since then they had become very good friends. “You didn’t know what led to what, whether the script led to their relationship or the other way around. It was something that was just going on its own,” said Laura Caballero, co-creator of the series. The truth is that The on-screen relationship also led to a greater personal attachment, to the point that real jealousy was felt. Especially from Tejero.
Fernando Tejero: “It made me very angry and I was jealous of any actor who came to play Malena’s partner.For example, I remember poor missing Alex Angulo, who was one of Malena’s partners, and I felt terrible about that. I kept asking the scriptwriters: ‘But when is this going to end?'”
Malena Alterio: “He was jealous. When I was having an affair with Paco from the video store, that’s when he got jealous. I’ll even tell you that at that time I was premiering Una palabra tuya by Ángeles González-Sinde, and my character was having an affair with Antonio de la Torre, and Fernando came out of the film saying to me: ‘Well, but I don’t know, it gave me the creeps to see you there’. We were like boyfriends without being boyfriends. We were a couple and now we are very, very good friends.; “He is my cousin from Córdoba.”
It was such an iconic relationship that others in the industry wanted to take advantage of it. Tejero and Alterio have appeared together again in other productions, such as ‘Al final del camino’ or ‘Cinco metroscuadros’, a feature film about the real estate bubble in which they played a couple. Their last reunion was in person, in an emotional hug after Alterio won the Goya for ‘Que nadie duerma’.
Image: Fernando Tejero (Instagram)
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