Malcolm Treviño-Sitté (Malabo, Guinea, 41 years old) was the only one for too long. “I was the only black person in class, in basketball, at school… and that was cool until I became a threat.” Now he is also the only black protagonist in a Spanish television series: Detective Touré, produced by RTVE and ETB, two public broadcasters and supported by Tornasol. It is never too late, but normalization is happening slowly. This does not detract from his enthusiasm and his belief in a profession in which he has always believed and which has taken him from the theater to the cinema and now to television, d Bilbao. . A series that successfully mixes intrigue, immigration and humor through the hands of this versatile and charismatic actor on the way to stardom.
Questions. Your mother didn't want you to grow up with your father so they wouldn't give you the two marks on your face that identify the Annobonese in Guinea, but wouldn't they have been useful as scars for your detective Touré?
Answer. My mother had other plans for me. I like to think that as an actor I didn't want to get my face cut up. I love my father's ethnicity, but… my mother, who was from the Bubi ethnic group, didn't like the idea of being hurt.
Q. How did you get to Spain?
R. I was raised by my brothers, my grandmother and my aunt Elvira, who is like my mother. My sister Mari married a Spaniard and I came here with them, first to Vallecas and then to Ciempozuelos, when I was eleven years old.
Q. Did you want to become an actor soon?
R. That's because my older brother opened the first video store in Malabo and I became a fan of Eddie Murphy, the Hollywood super detective, and the films of Bruce Lee and Jackie Chan.
Q. Well, it ended like the first one, except it took place in Bilbao instead of Hollywood.
R. In total!
Q Between you and the Williams brothers triumphing in Athletic, you are on your way to the prophecy that Juanma Bajo Ulloa has advanced with this black Lehendakari in Airbag.
R. I remember… Touré will at least work with the Williams brothers.
The actor Malcolm Treviño-Sitté will star in the series “Detective Touré” on La 1.Santi Burgos
Q What idea did you have of Spain before you came?
R. I attended the Spanish school in Malabo. They had brought me to visit before, but when we settled in Ciempozuelos, every time I went out I noticed these stares, comments, rudeness, bad manners and lack of respect.
Q How could we specify it?
R. Racism, a word that I would like to eliminate from my vocabulary because it means giving importance to a few people who cause a lot of harm.
Q Strange, until two days ago we Spaniards would not have thought that racism would spread so widely here. What is worse in this scourge: the conscious or the unconscious?
R. It's still embarrassing to admit it. But you hear atrocities. I am a big football fan and when I hear them on the fields I see that they are still making excuses for them. Both racisms are equally harmful, but I understand a little more or even forgive unconscious racism.
Q Are we factory racists and cure it with education and culture or are we naturally good and bend over backwards?
R. I think we are good and education and culture help a lot to fight against it. Also self-knowledge and introspection.
Q. Do you think this will become normal the day you are interviewed to talk about your acting method and the topic doesn't come up? How it started?
R. At the Metropolis school, also in Boato, in Alcorcón and later in Replika, which changed my life. I trained with different teachers and learned a lot. I focused on African theater, a world that reading Peter Brooks' The Empty Space took me to. According to him, there is a lot of drama in Africa because the fourth wall is often broken. I had to understand what I could contribute to my profession based on my difference.
Q Less Stanislavski and more Peter Brook…
R. Both of course. Nurture and root me to create my own path. Until I understood something while rehearsing Los Negros by Jean Genet with Miguel Narros. I saw this man overwhelmed and asked him: Miguel, what's wrong? Don't know how to guide us? He replied that we had a lot of energy and I told him: Of course we are black, Miguel. Uncontrollable. I saw him exhausted. And he verbalized it to me.
Q Let's go back to Ciempozuelos and those looks. Did they tag you?
R. For several years of my childhood, I was the only black person: in class, on the basketball team. And that was cool.
Q He is so far the only black person to be the first to star in a series in Spain. Let's take this slowly.
R. Observe! I have an association of multicultural artists that we call Limbo. We get help for projects with open castings. The casting directors do a good job. I make it very clear. The more ethnicity, the more publicity.
Q During your integration process in Spain, when did it stop being cool to be the only black person?
R. When I was an only child it was different, it was the attraction, but then I was a threat. I was confronted with this as a teenager. I had to prove that I was Spanish and a good black man, that I didn't get into trouble or do drugs, that I was an athlete. My conflict comes from what people wanted to see in me. I had no references, no one told you you were good enough to be an actor, even though there were pioneers here. Until one day a literature professor, Serafín Turío Murillo, said to me: Haven't you thought about becoming an actor? If I win a prize, I will thank him and all my teachers.
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