One of the Argentine actors with the greatest international expansion, michel noher he is a nomadic interpreter who places his body where the situation requires it.
As with Marcos, his character in “Unit”which has just finished filming its third season, the end of the trilogy for this fascinating story of espionage, action and suspense that has nothing to envy to references such as “Homeland” or “The Americans”.
Currently, Noher dazzles as the mysterious Rubén in “If I had known”the successful Spanish production that landed on Netflix, a skilful story that combines romantic comedy with time travel to the “Back to the Future” style.
For some Mondays, between November and December, he returned to the theater with “The Eternal Son”moving portrait about fatherhood.
On a hot afternoon that summer seemed to borrow from spring, Michel Noher talks with NEWS about various issues, wherever the talk leads.
News: I read that much of his childhood and adolescence he lived in Bariloche. How was that?
Michel Noher: That’s right, I grew up there. Today I think about it in retrospect and that possibility of growing up in the middle of nature was very beautiful and also of having a life that was much less mediated by the presence of adults, because there was another question of trust and tranquility, it was a different time in the world. . There were no cell phones, to communicate with my old man who lived in Buenos Aires, I had to organize everything by radio, they told me that at that time they were going to call me and then I would go downtown, to an Entel booth and there I would receive the call, it was another planet!
News: When you lived in Bariloche, were you alone with your mother?
Noher: When we first left, my mother was married, then she separated and the two of us stayed in Bariloche and the rest of the family in Buenos Aires. I also had that part, the part of being uprooted, of being surprised, of being a toad from another well and having to adapt very quickly. Because when I left I was a newly arrived porteño and when I returned I was a Barilochense… I don’t like to say pajuerano but that’s the idea a bit because going from a city of 80,000 inhabitants to one of 3 million is a big difference. All the time there was the issue of adaptation and I think that even today it is something that continues to revolve in my life. My development as an actor has occurred almost half in Argentina and the other half abroad, I worked in Uruguay, in Brazil, now I am a lot in Spain. There is something there that is obviously already part of my life and that has to do with adapting to different realities and idiosyncrasies. I manage well in that sense, I like it, I am excited to meet different cultures, with different ways of doing things, that exchange seems super enriching to me.
News: Right now “If I Had Known” is a success on Netflix, we have also seen it in several seasons of “The Unit”, two important series. Do you feel that better opportunities have arisen in Spain than in Argentina?
Noher: I don’t know if it’s better, opportunities arose that here in Argentina still don’t exist. I have not seen a series of the magnitude that is “The unit” here yet, perhaps what is most similar and what I loved is “Iosi, the repentant spy”. Being there in a blockbuster talking about the subject he talks about, the way he does it, with the camera and the creation of Dani de la Torre, working with actors like Nathalie Poza, Marian Álvarez, Luis Zahera. Francesc Orella, all First A, with one or more Goya under their arm, should be the same as a player lives when they invite him to participate in a European team, there is a chance to enhance his work.
News: In “Pulp Fiction” is the famous dialogue between Samuel L. Jackson and John Travolta about the small differences between France and the United States. What are those differences between Spain and us?
Noher: Something that surprises me a lot about Spain, and about other countries I have been to, is that in comparison we are a country that drinks very little. In Spain it is very normal to have a little vermouth after noon and in general the meetings take place a lot in bars, we are very fond of getting together at home, having a barbecue. Then there are some different ways of cooking food, when I go there I really enjoy eating artichokes, they call them artichokes and I discovered what they are made on the grill, another level! Our raw ham and their Serrano ham are so different flavors that they hardly have to be called the same.
News: You were born in ’83, almost with democracy. Did you see “Argentina, 1985”? How did you question it?
Noher: I saw it and it seems to me that it is a very healthy film, it is very well designed to reach as many people as possible because there is a younger generation that is now approaching what happened. Personally, due to the idiosyncrasies and training of my parents, I always had a lot of information on the subject, but I think that the film allows a lot of people to be interested in our recent history, to know that this happened and it wasn’t that long ago, which It is important. It’s a friendly gateway to the issue and it’s fine with me. I heard people claiming more toughness, but it seems smart to me as a decision because it allows them to continue to fill rooms despite being available on streaming. I, for example, was in Spain when it premiered, so I saw it a month and a half later. I went alone, I love going to the movies alone… luckily because there was only one loose seat left in the middle of the room. I enjoyed it a lot.
News: His father gave a note this year in NOTICIAS and said that his great-grandparents were assassinated in Auschwitz and that his grandfather miraculously escaped. How do you live that?
Noher: It’s very strong because all of that is much closer in time than one chooses to believe, in the face of true horror one wants to believe that it is far away and yet it is just around the corner. My grandfather is a survivor, the rest of my family died there. My mother is also a survivor, she had a boyfriend, they were going to meet, it wasn’t because she felt bad and just that night they sucked him off, nothing was ever heard from him again. If my grandfather’s parents hadn’t found a way to ensure his son’s survival or if my mother had gone that night, I wouldn’t be here. Not long ago it was the assassination attempt on the vice president. When I found out, he was working in Spain with refugee actors who fled Afghanistan because they were at risk of death, things like that happened this year, not a thousand years ago. Extremism is much closer than we are willing to admit. We must be more vigilant and be stronger in condemning those types of expressions that speak of the triumph of one as the extermination of the other.
News: Let’s talk about his one-man show “The Eternal Son”, in which he plays a first-time father.
Noher: Yes, I released it in 2018 and we did 3 hyper-successful seasons with a full house. We started at the Cultural San Martín, we went to the Teatro Nun, we did tours, a season in Mar del Plata, we were nominated for the Estrella de Mar, the ACE Awards and when we were about to face the fourth season the pandemic broke out so we had been left with many I want to do it again because something very nice is lived, of community, of communication, of the encounter. It is a monologue about a first-time father in the ’80s who has a son with Down Syndrome, we see the bond with that son and society’s relationship with them, from birth until Felipe, which is the son’s name, turns 30 years. I play the father, the son, the mother, the doctor, the relatives, but the main thing is the story and that is how it should be because it is a true story, that of the author Christóvao Tezza who wrote the novel “O filho eterno” talking about his human and universal experience. And I hadn’t thought about it until now when we spoke, but it has to do with what matters to me that we see as a society: accepting ourselves with our differences, agreeing with the other, understanding that not everyone is going to think like me and finding ourselves in tenderness , in the human. The audience is very moved and that always amazes me, theater is a bit like gathering around the fire and listening to a story, letting yourself be transported and transformed by it. You always have to go back to that primary thing to get away from everything mediated around us, spending an hour in a dark room ready to listen to a story seems magical to me.
News: Does he challenge him with his own paternity? (Nde: he is the father of Antón, who was born in 2016 as a result of his relationship with Celeste Cid)
Noher: Yes, it challenges me with my life, with my own prejudices. Antón turned 6 years ago very little, in the search for the name we liked what it meant. It comes from the Greek, Athos, which means what blooms and there was something about that that we liked. I also love how ton sounds, which is the note, the tone in Portuguese.
by Leonardo Martinelli
