• ESTHER MUCIENTES

    @emucientes

    Madrid

Updated Thursday,24August2023-21:35

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  • Retro-viral characters (II) Manuela Trasobares, the mezzo-soprano who starred in the craziest tantrum on TV in the 90s: "If I had had a gun, I would have used it"
  • Retro-viral characters (I) Santiago Urrialde, the patriotic Rambo to whom Javier Bardem gave his greatest gift: "I do not feel the legs"

"My story deserves a documentary." It seems that Sonia Monroy does not need a grandmother, but what she says is true, her story deserves a documentary. Sonia Monroy in Spain is known for dozens and dozens of things, but none for what she has always wanted to be: actress. That's why he's not in Spain, that's why he left years ago and that's why he doesn't want to go back. Sonia Monroy has settled her life in Hollywood and, although she recognizes that she earns much less money than she earned here from set to set, there she is happy, "even with my hardships."

Everyone remembers Sonia Monroy for being the famous silhouette of Tonight We Cross the Mississippi. There came the fame that has cost her to live chained to a stereotype that in Spain has never been able to be removed. But in that documentary that would be his life, Pepe Navarro and the Mississippi is one more anecdote. The story of Sonia Monroy is not yet written. Where is that Sex Bomb? What do you do? Where does it come from? It is not the documentary that would deserve her life, but it could be the first script, and, without a doubt, she would write it.

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The social and television phenomenon they "tore apart": "I tried to commit suicide twice; "Let's start at the beginning, but very much at the beginning. Where does Sonia Monroy come from? Well, Sonia Monroy comes from a very, very big family. We were seven siblings, my parents, my cousin and my uncle. Everyone at home. I was very naughty, very rebellious, very contestant. He always had an answer for everything. That's why I have that ease of reply (laughs). I always wanted to be right about everything. Let's see, keep in mind that I had four brothers and they messed with me a lot...

In fact, Sonia Monroy's story is linked by an unbreakable umbilical cord with her family. His tenor father, his mother an actress, both at the Liceo de Barcelona. Among great figures such as Josep Carreras, Plácido Domingo or Montserrat Caballé, Sonia Monroy was raised. As she left school, both she and her siblings flew to high school. That's where his passion for acting was born and that's where his first opportunity came. He was only six years old.

When was your first time? He was 6 years old. I was given the role of Madame Butterfly's son. That's why I've never had any stage fright because I've grown up in this. My father told me, because I don't remember it much, I was very small, that when the performance ended she was the only girl who was put in front of the curtain with the protagonists of Madame Butterfly. In my time there were no children so prepared to act, so they could not find one who played that role. Everyone got on stage and when the soprano started singing the children cried scared. Not me. It was my father who told me how to do it: "Think that the soprano is a mom and is telling you something very trist." And so he did and cried, but he cried with emotion, as it had to be done.

My life has always been marked by death

When she talks about those years, the Liceo de Barcelona, her first roles, the madness she got into with her brother Peter when she set up her first music group when she was only 13 years old and toured half of Spain from bowling to bowling, Sonia Monroy's voice seems to break. He gets excited. He confesses: "My life has always been marked by death. When my brother Peter died I went to Madrid, when my father died I came to Los Angeles to fight and I'm still here."

A bit like Concha Velasco and that 'mom I want to be an artist' I have always carried interpretation in my veins, but I have wanted to be many things. That the one that covers a lot, little tightens, because that has been me a long time. That I didn't focus. I wanted to be a footballer, and I even tried out for FC Barcelona, but I got injured. I also studied to be a police officer because I wanted to be a mosso d'Esquadra, but I realized that I was born to be an artist.

In Spain Sonia Monroy is remembered for the Mississippi, for Martian Chronicles, for her quarrels, for her relationships, for that ballast that has been tried to get rid of so many times and that she has never been able to. When she travels to Spain she is always identified with those years, those of more than a decade ago, the one that leads to the other side of the pond.

Sonia Monroy, in her first role as an actress with six years.E. M.

At the age of 16 Sonia Monroy began working as a hostess in TV3 programs, with 18 as a comic actress with Alfonso Arús and after there she made the leap to Madrid. "My brother who was closest to and with whom I sang died and I went into a depression," says the artist. "I didn't want to act anymore, I didn't want to sing and it took me a long time to recover. I went to the psychologist and she was the one who told me that I could use a change of scenery and I went to Madrid."

And how were those beginnings in Madrid? In Madrid I started working as a waitress, go-go and then I did a collaboration with José Luis Moreno as an actress. It was 1996. He liked me a lot and after spending a year and a half working on Maravillas 10 y pico with María Isbert, Quique Camoiras, etc. it was when the Mississippi arrived. They called me to do a casting and I became the silhouette of Tonight we crossed the Mississippi with Pepe Navarro. That's where I started to be known.

From there she became a reporter for TNT, collaborated in A tu lado and Crónicas Marcianas arrived. Eight years with Javier Sardá, the years in which we saw Sonia Monroy bitten in the ass by a snake live, the years in which Sonia Monroy invented the escapes from the set, the years in which one day she was in Tómbola, the next in Vitamin N, she returned to Martian Chronicles, she was a rogue reporter, Everything proposed to him he accepted. And music, music could not be left out.

Sonia Monroy created the Sex Bomb and did it. "I set up everything myself and took care of everything," he says. "I chose three girls who were not known, they were go gos, I taught them to dance. Only I sang. I went crazy with the casting," she says. It was an incredible success, but Sonia Monroy got tired: "We were there for two years until I couldn't stretch the rope anymore because I was carrying everything and I couldn't handle everything. I was exhausted."

And then? After all those years, of not being given more opportunities than television, I went to Miami. I stayed for four years, worked at La Cosa Nostra as a collaborator and did many events. And then my father got sick.

The American dream is over... But another one began, the one he promised his father before he died: "I told him I would fight for my dream and only for him, to be an actress."

Do you regret the past? I do regret the past. I would change having worked in television and focusing on that part of my career. It is very false when people say that they do not regret what they have done, because I do regret it. I regret not paying attention to my father and pursuing my acting career. I regret working in television because it pigeonholed me so much. I made a lot of money and had fun, of course I had fun, but I should have focused on being an actress. It is not the same to come to the US with 40, as I came, than with 20. Listening to you seems that you really had a hard time. And I'm still having a hard time because it's not easy to come to a country and come alone. Not speaking any English or knowing anyone. And I had a very hard time separating from mine. I live on a roller coaster of emotions. People see me as funny and positive, but when the roller coaster goes down I sink a lot, although I always get back up. The good thing about me is the perseverance I have and that I don't give up.

Sonia Monroy, in Crónicas Marcianas.E. M.

People see me as funny and positive, but when the roller coaster goes down I sink a lot

Why did you leave Spain? The click was the death of my father. My father was very wise and never listened to him and when he died I listened to him for the first time. There was no trigger or that anything bad happened in Spain, simply that my dream was to be an actress and work here, in Hollywood. And now what does Sonia Monroy do? Sonia Monroy's day-to-day life does not exist. No day is like it. One day I'm shooting a Pepsi ad where I'm the protagonist and another I'm doing recreations of real cases. My day-to-day life is a bit crazy. Every week I'm on a different shoot, I do cameos, small roles, castings – the last one for a film that is going to star Anthony Hopkins – and I'm finishing the editing of a film.

Sonia Monroy triumphs on the other side of the pond with her YouTube series My Hollywood dream sucks. In addition, she reveals that the project that has her completely absorbed is the documentary about her mother's disease: Alzheimer's. When Sonia Monroy was starting her career in Hollywood again she had to return to Spain: her mother had fallen ill and she had to be with her. From that tragic experience, the actress has created Remembering my mother while she is forgetting me, the documentary about the seven years she lived with her mother's Alzheimer's. "I have a hard time editing it because I put the images in and I collapse," he says. It's with the trailer, the next thing to sell it to a platform.

Sonia Monroy, the day she was bitten by a snake in Martian Chronicles.E. M.

Has the U.S. given you what Spain didn't? Basically, it has given me my dream: to work as an actress. In Spain they don't value me. Sonia is Telecinco, it's television, it's press of the heart and they don't give me the opportunity. You know the talent I have – she was a candidate for the Goya for best actress for her role as Lydia in the film Serie B – but my name in Spain is linked only to that. It is very classist.Would you like to return? I don't want to go back to Spain. I return to Spain in summer, I am with my family, my friends, I charge myself with energy and I return. Although I don't want to live in Spain, I don't change any country for ours. This year I'm actually going to become an American citizen. My heart is total Spanish, but I'm going to become an American citizen because I'm going to stay here until I die. At work level I can do something punctual, but I go and return. Now, for example, I'm preparing a reggaeton song with Money Makers. And I'm going to mess it up, I'm going to mess it up again.

My dream to fulfill is to make a movie with Tom Cruise. Let's see if you come looking for me

What dream does Sonia Monroy have left to fulfill? My dream to fulfill is to make a movie with Tom Cruise. Let's see if he comes to get me before I carry a cane (Laughs). I could tell you many others, but my idol is him. So, television doesn't even mention it anymore. Look, I'm going to be very clear, I decided to be in a situation with less money than I earned, because in Spain and on TV I earned a lot, and go through hardships, which I went through, but be happy. And here no matter how little I do, even if I only say three words I am working, I am acting and I always dream that my opportunity will come.

For Sonia I could continue with the interview hours and hours. It does not matter the nine hours of difference with Los Angeles, that he has not slept yet, that tomorrow he has filming. She likes to tell and, above all, tell what nobody knows about her.

-We have to say goodbye, Sonia...

-Okay, but let it be clear that I do not regret the life I have had because my life is very entertaining. Let them take away the dance!