One of the show’s central characters, “Berlin,” will make a comeback to television later this month in a spin-off series, which comes two years after the highly successful Netflix series “Money Heist,” which attracted millions of fans worldwide.
The five-season Spanish-language thriller featured a Machiavellian criminal genius who captivated viewers right away, although he passed away early on but was still very much present because of numerous flashbacks.
And now, on December 29, he’ll return with an eight-part prequel titled “Berlin,” in which the show’s eponymous gentleman criminal assembles a group of gifted misfits to loot a prestigious auction house in Paris.
In “Money Heist”, or “La Casa de Papel” in Spanish, Berlin took centre stage as a mesmerising if manipulative sociopath with savage and unpredictable turns, but also a touching and endearing side.
Pedro Alonso, the Spanish actor portraying him, faced difficulties when the Netflix production team decided to keep him in the role long after he passed away due to the intense fascination with the figure.
In an interview with AFP, Alonso revealed to the producers that he was unsure if he was “capable of sustaining a character only in the past,” particularly one who “based his strength on danger, on the unpredictable, the unexpected.”
“It’s true that when you portray a character that works well, many people make this crazy switch in their head, so no matter what you say (off set), it’s always Berlin who’s talking!”
“But I can’t do anything about that, and I don’t want to anyway,” he said.
Now 52, Alonso says playing Berlin, a “perverse, shady and difficult character, really got inside of me”.
“Is the Berlin brand strong? Of course it is,” he says.
And the eight episodes of the new prequel are only going to strengthen that.
“All the characters that I portray are partly me, which is to say that how I portray this character is in line with who I am,” he said.
“Of course I have a bit of Berlin in me, but I’ve also got part of another character in me who I played this year, a father who is not an Alpha male and is an alcoholic.”
Alonso says he is not an actor who is bent on “playing a totally different character every time”.
On the other hand, he did hesitate before embarking on this new project following the enormous success of “Money Heist”, Netflix’s first non-English-language global hit, whose first season racked up close to 100 million views.
A global success
“When they brought up the idea of doing it, I asked them for some time to think. And it wasn’t to think about the character himself but about the exposure of being involved in such a huge phenomenon as this,” he said.
“At that point, it was a question of: do I really want to keep swimming in such exposed waters?”
The new series picks up the heist theme with a new mission in the Paris catacombs that Alonso said involves “more comedy and romantic comedy” — and a new love interest for Berlin.
Asked about his slightly husky voice, whose varied tone and tempo is one of Berlin’s seductive charms, Alonso starts laughing: “I’ve no idea what you’re talking about,” he grins.
“One time I heard Jose Sacristan, an actor I respect very much, saying: ‘When you’re 20, you have the face you’ve been given but when you’re 50 your face reflects everything you’ve experienced in life’.”
“So I guess in the same way, your voice develops as a result of what you’ve been through.”
For him, “Money Heist” had certain uniquely Spanish elements that made it stand out.
“It has something to do with the emotional warmth of the characters, a type of resonance in their emotional, sentimental and even physical aspects which goes beyond what you would imagine in Anglo-Saxon heist films,” he says.
“There is a certain effervescence of feeling.”