For many, Yon González is a familiar name, even before the new Telemundo show Velvet El Nuevo Imperio. The Spanish actor, who broke through on El Internado and starred on shows like Gran Hotel and Cable Girls, is now taking on a new modern adaptation of Velvet, a global Spanish hit. The new Velvet El Nuevo Imperio, which sees him star opposite Samantha Siqueiros, blends fashion and romance for a dramatic and glamorous tale. And it’s an opportunity for new audiences to get to know the heartthrob.
González, who was born in Vergara, a smaller municipality in Spain’s Basque Country, shared that in many ways, acting chose him, not the other way around.
“I was a very restless kid, eager to experience things, and my mother told me, “Sign up for a fashion agency in Bilbao, and then you’ll go in your car, since you love driving so much, I’ll give you mine, and after the course, you’ll go out into the city, meet people, and, well, live,” González told Remezcla. After that, he was asked to do a casting call, and though he had no experience, Gonzalez shared he approached it with an open mind, as he approaches everything.
The rest is a long and fruitful career in Spain, one that has seen him play serious roles, but also many a romantic hero. González, however, has never wanted to be seen as just one thing.
“When you do something that works, generally, they keep offering you similar roles,” he said about his many romantic leading man roles. But “I recently did a series called Memento Mori, which is about a psychopath, a serial killer, and there I completely deviated from this line that I’ve done throughout my career. It was a very beautiful and very different experience, and an incredible journey.”
Just as Velvet El Nuevo Imperio has been a journey of discovery for González, one that’s been “full of challenges, of dynamism, which you have to live up to every day to be able to pull this off with all the pride in you.”
And for González, acting might be something that chose him and something he chose, but it’s also something he puts a lot of work into. “The work starts from the moment you start to know the text,” he shared. “That’s where the actor’s work begins and the creation of the character, and creating the line of thought, how one thought leads you to another, to a sensation, to an atmosphere that, in your life, you would do it and feel it differently to how the characters would react.”
But that creation is also collaborative, he told us. “Of course, you also have to be totally open to instructions, because one can have a vision of a scene and then you arrive and the director or a colleague has a different vision, and it’s always good to be open and not fixate on things completely, even if you have a proposal, to listen, because there are scenes that can be done in many ways, from many perspectives, so it’s about trying together to choose the best one.”
And this collaboration, for González, involves everyone on set. “It’s teamwork, which without the others would be impossible, from the makeup artist to the hairdresser, the lighting guy, the sound guy, all of that is crucial, and the more we work together, the more effective the project and the product will be.”
When it comes to Velvet El Nuevo Imperio, González is starting from scratch, even while respecting the legacy of what came before. “I don’t focus on the original Velvet,” he told us. “What I focus on is the material we have to work with, which is the scripts, and from there, work to create our own product.” Comparison is, after all, the thief of joy, and both things can exist and be successful separately.
“I’m not going to compare myself to Miguel Ángel Silvestre, the protagonist of the previous Velvet, because everyone sees and feels the scenes in their own way, and I think you have to serve yourself, your team, the director, and try to get each scene with everything we come up with here and whatever happens in the script.”
González also made it clear that this is, in many ways, the same story, but it’s also not. “Even if it’s the same story in some ways, there are different scripts, and they are different scenes, and although they tell the same tale, they are structured differently.” And for him, that means “you have to work with the material you have, and leave the comparisons out.”
“Comparing yourself unintentionally is ugly; in the end, you have to bet on your ideas and carry them out with the people around you.” And Velvet El Nuevo Imperio is a new thing, with a new leading man, even if the name might be familiar to a lot of people.
Velvet El Nuevo Imperio airs on Telemundo and is available to stream the next day on the Telemundo app and Peacock.
