Yesterday (Dec. 19), RBD announced the beloved Mexican band’s reunion. However, they’re one member down: Alfonso “Poncho” Herrera. Since focusing on his acting career, he has made it known throughout the years that he’s moved on from that part of his life. Remezcla has compiled a few of the times when Herrera has spoken about his time in RBD and his intentions to not return to the group — which have been clear and consistent for years.
Since performing at RBD’s last show as a sextet in Dec. 2008 in Madrid, Herrera has put the microphone down and never looked back. Even while still in the band, he had said that he didn’t like to sing. In an interview with Noroeste in 2015, Herrera reiterated his stance to focus his career on acting. Starring in Rebelde was a stepping stone for his career to transition to theater and movies. “I confess that singing was never my great passion, but RBD will always be a part of me,” Herrera said. “I have discovered that cinema is my great passion. Making television is an exercise, doing theater is a delight, but what truly marks you is cinema.”
Herrera has also previously talked about how hard the members of RBD were working with little pay to show for it. In an interview that resurfaced this year on AM, he also mentioned how they discovered they were earning different pay rates while in the group. “Once all the members of the group got together, we were on a tour in Chile, and we started talking and we realized that we all earned differently,” Herrera said. “And that was very tough [to find out] because we also earned very little for what we worked for and what was generated at the concerts.”
In an interview with Remezcla earlier this year, Herrera touched upon the subject of bad contracts in RBD. On Twitter, he joked, “Check your contracts well,” in response to the announcement of the cast of Netflix’s Rebelde reboot. “If there’s something that I can help them with, it’s [advising them] not to make the same mistake I did, which was not checking the contracts that well,” he told us.
Since then, Herrera has starred in international shows like Sense8, Queen of the South, and most recently, Ozark. And while acting has become a full-time gig, he remains appreciative of his time in RBD and always shows love to his former bandmates. “It was amazing to be part of a project that was so important for a generation,” Herrera continued. “I don’t have anything but words of gratitude for being part of a project that I enjoyed, that I valued. We traveled a lot. Imagine, I was 20-something and I had the opportunity to travel the world, meet many people, get to know cultures, cities I never imagined I’d visit and experience.”
While RBD mania took over once again yesterday with the announcement of the band’s reunion, Herrera playfully referenced lyrics from their song “Rebelde.” “If you’re a rebel and do not follow others, I invite you to donate to a good cause,” he wrote. As an ambassador of goodwill for ACNUR, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, he encouraged his fans to donate to the organization that helps support refugees around the world.
However, Herrera recently picked up another microphone. He is currently voicing Batman in the Spanish-language version of the Batman Unearthed podcast.