BOB: This show originally aired in July.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: Earlier this summer, viewers of Spanish-language TV were introduced to Walter, a chemistry teacher battling cancer who decides to make high-quality meth in order to support his family.
[BREAKING BAD CLIP]
[“METÁSTASIS” Clip]
This Walter is Walter Blanco, and the show is “Metástasis,” the Spanish-language version of “Breaking Bad,” pretty much a scene-by-scene remake, produced in Colombia with the guidance of show creator Vince Gilligan. It’s airing on the Univision-owned network UniMás and it's already on Hulu. The Colombian actor Diego Trujillo plays Walter, his descent into brutality and a kind of madness. When we spoke to him on the line from Bogotá, I asked him how pure this remake really is.
DIEGO TRUJILLO: Ninety-seven percent, I would say. [CHUCKLES]
BROOKE GLADSTONE: [LAUGHS] Did you watch “Breaking Bad” to prepare for the role of Walter Blanco?
DIEGO TRUJILLO: I hadn’t watched it when I was called to audition for the character.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: Mm-hmm.
DIEGO TRUJILLO: I didn’t know about it, like many other people in Latin America. The moment I was called for the audition, I started to watch it and, from then on, I, I couldn’t stop watching it. I tried not to get so influenced by Cranston’s acting.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: How’d you think he did?
DIEGO TRUJILLO: Well, wonderful! I really liked him much better than in “Godzilla.”
BROOKE GLADSTONE: [LAUGHS] But I mean, did you find that his interpretation basically had to be your interpretation? I mean, you see the same descent of a character into malevolence and madness.
DIEGO TRUJILLO: There are things I don't agree with in his interpretation, but that’s very personal, you know?
BROOKE GLADSTONE: Mm-hmm.
DIEGO TRUJILLO: But the character basically has to be the same because it’s very well interpreted.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: Can you give me one example of where you consciously departed from Bryan Cranston’s interpretation?
DIEGO TRUJILLO: There are some scenes in which he’s kind of exaggerating the funny situation –
BROOKE GLADSTONE: Mm-hmm.
DIEGO TRUJILLO: - like gags and all that.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: The slapstick.
DIEGO TRUJILLO: Exactly. Like the humor is in the scene, it’s written like that. But you can choose to make it more or less exaggerated.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: This isn’t your first remake, right? You were in the Spanish-language version of “Grey’s Anatomy.” That’s “A Corazon Abierto” and even “Desperate Housewives,” “Amas de Casa Desesperadas.” Why remakes, instead of dubbing?
DIEGO TRUJILLO: In the case of “Desperate Housewives,” the remake was not really an adaptation. It was just a remake. So that’s why it didn’t work. When you adapt something, you have to consider the social and economical circumstances of Latin America. And that way of living in “Desperate Housewives,” put that in here, in Latin America, that’s high class way of living. So you don’t really believe that the gardener can fall in love with one of the housewives. Gardeners here won’t have access. I hope this doesn’t sound like discriminating. It’s just there are very particular differences here, and, and people don’t feel they’re watching something real.
[“DESPERATE HOUSEWIVES” CLIP]:
JOHN: You know, Mrs. Solis, um, I really like it when we hook up. But, um, well, you know I, I gotta get my work done and I can’t afford to lose this job.
[END CLIP]
[“AMAS DE CASA DESESPERADAS” CLIP]
BROOKE GLADSTONE: So “Desperate Housewives” didn't work that well but you were also in “A Corazon Abierto”/”Grey’s Anatomy.” Your character didn't exist in the original series, so I guess that was a pretty broad adaptation.
DIEGO TRUJILLO: Yeah, that’s the case of an adaptation in which really they – things changed completely, so it works. We don’t have public hospitals with all that technology. Our public hospitals here, they really struggle to keep on going.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: Mm-hmm.
DIEGO TRUJILLO: And, of course, they had to kind of expand a little bit more all the romantic things, make it look more like a soap opera. And that’s why it worked.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: So that brings us to Walter White. Jesse Pinkman became José Miguel Roses, Skyler, Walter Blanco’s wife, is Cielo, as in “sky.” One widely-reported switch is that the meth lab, in the RV in the American series, is now in an old school bus. What other changes were made, and why?
DIEGO TRUJILLO: Locations. We have a totally different geography here. Bogotá is a city up in the mountains, so we have a cold weather all year round. The desert in, in Albuquerque and the presence of the border, which is kind of important in the original series, well, we don’t have it here. So that has to be taken out of the story. The income of a middle class family like Walter Blanco’s wouldn’t allow them to have two cars, for example. We don’t have a pool -
BROOKE GLADSTONE: Mm-hmm.
DIEGO TRUJILLO: - for climate reasons and for economical reasons.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: So when Skyler snaps in the American series and, and walks into the pool with her clothes on, did you have an equivalent scene with her doing something else?
DIEGO TRUJILLO: Yeah, and I think it works beautifully. We do have a house and we have a kind of a pond in the back yard. So what she does is she walks into the pond and, in that instant, in her mind, she imagines she’s going down and she’s floating and she’s trying to forget and she’s purifying herself. So we had to adapt it that way.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: There is a tradition of narconovelas. These are soap operas based on a narcotics theme. Is there a right way and a wrong way to explore these issues?
DIEGO TRUJILLO: There is nothing like black and white when you’re talking about drugs. We have suffered from all the war around drugs. And the problem not necessarily is producing drugs or dealing with drugs. The consumers have a lot to do with it. Like if you cut down the business, the problem just stops existing, so –
BROOKE GLADSTONE: If America wasn’t such an eager market, then you wouldn’t have the oppressive hand of the traffickers messing with your democracy.
DIEGO TRUJILLO: Exactly. You can see what has happened with marijuana, for example. There are states in the United States that have made it legal. And now selling marijuana is not a good deal. The business is just cut off.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: So we could see, in fact, the methamphetamine trade spike.
DIEGO TRUJILLO: I don’t think in Colombia because it’s hard to produce here, and I don’t think the series is making a propaganda with it.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: So who do you think will make up the biggest audience for the show, Spanish-speaking people watching your performance in Latin America or in the United States?
DIEGO TRUJILLO: I think it’s gonna be the Latin audience in the United States.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: Mm-hmm.
DIEGO TRUJILLO: And that’s what I think Sony was trying to do when they made the adaptation because it was really risky to adapt such an important series, but I think there are so many Spanish-speaking people who haven’t watched it, that they wanted to get to them, to that audience.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: Then why adapt it at all? Why not just dub it?
DIEGO TRUJILLO: Because it has been tested and shown that many people don’t like to watch series dubbed. They prefer to watch them in their language.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: Not everyone is so excited for a new “Breaking Bad”, right?
DIEGO TRUJILLO: No, I mean, the people who know the original are not. I get all kinds of insults when I mention it on Twitter or whatever. People say, “No, you’re gonna ruin it, it was just perfection.” But, of course, the people who never saw it are gonna love it.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: Diego, thank you very much.
DIEGO TRUJILLO: It was my pleasure, Brooke. Thank you.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: Diego Trujillo plays Walter Blanco in “Metástasis”. But what do you call yourself?
DIEGO TRUJILLO: I am Heisenberg. [LAUGHS]
BROOKE GLADSTONE: [LAUGHS] He joined us on the line, from Bogotá, Colombia.
[“BREAKING BAD” CLIP]:
WALTER: Tuco, hey, why don't we just all relax, huh?
TUCO: [LAUGHING] Heisenberg says "relax."
[“METÁSTASIS” CLIP]