The usual dynamic of Pasapalabra is to renew its guests every three afternoons. And this Thursday, October 6, the program presented by Roberto Leal welcomed new celebrities who test their general knowledge, their mental speed and their nerves in tests such as the musical track and the word search. Among them, the presence of the actor Miguel Diosdado stood out, whom many will know from series such as Netflix’s Cable Girls, or Acacias 38, from Spanish Television. His experience in theater, television and cinema is extensive, but if we dig a little into his resume we will find a most curious case. And it is that he has a particular relationship with the Rivera family, at least, in his work on Telecinco.
There are actors who, because of their physique, often make the same famous character in many series or movies. Well known is the case of Gene Greytak, who in his filmography only had 17 productions, and in all of them he played Pope John Paul II; his case is more striking, because he was not even dedicated to acting, his real profession was a stockbroker. Well, something similar happens with Miguel Diosdado: his Andalusian beauty has allowed him to give life to people from the Rivera clan in the miniseries Paquirri, La Duquesa and Carmina.
The first production released was Paquirri, in 2009. This series, starring Antonio Velázquez, told the life (and death) of the bullfighter Francisco Rivera, Paquirri. There Miguel Diosdado embodied Antonio Rivera, the brother of Isabel Pantoja’s former husband, and accompanies him in his last moments, in the ambulance where Paquirri died on the way to the hospital after the fatal attack in Pozoblanco.
Paquirri gave Telecinco a joy in audiences. His first episode reached 2,901,000 viewers and a 20.2% audience share, and the ending reached 3,369,000 viewers with 19%. This episode scored the golden minute of that day in 2009 as a victory, with 4,486,000 followers and a 27.7% audience share.
Diosdado’s work and image must have been very popular on Telecinco, and so they recounted him for the miniseries La Duquesa, which narrated the life of Cayetana Fitz-James Stuart, the Duchess of Alba. Miguel played there the bullfighter Fran Rivera, nephew of that Antonio Rivera whom he himself brought to life in Paquirri. His weight in the series had to do with the real-life wedding of Fran and Eugenia Martínez de Irujo, daughter of the duchess.
And a year later, in 2012, Miguel once again got into Fran’s skin in the miniseries Carmina. As its title suggests, it was a production that revolved around the figure of Carmina Ordóñez, Paquirri’s first wife.
Miguel did a great job here, but, above all, his physical resemblance stands out. José Antonio Canales Rivera, Fran’s first cousin, made a cameo in this series, and told the actor that his resemblance was amazing. One of the keys to this work is that the actor did not dedicate himself to imitating Fran in his public interventions, but instead built a character. “Deep down it has been almost like facing another role, I make a script based on the true story but directed from a director’s point of view,” he explained in an interview on ABC about this work. He also told the aforementioned media outlet that he did not speak directly with Fran Rivera, but with people around him, such as his brother Julián Contreras, and thanks to this “I have created that essence and that soul of his” that allowed him “take the essence of him. Being such a recognizable character and that he is alive, imitating him seemed to me that it was not going to strain “.
Carmina was not a series that treated the figure of Carmina Ordóñez particularly badly or indulged in morbidity (as Mi gitana did with Isabel Pantoja), but it did delve into hard episodes of her life, such as the episodes of sexist violence that suffered during her marriage to Ernesto Neyra. In that sense, highlight the scene in which Fran, that is, Miguel Diosdado, confronts her mother’s third husband after little Julián went looking for her after an assault.
Lastly, it can be noted from the filmography of Miguel Diosdado that, no longer playing Fran Rivera, he played another bullfighter on our television. And it is that he was Lucero de Linares in Bandolera, the daily fiction that was broadcast on Antena 3 between 2011 and 2013, and in which he was more than a hundred chapters.
Today, the phenomenon of biopics is on the rise again. There are series in production (or about to be released) about the lives of Nacho Vidal, Bárbara Rey and Ángel Cristo or Miguel Bosé, among many other characters. Who knows if sooner rather than later they offer us a production that tells the life of Fran Rivera, now that she no longer appears on Public Mirror. Because for the casting, the directors would have a very easy time choosing a good actor for the role. I refer to the exposed evidence.