Susi Caramelo: "I'm pibonéxica: I think I'm hotter than I am"

SUSI CARAMEL. Hospitalet de Llobregat, 1980. The comedian of the moment has entered the television world like a whirlwind. After making a mess of it on red carpets and photocalls with The Missing Ones, he will have his own program in # 0 of Movistar +: Caramelo.

Barely a year ago you made your debut as a reporter on 'The Missing Ones' and now you're premiering a solo show with your name in the title. What happened here?

It is true, it has gone very fast. I have been very lucky, but there is a lot of work behind it for many years. It has not been to arrive and kiss the saint.

How did you start in comedy?

I left school in the 2nd year of BUP because my thing was not studying, but since I was a child I was very creative and very clown. Art and theater have always been my thing and I studied acting in Barcelona. In high school, a classmate asked me to do a humorous dialogue in a bar and I must have been very funny because many people came to see me. I've always had a lot of calling power and that's where I started with stand up. Since then I've been working on it. I discovered that what started out as nonsense and a hobby was my calling. I was extremely lucky, because I have friends my age who have not yet discovered what they like to do in life. That's sad.

After so many years in the world, fame has come to you almost at 40. Better or a pity?

Better for health. I'm a neighborhood aunt who was very crazy. I've had my time of being brainless, of being a nini, not studying or working, being lazy all day and just wanting to party. I've always surrounded myself with pretty badass people and many of my surroundings as a young girl have ended very badly. If fame catches me at that moment... I don't even want to imagine it, because my path wasn't done yet: I still had a lot to discover, to learn, to try... If your personality isn't formed and you find yourself hit with a lot of fame and a lot of money, you can end up either way. I'm glad that this catches me at almost 40, that I'm not fooling around anymore and, although it seems very crazy, I'm quite cautious. I am a responsible aunt within my madness.

Another common example is that of soccer players.

Are they lost? But if they do a lot of drug tests... Notice that I see soccer players as premature old men. Since they have a lot of money, they don't care if they marry very young and have four children in their twenties. I have always thought that youth do not enjoy anything. Although, of course, with 30 they are lined up, retired, possibly divorced and with their whole lives ahead of them. Who would catch a footballer! (laughs).

I dress up as a tomboy for three questions: "Aunts aren't funny."

What a classic, I don't know how many thousands of times I've heard it, although I've hardly ever been told it because I've been very funny since I was little. And my mother and my grandmother more. It goes in the genes. That lie is one more topic of this macho society in which we live. They are afraid of us women. It has to be that, because I can think of no other reason to say such nonsense.

I continue: "The one that feminists would mount if those interviews that you do, complimenting men, were done by a guy"

Damn, but they have done it! But if you have been doing it all your life and nothing has happened, what shocks them is that an aunt comes to do it. It makes me very funny every time I read that comment about my reports. What are they telling me? It slips me, but it shows everything that remains to be done to reach real equality.

The last one: "You showed your boobs in the middle of the report so they would talk about you."

Free the nipple! (laughs). I didn't do it for that, but they do talk, yes. For something like this to become news... I don't care, because I know I'm much more than pretty boobs. I'm very prepared, I've worked for years, I do stand up, I write, I act, I present, I'm good at being a reporter... If it were just for my boobs, I wouldn't have all the work I do. Luckily, normal people don't just keep that, they keep the essence. That moment was improvised, all the guests were with impossible necklines and I found the pot going funny. Since I'm not ashamed and I think I have very nice tits, it's better to show them now than when I have them like the old woman in Something About Mary. So I took them off. It wasn't free and I don't give it much importance, but we live in a country where people see a boob and get nervous. When I see that image I look very good and I am very grateful to nature (laughs).

I am myself again. You define yourself as 'pibonexic'. Develop the concept, please.

Pibonexia is believing that you are hotter than you are and I believe it. I am convinced that it is the disorder of the 21st century and I am patient zero. I don't know if it's the fault of the Instagram filters, but people are so high that it can't be. But you live better that way, it's a hell of a disorder. I wish everyone was Pibonéxico. I began to realize when I went to Zara to buy clothes and I didn't know what to choose because everything looked good on me. I came to think that I still looked better than I am, but I decided against it and gave it a name. There is no medication for this nor do I want there to be. Long live pibonexia! You have to love yourself.

It works, because you hooked up with your ex-boyfriend (actor Israel Rodríguez) by interviewing him at a 'photocall'. You told it and now you have told that you have broken up. Do you enjoy exposing your private life?

It makes me laugh. We give too much importance to these things. I see a lot of famous people hiding, and I respect that, but not me. I am a very natural aunt and, just as I said one day that I had hooked up with this guy, now I say that I am no longer with him. Nothing happens and now to the next. You're going to see me with many more guys. I carry relationships very naturally, I've always done it that way and I'm not going to hide. This does not go with me. I don't have to give explanations to anyone and, furthermore, you avoid being persecuted, which would make me paranoid. Leave, leave, I'll tell you.

In that shamelessness, at least apparent, that you handle, has anyone impressed you?

Yes, in my first report it made me very nervous that Hugo Silva appeared. I'm not a mythomaniac, although there are always people you admire a lot and... The person who most impressed me was Pedro Almodóvar. He intimidated me because I was very excited. Man, and if Paul Newman were alive, that would really make me nervous. But I try to take it naturally. I don't understand the fan phenomenon of thinking that certain people are above you. They are human beings who shit every day like you and me, but who have been very lucky in life. Nothing more.

The program tries to make you fulfill pending dreams. Do you have many left?

A lot, I have a crazy list of wishes that I don't even finish it in a season. Let's hope the show goes well and they give me at least a second one. I don't want to spoil any unfinished business, just in case, but I'm going to tell you a couple: working with Almodóvar and launching a Pibonéxica clothing line. This second is not unfeasible...