Mexican director Álvaro Curiel: With a Reputación Dudosa, I returned to Sony and comedy

“What makes me very happy about Reputación Dudosa is returning back to two places, first Sony, because I made my career there doing simulators. And the second is to comedy,” said Álvaro Curiel de Icaza, Mexican director, EN VIVO with Ríchard Izarra from MIP Cancun.

Curiel and Sony are at MIP Cancun to announce the second season of the comedy Reputación Dudosa, which premiered on Claro Video last June. “We are going to show the first chapter of the first season, just as a reminder that the second season will be released on November 17, so we are refreshing people’s memory about this project,” he explained. And he added that they also are at the market to share “our work with all this beautiful television industry’s family.”

As for plans for 2023, he announced that they are trying to help Sony develop a series – another comedy -, but he cannot announce the title yet. In this sense, he highlighted the virtues of doing this genre. “Comedy is not directed with the stomach. Drama is something else. I end up exhausted from doing drama. And comedy is thinking all the time about how you can take a situation further, it forces you to always be thinking about something that I like as the musician that I am, which is the rhythm and the intelligence to really understand what that moment is missing to truly explode.”

Curiel explained that Reputación Dudosa is an ensemble series. “We have a very generous casting always on screen, too many actors on the set, so we really had to have a super creative work atmosphere. (…) I think that one of the keys to comedy is to have an atmosphere of collective creation and that is what television is, unlike cinema. In cinema, I am the author, the writer; while on television there are many authors, so the ideas really come together thanks to that.”

Working with Sony on this series was a comeback too, the last time he was in the company was in 2008. “I’m very happy. And, above all, something that is not easy is the respect for the work of the director. Sony respected me from listening to script notes, from how to direct my proposal, even in the credits they listened to me.”

Curiel also highlighted that at Sony he found people defending his experience above all. “If there is something I’m jealous of Americans, it is that when you go to the Oscars or the Emmys, people’s gray hairs are respected and I already have some. That is something that I feel that in Latin America we have not fully achieved, which is to respect people who have already made a career and I think that in this case it did happen and for that I am very grateful.”

View EN VIVO with Álvaro Curiel