Banderas and Picasso, soulmates
Actor inhabits the artist in Nat Geo’s Genius.
VALLETTA, Malta – “Perhaps it would be more comfortable if we talked in my room?” Antonio Banderas says.
What woman would say no? Even with his hair and eyebrows shaved, Banderas is stunning. Stripped of the makeup, wig and prosthetics — including false teeth, a neck wattle and wrinkles — that required him to be in the makeup chair at 2:30 a.m. for his transformation into Pablo Picasso, he is back to himself, but different. Banderas is tired. The sun is setting. Yet he’s a trouper, so he settles in for a long, wide-ranging chat.
The star of National Geographic’s Genius: Picasso (Tuesday, 9 ET/PT) reflects on his hometown hero, mentions how the role of Picasso had come up before and discusses how this may be a turning point in his career.
A natural to portray the 20th century’s most celebrated painter, Banderas grew up so close to where Picasso was born in Málaga, Spain, that he first learned of the man as a toddler. He viscerally understands the soul of Picasso: The Andalusian male is not a remote notion for the actor.
“I have seen Picasso in my father,” he says. “I have seen Picasso in the members of my family. My mother was the youngest of 16. Her older brothers lived (in Picasso’s time). It is important to understand Picasso and everything he understood in life.
“After five months of playing him, I feel everything happening in every second of that day — if I am playing happy, I am happy,” he says. “At the same time, it carries a lot of responsibility. I have to understand the material they gave me.”
The material covers the artist’s entire life, from birth in 1881 to his death in 1973. In those 91 years, people were constantly drawn to him.
“Picasso was like a planet with a lot of satellites. Everyone gets trapped in his orbit,” Banderas says. “He had a tremendous charisma and gravity. What I feel acting him is — shoosh! — people are getting into my life and staying.”
Despite his reputation as a womanizer, Picasso was truly devoted to at least six women in his life. Even as he moved on to the next, usually younger, woman, almost all of the others remained in his life. And he continued to financially support those no longer sharing his bed.
“I think he never stopped loving them, somehow,” Banderas says.
Considering their common origins, Banderas had been approached to play Picasso before. The timing was never right.
“I was afraid the Picasso I really have in my mind is the older Picasso,” he says. “The image I have is the bald man with the striped shirt in his 60s and 70s.”
By that age, Picasso had lived through the horrors of the Spanish Civil War and World War II. He had seen his country torn apart and friends hauled off to concentration camps. After the unthinkable — the bombing of the town of Guernica by German and Italian planes at the behest of Spanish fascists — Picasso painted his haunting masterpiece Guernica for the 1937 World’s Fair in Paris.
Picasso’s lover, Dora Maar, photographed him creating the piece, so the Genius production team knew exactly how to present him — in his white shirt, intensely staring at this gigantic canvas, forever smoking Gauloises.
To get inside Picasso’s skin, Banderas took painting lessons, read a lot, and — because the artist did not like his own voice — Banderas created one for him. “I made him a little more down,” he says, dropping an octave. “He speaks like an Italian, slowed.”
But he also had to move like him. The men differ physically; Banderas is about 5 inches taller than the stockier Picasso.
The transformation, which includes makeup, hair and prosthetics, “was a fantastic liberation. I wanted to kill that guy a long time ago. I am 57, for Christ’s sake. How long can I play that guy?”
For this role, he has been shaving his head every morning. And despite all those years as the Spanish heartthrob, he says it was never him.
“I never really, really, really, really felt it,” Banderas says. “To tell you the truth, I played the game. ... I was more comfortable with characters given to me by (Pedro) Almodóvar who have transgressions than Zorro.”
A heart attack in January 2017 sharply refocused his life.
“I am just not that young anymore,” Banderas says. “Then Picasso comes at this particular moment in my life. It is like Coca-Cola in the desert.”
“Picasso was like a planet with a lot of satellites. Everyone gets trapped in his orbit. What I feel acting him is — shoosh! — people are getting into my life and staying.”