:format(webp)/cloudfront-us-east-1.images.arcpublishing.com/grupoclarin/ORKZOWZ6SRAXTEXXFMZK7EKRAU.jpg "There are no differences between who I am on TV and in life")
Edith Hermida answers the phone in Puerto Madryn, where she went on vacation with her 26-year-old daughter and her 84-year-old mother. The Bendita host and panelist is excited after having seen the whales just a few meters away. “I was overcome with emotion when such a great note came there… nature so alive,” she says, having just woken up from a nap.
But there is another emotion, and that is that she is fulfilling her dream of touring the country with the “adventure” of presenting her one-man show, Teneme Patience, which just took her to Patagonia (and which this Saturday will bring her to Córdoba).
That’s right: at 53 years old, this unprejudiced and fun brunette took to the stage to be herself in a humorous/testimonial way.
“For me this is just as you say, an adventure. I say ‘let’s see what’s up with this…’ and I tell myself to do something and then I say why? But I like it and it’s good because it’s like a challenge at a time in my life when I could be calmer and not… I decide to take it, then I’ll see how I pay,” he says while a giggle escapes his mouth.
Edith Hermida brings her one-woman show, “Have me patience.”
–Sometimes one fantasizes about having other lives. Was it part of your fantasy to do this?
-No, not really. Although I had studied theater before starting voiceover, I never had the fantasy of doing theater until Panam called me to play The Bitter Witch. The first season I was very embarrassed in rehearsals, but once I got on stage, experiencing that energy of a live show, I said this is great, I will never get off again and I have been with Panam for 12 years. Later when I started touring, each presentation was an adventure, touring the country with different energies. And when I started with Teneme Patience I said well, this is going to help me go on tours, which was what I had liked.
–How did you get to Have me patience? Did you write it, did you work with anyone? Who was the critical eye?
–I worked with Verónica Lorca. I didn’t know what the structure of a comedy, of a stand-up, is like, and she is a teacher of this, she has been doing stand-up for a long time. She asked me what do you want to tell? It was like being faced with a blank page. Then it occurred to me to start telling her who I was, where she came from, what my family was like, how I started and all the ideas fell from there. She took everything I told her, gave it a form and added jokes and humor. I still have a somewhat funny style of speaking, that is, life itself makes me laugh. I take a tour of my entire life: how we were educated, how we grew up, how we became sexually initiated, what communication was like, comparing it a little with this time.
–You are used to the camera, the microphone, being in public, but does it change the situation of having people sitting 5 meters away and a dark room crouched by you?
–I get really nervous, I still can’t master them. There I start to think about why I’m doing this, but everything goes away 30 minutes after it starts. The people who are going to see me generally know me for many years. That’s good too, there are people who watched me from Channel 26, when I just started. The public that comes loves me, knows me, knows what I am, it’s like we are friends. They participate a lot, so I end up there hugging everyone. It is really gratifying what is happening with the work.
A common mine
In recent years, Edith Hermida went from being a panelist with spark (as she always was) to someone who within that ecosystem qualifies to make headlines on entertainment portals. She raised her profile, without changing her form.
From their opinions to the occasional romance. “I never considered myself a celebrity, I am a girl who works on TV. What I like most is that they tell me that they see me and that they feel what they are close to me,” she says.
–Do you feel like you are making that transition? You generate this thing of being a neighborhood mine, with a street but you can’t believe it, but suddenly they are asking you for photos…
–I took a very small path, step by step, I never had any explosion like that, wow, like a Big Brother, a tremendous success. Mine was always very gradual, with a lot of continuity, I never stopped working. I am like that and there is not much difference between the one you see on TV every day and the one I really am, there is no character there.
–Bendita gives the sensation of being a spectacular place to work, in the midst of so much pretense of television happiness. Is it so?
–Look, sometimes I have problems, like everyone else has problems, and sometimes when I’m a little complicated with some things I say ‘thank goodness I’m going to Bendita’. They’re going to realize it and they’re not going to want to pay me, but that’s where everything falls into place. I clear my head by going to work, so in that sense I am privileged.
Edith Hermida brings her one-woman show, “Have me patience.”
Edith remembers that Bendita only had a difficult moment once, when the pandemic began and she was in the role of driver on the floor. “We had done the program and it had measured very little. Beto and told me ‘we’ll have to see if we don’t have to change the tone of the program’, because it seemed like the end of the world was coming. The decision was made to continue with the style later, because it was very difficult to make humor in that context. And it ended up being an incredible program in a pandemic, where everyone was locked up and Bendita at least brought you a little humor and relaxation. We did very well in terms of audience measurement that year.”
–Do you look at the numbers too?
–I don’t look at the numbers, I’m telling you honestly. I do try to see how we are doing in general… football affects us a lot, when there is a game, but if not, I don’t ask for it and they aren’t telling Beto about the cockroach all the time about the measurement either. We have a program put together and we go with it, we are not so focused on the minute by minute, nothing is stretched.
–It’s good how they have been adding younger panelists, who have a completely different chip. Sometimes that works and sometimes not so much, it has to fit between you.
–I am delighted with this thing that it has been refreshed and that more panelists are rotating and that streaming or younger guys are coming, which I think has refreshed the panel. Today media is consumed from different places and very talented boys and girls emerge, as happened with Juariu, who came from the networks, with Romy Escalora who also joined this year, Frodo from Big Brother and Enzo Aguilar who also came from the networks . I like it.
–And can you imagine streaming or any of this?
–The truth is, yes, I imagine. I want to be attentive to new trends. I have been doing radio for a long time, but it seems to me that everything is changing, it is modernizing. Far from pretending that everything remains as before, we must add the new generations, the new trends and rearm. It seems to me that it adds a lot to me. I don’t like that it is disqualified due to the passage of time. We are all going to grow and I like when young boys incorporate into their imprint what makes a guy like Horacio Pagani, for example. I don’t like that they disqualify conventional media: it seems to me that we can all be working and we can all join in something multiplatform. Do not accuse us of being old-fashioned, they are also going to need conventional media.
To see
Edith Hermida present Be patient with me this Saturday at 9:30 p.m. in the City of Arts. Advance for $5000 at autoentrada.com.ar