Sergio Peris-Mencheta, a 'Fraud' Reconciled with His Demons

Sergio Peris-Mencheta (Madrid, 1975) has reconciled with life and his inner demons after staring death in the face. The actor, producer, and stage director has overcome leukaemia and recounts his medical and emotional battle in the book '730 Days. Illness as a Mirror of Time (Planeta). He also returns to stage direction with 'Blaubereen', an exploration of the banality of evil and genocide focused on Auschwitz and the 'innocent' Nazis complicit in the Holocaust.

"It's a self-help book in the truest sense of the term, for me and for others," the author acknowledges, making "peace" with himself. "I was at odds with myself and life, and writing it has been an act of self-affirmation, a cure for my self-demanding nature and undervaluation," says the actor, whose physique has changed as much as the map of his emotions. "I have lived and still live under the impostor syndrome, the snake oil salesman or the charlatan: I suffered it as a rugby player, as an actor, as a director, and as a father," he confesses, admitting to "enormous insecurity."

The diagnosis of leukaemia was a blow. He felt his days were numbered "and I became obsessed with the idea of disappearing." But the same cancer that dissolved all his certainties has made him "see life and death differently." "Death should be discussed in schools, but we live with our backs to that film that ends badly and is addressed in religion class, not biology," he says. "I grew up in an atheist family and was terrified to know that when I died, I would rot and not go to heaven like my classmates," he jokes.

After a long hospital stay in Spain and the United States – "with a lot of chemo and a lot of radio" – he is free of harmful markers. He is winning a battle that has left him with serious physical limitations. "Now I live with suffering, which has a positive side. I have run a lot in life and needed to stop. I live more slowly and am with my children, ready to listen to mine and others and to listen to myself," he summarizes.

Being unionized as an actor in the United States was providential. "It involves the best insurance, which covered 99% of the treatment," he says, recalling a medical bill "that exceeds four and a half million euros." But salvation came thanks to the marrow of his only brother, three years younger than him, and compatible for the transplant. "I rolled a double six in the dice of life with my brother's full compatibility," he rejoices.

In California, he strengthened his acting career, but he is happy to have returned home. "Hollywood is very uncomfortable. I can't do action movies and I don't want to; I wanted to get off the horse and throw away the armour and sword," he says, tired of his typecasting as a Mexican villain in the dream factory. "There are no tax incentives there, and it's easier to work in the Basque Country or Tenerife on an American film than in Hollywood. Everyone is leaving, and it's ceasing to be the epicentre of cinema," he acknowledges. "California is Democrat," he adds, "the Republicans in Hollywood are anti-Trump, and their policies don't help. I was happy there, but now I'm happier here."

In the book, he reviews the best and worst of his life. He celebrates the invaluable support of Marta Solaz, his wife, and does not shy away from discussing the abuse he suffered from his father, "as he suffered from my grandfather, both victims of leukaemia." But he is delighted to have broken that genetic and emotional chain that anchored him to cancer and violence. "With my father, I experienced the most intense terror and love one can experience. He is the person I have loved the most and feared the most." "When I got married, I was worried about repeating the pattern of abuse with my children, but I have broken that and many other chains of those karmas that drag from generation to generation," he prides himself.

He returns to the theatre with 'Blaubereen', a "committed documentary stage piece" that denounces genocide through Auschwitz and the role of the 'innocent' accomplices of the Jewish Holocaust. Written by Moisés Kaufman and Amanda Gronich, the piece adapted and directed by Peris-Mencheta was a finalist in the Pulitzer Prizes in 2024 and raises the curtain on June 5 at the Canal Theatres.

"We started preparing the play three years ago, before the Gaza war began. Reality has approached fiction, but the victims of the Holocaust are not perpetrators of another holocaust; let's not forget that here the perpetrator is the Government of Israel and its president, as is Hamas." "I want to make it very clear that the play does not whitewash Israel, as someone has suggested," he adds.

"Unfortunately, genocides are commonplace, and any of us could be a perpetrator like the Nazis, those telegraphists or pastry chefs who found a new identity in the SS, or the genocides of Cambodia, Rwanda, Armenia, Bosnia," he says, justifying having tackled a piece on this subject.

Peris Mencheta clings to theatre and cinema with the same intensity. "They are complementary. I started directing theatre in a university workshop to flirt, and from there, I was offered a role. The actor and director were born at the same time," he assures, clarifying that he approaches "everything I do in theatre as a game since I came out professionally with 'Incrmentum' in 2011, pushed by Mario Gas."