Jorge Ramos decided to take a step forward and give a twist to his interviewer career. In his 35-year trajectory, the journalist of Mexican origin has been seen in front of his interviewees in a studio and in a more traditional format. Now, Ramos has decided to ‘break’ the mold and talk to celebrities about the more unknown and personal facets of their lives. On April 24, the journalist will premiere “Algo personal con Jorge Ramos” at 10pm ET on the platform ViX from TelevisaUnivision.
“For me this is a new and welcomed challenge. Having spent most of my career talking to presidents and politicians, this is a great opportunity to leisurely talk to writers and artists about their deepest motivations. It is something really personal, for them and for me,” explained the 64-year-old journalist.
In an interview with HOLA! USA, Ramos shared his feelings about this new and exciting challenge, he also shared details of the moments that impacted him the most on a personal level. In this first season, Ramos sat down to talk ‘with an open heart’ with several entertainment, culture and sports personalities. Those included: Eugenio Derbez and Alessandra Rosaldo, Alejandro Sanz, Carlos Vives, Isabel Allende, Javier “Chicharito” Hernández, Joan Manuel Serrat, Mario Vargas Llosa and Sebastián Yatra, in addition to the musical group Maná, all who shared “something personal” with Jorge Ramos.
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Jorge, how do you feel about exploring this new chapter as an interviewer talking to other types of celebrities and personalities about their personal lives?
It’s a little different, I’ve been interviewing politicians and presidents for over 40 years in very short, very tense, very controversial, very difficult interviews and suddenly, having the opportunity to sit down with people who are idols for me, heroes and heroines, with whom I grew up , to whom I read when I was young or who I have listened to throughout your life, and suddenly having the opportunity to sit with them for an hour so that they tell me something personal, this is one of the great privileges of my life as a journalist.
It is also one of the great challenges, because despite having done thousands of interviews in my career, I have never been able to interview someone for that long of a time, on such intimate topics.
How do you feel in this new format?
One of things important to me was to take the interviews out of its traditional format, because we could do an interview in a television studio and that was it, but if you take it out of that place and take the interviewee to a totally different place, where they don’t expect it, the essence of the interview changes. For example, we have done interviews in gigantic theaters, but totally empty, that is something that they did not expect, and some of that has to do with the pandemic, but also with the design of the program.
As for the time, you and I can talk for 5 or 10 minutes, but at minute 30, you’re going to have to tell me something personal and I’m going to have to tell you something personal, and in time we’ll get to know each other better, like it or not, because there is no way to have such a long conversation without letting go of something about yourself.
Of all the personalities you interviewed during this first season, what interview impacted you the most?
I did yoga with Sebastián Yatra, and I did it better than him (laughs) because he fell and I didn’t. Then there was a very emotional moment with Joan Manuel Serrat, who is now 78 years old and at the end of his career and we started talking about what his last concert would be like and tears came to his eyes.
There were many moving moments; by Isabel Allende and Mario Vargas Llosa, they told me about what it meant to fall in love at 80 years old. In the movies that doesn’t exist, but in real life it does. Isabel Allende told me something very interesting, she said that it is as intense at 80 years-old as it is at 20, what happens is that you no longer waste time on nonsense, on stupidities and those things are new. I also went out for a bike ride with Eugenio Derbez, on the same beach where I used to go when I was young when I arrived in the United States. Those are things that are very special and that one appreciates.
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