Hovik Keuchkerian: "You're not at war because of Israel, you're at war because your job costs 2,500 euros and you've been getting paid 1,300 for the past ten years."

It's 8:20 a.m. and the massive body of Hovik Keuchkerian (Beirut, 1972) is already peeking out from the sides and top of an armchair in the lobby of Madrid's Hotel Urso. Although there are still 25 minutes to go until the scheduled time, the actor has been sitting there, absorbed in staring at the horizon, for another quarter of an hour. He arrived in his car and forgot the transportation offered by Netflix . "I like people who arrive early; it's not the norm. If you arrive late, this would have started badly," he says, offering his gigantic hand in greeting.

Everything about Hovik is excessive. It's his physical presence. It's his laughter, which will resonate repeatedly in the silence of the hall . And, of course, it's his direct, piercing, unequivocal speech. " I'm faithful to what my stomach tells me, and even if a million people say the opposite in front of me, I'm going to face it ," warns one of the protagonists of Two Graves , the three-part thriller with which Netflix is ​​​​touring the Andalusian coasts starting this Friday to solve the murder of two teenagers; who begins the national tour of his stand-up comedy show, Grito , in September; and who celebrates 15 years since joining the profession. "15 years, terrifying. Who would have thought it. And working, kid. I must be doing something right." And that's when the first laugh erupts.

We've seen little of him in his father role in 'Two Graves' so far.

You can tell me. I know it doesn't suit me, but I found that guy's inner world interesting. I too swing, like a pendulum, between trying to be quiet, calm, and exploding. It's something I haven't yet mastered. But Antonio is a guy who tries to move forward without breaking down too much, even though he's already broken.

Have you identified with him in that brokenness?

Everyone is broken, and so am I, of course. And I know I'll be broken again. Today I woke up relatively well, and once I was here, something came to mind and took me to a place I don't like. I had to get out of there because this isn't a day to be like this, it's a day to take care of you.

Do you tend to sink into those kinds of somewhat depressive thoughts?

It's so funny, in the human condition, that we've believed ourselves to be secure. Life is something unexpected and uncertain by nature. It's another matter that we, with this belief of being incredibly clever, have believed that just because we have a paid-for house, a job, and health insurance, we're already secure. But there are four or five idiots out there who, if they touch a button, will screw you. It makes no sense at all and is absolutely histrionic to believe that life isn't uncertain. It's idiocy of unconscionable proportions.

His life, like that of much of the West, seems from the outside to be quite safe.

It's not, although I've got everything set up, I'm calm with the accounts, and I'm working. I have all that nonsense, but one day the phone could ring, like it did the other day, and it was a very good friend who had been diagnosed with a tumor the size of a fist in his lung. It could happen to me right now, and that security you're talking about has gone to hell. It doesn't have to be a tumor, anyway. What happened to me was that I went to bed on August 13th and couldn't get up because I had a severe hernia. The pain changes your life, and your security goes to hell.

"To believe that life isn't uncertain is to be an idiot of unmeasurable proportions."

Hovik, who arrived in Spain at the age of three when his parents emigrated from Lebanon due to the war, has built that confidence. He started with a career as a boxer, and later as an actor. "I always say: whatever my career gives me will be a good thing because it wasn't in the plan. I have friends who, in '99, were finishing their Drama studies, studying English and crossing their fingers to find a manager. Thirty years have passed, and they haven't even gotten their head in the sand, or have a manager, and they've lived off micro-theater. People who are crazy good. I started out as a boxer there, I was a comedian, and now this. All because they saw me one day, they auditioned me, and I got in ."

They must have seen something to have been there for 15 years.

Yes, of course. But one of life's paradoxes is being told you have to have a goal, to pursue something with full intention. Enough already. Of course you have to have a goal, but all the things I've doggedly pursued in life have ended up destroying me. It doesn't matter if it's a person, a work goal, or a life goal. And yet, whatever has crossed my path while pursuing something else has turned out to be true.

Now that you have a solid acting career, why have you returned to stand-up comedy?

Because I felt the need to talk about myself. As I do in this interview. I always speak from my own perspective. I'm not like all those fools who say that boxers, poets, and actors speak... Since I was young, I've had a need not to speak from a character. I've always had the need to shout, like therapy.

What is the cry in this case?

My cry is a critique of the absurdity of human beings. I laugh at your stupidity, and at my own too. You only have to look around to see how ridiculous everything couldn't be. On the first day, I thought I was going to get the hell out of my life, but I shook off the bad vibes and some bad habits and picked up speed. Now I have a mix of critical poetry, humor, and harshness...

There's something premeditated about being a hater , about going against the grain, in you, isn't there?

Not as part of a plan. I live the way I live, think the way I think, and do what I do, and that often generates controversy and problems. But that's what fuels me. I won't allow myself the luxury of not believing what I believe or feeling what I feel, no matter how many people I have in front of me, how much weight they have, what ideology they have... No one is going to condition me. I'm faithful to what my stomach tells me, and even if a million people in front of me say the opposite, I'm going to face it as I always have. But I'm not going against the grain to be original, to have a plan, to be different. It's about being honest with yourself and knowing where you stand. Even if it has negative consequences.

Have you not considered the option of putting on the brakes?

No, but I do know that when a certain moment comes, it's going to come on its own. I'm going to say, " What's the point?" Because now it happens to me occasionally, it doesn't last long, but it happens. There are days when I think, "Why are you even hooking up with this guy if he's not going to care? He's going to make his headline and I'm going to be questioned for six months." I don't like to get ahead of myself, but I see it coming. I was a kid who thought everyone was good, that there was no evil, that everything in the world was good vibes. Life as a phenomenon is cool, life as we human beings interpret and live it is garbage.

Have you gone from being an idealist to being angry at the world?

I haven't changed that much, it's just that the ideal is different, it's the end. We deserve the end, to be done now and stop burdening the fucking universe. When I hear people say that man is an exception that gives meaning to the universe... Man should stop burdening the universe and wasting it. We can't keep implying that only our perception of the universe is worth anything, which is ridiculously insignificant. You have to listen to some bullshit... But if the universe doesn't even know who you are, it doesn't give a shit who you are. So I'm no longer an idealist; I'm now a dreamer who dreams of the end of humanity.

What was innate, then, was perhaps the struggle and the fight instead of the need to go against.

And look, I'm really tired, man. Being physically like this doesn't help either, but there's always something that pisses me off, and it would piss me off if I were a woman, to use very, very colloquial language. I can't help it. I can't stand stupidity, I can't stand groups, I can't stand ideologies, I can't stand positions, I can't stand the whole gang of mentally incompetents who follow someone because they represent an ideology. I don't understand why people still haven't realized that ideologies are rotten from the very beginning, why they follow someone who shares their ideology and then throw their hands up in horror because it fails. I don't understand seeking that warmth from the group when you know the group is going to fail because it's founded on an ideology.

Well, I don't know if this is the best time in the world to have that way of seeing reality.

That's why I confront it less and less. And I have to somehow stop fighting the world. Because otherwise, it'll destroy me. There's no point in being like this 24 hours a day. I can't find the adjective. It's not angry, it's disgusted.

You arrived in Spain in the 1970s as the child of war migrants. Has the world returned to those times?

The fact is that the world hasn't stopped being there, it's a lie. That's the nonsense people say. When did we stop fighting? It's this false sense of security we were talking about earlier. The war in Beirut hasn't stopped stopping and starting all these years. And when it has stopped, it's to rearm. Haven't we really understood that we've been at war for a long time? Now it'll explode even more, but come on.

Perhaps it is a question of proximity, that they are now even closer to the West.

Now everyone is analyzing what's happening in Europe, and what were we told was going to happen? Many were wrong in their analysis of this moment, but we've forgotten that. Those people are the ones reanalyzing what's happening. Trump wasn't going to win the US election. He didn't win, he swept. And all those smart guys are supposed to be presented with the study or article they've done and told that the first thing in their next analysis is to say they were wrong. Well, the same thing with the situation in Europe.

Do you attribute this to a permanent state of opinion?

Of course. And then we have to name everything. Now we're going to come to blows, and there are people clutching their heads because you need an army. Of course you need an army if you want to be in the spotlight in the 21st century. So what the fuck? Why this double talk? Do you think they're going to ask you which side Spain is going to go to war on? And you go out on the streets, demonstrate wherever the hell you want, but they're going to put you on whichever side you happen to be. And if you don't understand that we're at war, you're an idiot. Because you're not at war because of Israel, you're at war because your job costs 2,500 bucks and they've been paying you 1,300 for the past ten years. That's why you're at war, not because your country has decided to go against another foreign country. You're at war because the gap keeps getting wider, you moron.

Is that other one, the one of daily life, your war?

It's all ridiculous. You get angry about what someone says on social media or in a newspaper, but what you should be angry about is because you're going to the emergency room with your child with a terrible throat, and they won't even treat him because they're short 25 people working there. Because we've put important things behind us to opine about shit. And I'm saying this, and I'm doing this interview on a press day because I have a signed commitment. But I've been wondering a lot lately, what am I doing here?

What are you doing here?

This profession is very particular, man, and I don't know if it makes sense. But I'm passionate about working. I've had moments when that passion began to fade, and I've been able to stop, step back, and recover the passion. The day it's completely lost, as I've done all my life, well, I'll do something else.

You're a rather peculiar actor: you don't have a manager, you can't get anywhere because you drive your own car...

When I started as a boxer, I had a manager, but I eventually quit. I've never liked it. I don't like people speaking on my behalf. Because I tell you that I'm going to be at the door of this hotel at a certain time, and if I'm a little late, it's because of traffic. And telling you that directly is the only way you'll get it that way. Because if it's passed on through someone else, and someone else, and someone else, it's going to change. And I don't accept anyone speaking on my behalf. Besides, I don't have any grand aspirations. If I wanted to be a multimillionaire, be in every mess, be super-recognized as an actor, win all the awards, go to Hollywood, or be in every media outlet, I'd need a manager, a press officer, a makeup artist, and a stylist. But I don't need any of that; I don't want to. I do my job, I get paid, and I go home. I don't need people around me.

We have returned to solitude

We go back to the fact that I don't need much. Everything surrounding this job is more than enough for me. Everything is everything. I like the work and the teams. And I keep my commitments. I've worked a lot with Netflix, and they know I do everything they ask of me. But in one day. If I have the 10th, I have to be there from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. and juggle naked, I do it. But that day, the 11th, I don't do anything.

I would like to know, in closing, who Hovik is for Hovik

I have no idea, I don't know, and I never will. I live in an unidentified internal struggle, which I suppose is due to identities and labels. Nor do I need to know. I would be very satisfied if, before I die, I knew what I was. Answering that question would be amazing. Who am I? It depends on the time of day.