The transformation (and the knee) of Omar Chaparro
Twelve years after putting money into making Suave patria, Omar Chaparro continues to bet on cinema. And this time, he literally put his knees on the line.
It turns out that in 2024, while recording Venganza —which premieres this Thursday—, he damaged a meniscus. He plays an elite soldier, a kind of Mexican Rambo. But the injury didn’t stop there.
“The director… told me that if I trained martial arts, that I was a black belt, and I answered yes, but I did a long time, now I’m 50 years old (laughs).
…he improvised a scene where I’m kicking, but I barely even warmed up and I think that’s when I ended up injuring my knee. But it’s all been worth it.”
It was not attended to because Sierra Madre was already coming, where he shares credits with Kiefer Sutherland (24). In this one it will be the opposite: a drug boss who makes life impossible for the American actor’s character.
From hero to villain (with the same knee)
For Revenge he cut his hair and grew a beard. From the beginning he knew that it was his version of the character that has fascinated him since he was a child. “How to say no, if it was something about war, action,” he says.
Of Sutherland he highlights: “Kiefer is a great guy, a professional and very intense.” The plot involves a group of the American army that attends a wedding in a Mexican town subjugated by the drug trafficker that he plays.
Although he confesses: “I don’t like these types of characters, but it was very well written and there are scenes of vulnerability… where they kill his brother and he starts to cry.”
The knee was already bad when he was filming Sierra Madre, directed by Justin Chadwick. He also did not have surgery then because he had already committed to The Cell of Miracles, which had just been released on Netflix.
Curiously, in that drama the injury helped him shape the character: a man with a mental condition that affects his speech and walks “like a weirdo, like a limp.”
“They asked me why and it was because my knee was injured. Then I went to check it out and my knee was covered in ointment.”
Between comedy, pure action and drama, Chaparro shows that not even a shattered knee can stop him. The show must go on.
