Would you mind if I start with a somewhat intimate question? When was the last time you underwent a urological examination?
Jesus Christ, that’s the question… (thinks hard) You know you probably never? In fact, I haven’t been to urology yet.
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Your character Bedřich Liška in Street, still a healthy man, is currently dealing with prostate cancer. How does he cope with an unpleasant message?
Well, let the audience be surprised. Maybe I can tell you it will turn out well. I myself don’t know how to deal with such a medical problem. There are people who don’t talk about their health problems at all, it will help someone cry on someone’s shoulder.
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Like Bedřich with his former partners in the series Ulice – with Alice (Eva Hacurová) and Anička (Ljuba Krbová).
Bedřich has been in the Street from the very beginning. This was originally an episodic story.
It is true. It was supposed to be an episodic matter about guilt and forgiveness, when he gets out of prison and wants to start a new life. He experiences problems with his father, who finds it difficult to compare with a convicted son.
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Actor Václav Mareš, the serial father of Bédi, died after four years of filming. It must be a shock not only for the screenwriters, but also for the one who stood by his side…
It was a shock especially for his family. Mr. Mareš did not complain, he did not talk about the disease, although we suspected that something was wrong, because he lost a lot of weight. I attributed some fatigue and exhaustion to his age, he lived to be 68 years old. It was fast, he died of cancer.
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You spent more than fifteen years with Bedřich. What is it like, do you have anything to do with it?
Nice, I’m just trying to make people distinguish what a serial character is and what I do. When we have social gatherings, I want them to take me as Jastraban, not Fox. I would deal with a lot of things and experience them differently.
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Adrian Jastraban
Photo: Jan Handrejch, Law
Let’s move on to your next roles. Was there a difficult preparation for the portrayal of the main character in the film Dubček from 2018?
I had little time to prepare. They called me in May and filming began in June. It is not easy to create a historical character, on the other hand, there are a lot of documents and shots about Dubček where I could be inspired. If I had to play Henry VIII, for example, there would probably not be many of those sources. (Laughs)
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I didn’t experience Dubček, I was a little boy. After 1989, I wasn’t so interested in politics, so I didn’t notice it that much. I had to penetrate his expression as a statesman who has a poker face at the meeting. He looks around without expression, only his eyes flick from side to side.
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I also had to lose weight fast, because he had an athlete’s body, sports talent, swam well. One of the tasks was to jump into the pool with confidence. I knew I wouldn’t give this, even if I tried my best. I swim normally, not much, anyway I can’t jump the arrow to have the right style. In the end, a stuntman did it for me and they put my head on his body.
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Was it hard to lose weight in such a short time?
Fortunately, today there are a lot of preparations that allow a person to drop quickly. I used protein supplements, where everything the body needs is represented. I managed to reduce eight kilograms.
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An outright negative house informant in the recently mentioned trilogy Actor is very out of your work so far…
Not at all, I already played the killer in Četnické humoresky. Then in the Cases of the 1st Department of the Pervert, who photographed the corpses at the autopsy room. He was flogged by prostitutes, dressed in latex. It is interesting that I was always cast in the crazy exotics by the director Peter Bebjak, who also filmed Herce.
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Adrian Jastraban
Photo: Jan Handrejch, Law
The audience’s grateful comedy Tour Participants brought an interesting opportunity to play gays. Mír Nosk managed to form a funny couple.
They invited me to a casting, sending me two scenes from the script, but they didn’t write what role I should learn. And because I liked the role of a singer, I felt more like a rocker than anything else, I went to rehearsal with his learned lyrics. I was quite surprised when they told me I would be gay. Maybe it was better in the end, I would probably stylize unnecessarily.
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You come from Banská Bystrica, an important historical center of Slovakia. Before the epidemic, it was one of the most attractive tourist destinations in the country. When was the last time you were there?
Last September, when I drove my mother to Prague so she wouldn’t live there alone. She had been sitting at home closed for half a year to keep her from getting infected, I didn’t want to prolong her isolation. We behave very carefully, prudently also because of her, but it is still better if she can be with her family and granddaughters at least occasionally. She has the opportunity to spend the weekend with us, we will take her on a trip.
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In the Middle Ages, it was said: “Alive in Bystrica, after death in heaven.” What do you like best about your hometown?
Surrounding nature. Eight kilometers from Banská Bystrica is such a mining village Špania Dolina, which is registered in the UNESCO list. There is only a dead end. We go there every year, this is my favorite place. Banská Bystrica is the town where I was born, I kissed a girl for the first time, got drunk with friends for the first time. (Laughs)
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Originally, your steps did not lead to dramatic acting, but to the study of puppetry…
The original field was an interplay of coincidences. After the revolution, I thought that anything was possible because the world opened up. A friend who worked as a backstage in a puppet theater enrolled me in an audition without me knowing. I haven’t had a war yet, so they told me they wouldn’t take me, but that it wasn’t in vain. Until then, I took puppetry as a recession. A friend told me – let’s go to the University of Puppetry in Bratislava. I was a little ashamed, but in the end we thought it would be perfect to tell the girls where we were reporting.
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Then I decided to move to Brno, I realized that I would like to do puppetry not as conservatively as it was taught in Bratislava. Then the director Ivan Balaďa, also a Slovak by origin, hired me for an Olomouc drama.
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Adrian Jastraban
Photo: Jan Handrejch, Law
Could you play a puppet show for your two daughters?
I play it because they got a puppet show from a grandmother about Christmas about three years ago. Actually, I have no avoidance. Now the girls are more likely to play alone, maybe they were showing donuts as he went out into the world. Rather, we compete for the light of the ramps in our family. (Laughs)
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Did the pandemic bring you more time with your family?
Yes, of course, I have never spent as much time with my family as during a pandemic. One forgets for a moment about those terrible numbers and what the pilots of our ship come up with. It was great to play board games, to make up the stuff for the girls when it was disgusting outside. They couldn’t play with their friends, they didn’t have it easy. Time with my family helped me not go crazy.
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