We fell for Alberto Rosende the moment that he was cast as Simon in Shadowhunters. We have to say that one of the things that we have grown to love about Alberto is his genuine love for the fans, the story, and Cassie Clare. So when were were asked if we wanted to interview Alberto, you didn’t have to ask us twice.
Now we’ve interviewed celebrities like Harrison Ford and Ben Kingsley, but we were not as nervous as when the phone rang and we were told Alberto was on the line. See – the thing is that Simon has always been our favorite character. The last time that we had sat down to talk to someone playing Simon – well, lets just say that Robbie Sheehan was very interesting.
But here’s the thing when Alberto starts talking – you are instantly put at ease. He’s not pretentious. He’s unassuming. He’s just a guy who really loves what he does and loves the fans.
In this past weeks episode, Simon was taken hostage by vampires – leaving Clary to lead the charge to save him. Knowing that everyone else on the cast has weapons trainings – cause you know they are wielding weapons all the time – we had to ask if Alberto had any training to throw the knife as Raphael this week.
“I’ve had minimal weapons training, but that was all CGI,” he said. We have to admit, we appreciated his honesty, but we tried to ignore it. See, we like thinking that Simon can kick ass – cause we adore him and want to make sure that he is protected. We’ve read the books – we know what is going to happen to him there, but him in the series – we admit that we have no idea.
But maybe that’s the pleasure of talking to Alberto – he really gets Simon. He wants to protect him as much as we do. “Simon’s an underrated character,” he said.
And we have to agree. We all know that in the books we get the gravity of Simon’s importance fully in book six – well, his importance as it relates to the shadow world. But his importance is always there – because he is the ultimate best friend. That importance isn’t underrated. But with Simon changing to a vampire so early in the TV series, we had to ask, what does that mean for the character, “It’s Simon’s time to hang onto his humanity. He’s Jewish and like in the books he can’t go into places of worship.”
He continued,”Simon is Jewish, which we haven’t gotten to talk about much in the show yet, but it’ll be hard for him not to be able to talk about those things that are important to him anymore.”
But one thing that remains important to him no matter what is Clary. So we had to ask – though we know that Clary picks Jace, why should she pick Simon over Jace, “He gives himself to her heart and soul. He gets kidnapped by vampires and his first question still is “Are you ok”. They know each other.”
Yes he does Alberto – just as you give everything to Simon. That is one thing that we can all agree on.
