Eugenio Derbez Teletón: Actor Says He Won’t Be Hosting The Benefit Event Again

After Mexican comedian Eugenio Derbez’s controversial opening speech at Televisa’s Teletón event this past weekend, the actor is not quite sure he’d do it again. “I don’t know, I don’t know, it was very tough, it’s not really my style, I’m not sure, I think that’s it for me,” said the actor in an interview with Mexico’s radio station Radio Fórmula. Speculations also went around that the actor had been payed a generous sum to read the speech written by someone else, but Derbez denied that; he said he had in fact written his own speech and it was the producers who encouraged him to go out and say it like that.

“I warned the producers I had important subjects to touch on; I told him we couldn’t start off the event like we live in a bubble where nothing else is going on and not mention what the country’s going through, mostly for the people who don’t have trust,” said the comedian. He continued to explain the conversation he had with the producers, who told Derbez his speech was in fact very strong, and knew if they told anyone about it, they would not let him say that on live TV.

The actor claims to have put his speech in the teleprompter himself, 15 minutes before the show started. “The producer was my accomplice, he and I were the only ones who knew about this since I wrote the text myself,” he explained.

Derbez then continued the interview by saying he doesn’t think President Enrique Peña Nieto is at fault for the problems Mexico is currently facing, even though his speech did throw implications that Angelica Rivera’s White House was acquired “who knows how?” “I’m just another Mexican and don’t know about politics, but what I do want is a better Mexico, I’m not part of any political party but I’m not against the government; it’s not about hating just for the sake of it. Mr. President got handed a country that was already deteriorated from many years before, and it is not him who’s destroyed in the time he’s been governing. He got something very complicated to straighten.”

Eugenio Derbez concluded the interview by assuring his participation was solely to help the children in need and not because he received a salary from Televisa.