Luis de la Rosa and Iker Solano spent three months in Uruguay recreating the music, friendships, and teenage chaos of Timbiriche, one of Mexico's most beloved pop groups. They sang the band's hits, learned the dance moves of the 1980s, and became so close to their castmates that the experience felt more like summer camp than a television production.
Two years later, their work is finally reaching audiences, but a public dispute with the very musicians whose lives inspired it has overshadowed the excitement surrounding the ViX series.
In an interview with this reporter, the two young Mexican actors addressed the controversy, acknowledging the original members' objections while defending the intentions behind their performances.
"I think our job as actors is to bring honesty, respect, and admiration to the role," said de la Rosa, who plays Erik Rubín. "We all love Timbiriche, and we love what that project was. All our parents knew the group and were incredibly excited that we were going to be part of it."
Solano plays Diego Schoening in the eight-episode series, which premiered October 9. The production follows Timbiriche's formation in the early 1980s, when a group of Mexican children became national sensations and eventually helped define an era of Spanish-language pop.
But the series arrived without the endorsement of six former members: Sasha Sokol, Benny Ibarra, Alix Bauer, Mariana Garza, Diego Schoening, and Erik Rubín. In a joint statement issued days before the premiere, the musicians said they had not participated in the production, had not been consulted about its scripts and had not authorized the use of their identities. They also objected to the decision to dramatize the lives of identifiable people who are still alive.
De la Rosa said the actors understood their concerns. "The way it was handled is somewhat outside our personal opinion," he explained. "But we have a lot of respect, admiration, and affection for them and for their position. I think it's a completely valid position."
Their wish is that the original members will eventually watch the series and appreciate the effort that went into portraying their careers: "Hopefully, when they see it and understand the intention of telling the story, honoring them and elevating them, which is what we all wanted, they can also feel proud of what they did and of the work we did with so much respect."
The dispute extends beyond artistic representation. The series also addresses the relationship between former Timbiriche member Sasha Sokol and television producer Luis de Llano, which began when Sokol was a minor.
Sokol publicly accused de Llano in 2022 of having had a relationship with her when she was 14, and he was 39. In 2023, a Mexican court ruled against him in a civil case involving moral damages, and Mexico's Supreme Court upheld the ruling in 2025. In the episodes already released, the story is a central element of the drama.
For the younger actors, however, much of their experience took place far from those disputes, on a set where recreating 1980s Mexico presented its own unexpected challenges.
The biggest challenge was not memorizing the songs. It was learning how teenagers actually spoke, moved and behaved four decades ago.
"The era was difficult, starting with the way people spoke," de la Rosa recalled. "The slang we use today is very different from what people used back then."
The director sometimes stopped filming because someone had used a modern expression that simply did not belong in the 1980s. "He would say, 'The scene was great, but you said that little word, so let's do it again,'" recalled Solano.
That meant watching old interviews, studying the original performers' mannerisms and learning choreography that sometimes proved considerably harder than expected. The cast also recorded the songs using their own voices, working with Kiko Campos, the Mexican producer and songwriter who helped create Timbiriche's original sound.
"The voice work was incredibly difficult because they were very good artists, and they set the bar extremely high," de la Rosa said.
The musical demands were particularly interesting for an actor who had already portrayed another Mexican pop superstar. De la Rosa became widely known for playing the teenage Luis Miguel in Netflix's Luis Miguel: The Series, where he played against Spanish actor Óscar Jaenada. He also appeared in The House of Flowers, another successful Mexican production that reached international audiences.
But Erik Rubín was a different proposition. Unlike Luis Miguel's solo career, Timbiriche was built around a constantly changing group dynamic, with friendships, rivalries, and adolescent relationships unfolding alongside the music.
Meanwhile, Solano has been building his résumé with increasingly demanding dramatic roles, including Prime Video's El Juicio, opposite Eugenio Derbez and Spanish actor Pedro Alonso. The series explores the aftermath of a sexual assault allegation and the conflict between two families seeking different outcomes.
Asked about working with Derbez, Solano described seeing a side of the comedian that audiences rarely encounter. "Everyone sees him as a comedian, joking around, laughing," he said. "I saw him at a moment when, as an actor, he had to go very deep inside himself."
He added that Derbez approached the material with unusual seriousness because of the difficult subject.
Despite their growing careers, de la Rosa and Solano found themselves living together with the rest of the Timbiriche cast in a Montevideo hotel for three months.
"It was literally like a three-month camp," de la Rosa recalled. "Our job there was to have fun, talk, improvise."
They developed a routine of visiting a nearby bar, where they became friends with the musicians who performed live. Their favorite discovery was the croquettes, although they admitted missing Mexican food, particularly its spicy flavors.
The actors also remembered the friendly competition over who arrived first for the day's filming. According to the pair, Sebastián Poza, who portrays Benny Ibarra, was the one most likely to oversleep.
"Iker and I were always the first ones downstairs with our backpacks," de la Rosa said, laughing.
The group's closeness occasionally created unexpected problems, particularly when the actors started picking up Uruguay's distinctive Spanish expressions.
Solano joked that he spent so much time imitating the local accent that switching back to Mexican Spanish became a challenge whenever filming began. Clara Dalmao, the Uruguayan actress who portrays Thalía, had the opposite problem. "She was practicing her Mexican accent with us, and I was unnecessarily practicing my Uruguayan accent," he recalled.
Not every attempt to recreate Timbiriche's performances went according to plan, either. One of the most difficult numbers was "Corro, vuelo, me acelero," whose choreography originally involved the entire cast.
"The space where we practiced was very small, and there was so much movement," Solano explained.
Eventually, the male actors were reassigned to instruments while their female castmates handled the dancing. "We're not dancers. It wasn't coming out right," de la Rosa admitted. The director finally offered a solution: guitars and drums instead of complicated dance steps.
For Solano, the hardest part of the experience came after filming ended. "I think the challenge for me was letting go," he said. "Letting go of that whole universe we built together, of spending time with my friends 24/7."
He described the experience as one of the happiest of his young career.
Now, after a two-year wait, the actors are watching the project take on a life of its own, with fans revisiting the music and original members publicly challenging the production's portrayal of their history.
The series is produced by EL ESTUDIO, with Pablo Cruz and Juana García Blaya among its producers and Humberto Hinojosa directing. Its cast also includes Macarena García as Sasha Sokol, Michelle Pellicer as Paulina Rubio, Sebastián Poza as Benny Ibarra and Clara Dalmao as Thalía.
© {{Year}} Latin Times. All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.