Albert Roig: "I've done shows where there were more people on stage than in the audience."

Actor and content creator Albert Roig (Barcelona, ​​1989) lost his job during the pandemic and, with the time he had, started posting videos on TikTok. Now, the artist makes a living thanks to social media: "The income that allows me to pay the rent right now is the collaborations I do with brands on Instagram, mainly, and also TikTok." He currently has more than 130,000 followers between the two platforms.

Roig's first contact with money was through his grandmother, who secretly gave him money. She kept it all in a savings account: "I didn't touch it until I was 18, when I started managing it myself." This is how he learned what saving was, a concept deeply rooted at home: "Keep an eye on them, save them, use them only when you're sure you need them," he explains. "My parents know how hard they are to earn and have been doing their part," he says. This is how he manages the economy now, he explains in statements to theCompanies.

The actor began doing an extracurricular theater program as a child: "There I was able to escape the bullying environment at school and high school." His parents were very supportive: "They saw that I was happy there, that I could express myself, and that I could bring the dramas at home to life on stage."

He turned professional and trained in drama. Roig combined his studies with performances at Port Aventura: "It was a cool experience, but I would arrive to class exhausted because I worked weekends and holidays and the pay was low." In fact, dedicating myself to theater is complicated: "It has always been a poorly paid world, and I have even had to pay to put on a show." And he continues: "I have done performances in which there have been more people on stage than in the audience, not because the play was not good, but because the audience has a hard time paying 18 euros for a ticket," Roig laments.

"Making a living from the theater is really cool," says the artist, but it's difficult financially and almost impossible with a pandemic and lockdown: "I was in a very good place then: with a really cool play, recording the second season of a series, at the Liceu with my salary and his opera as an actor. The pandemic hit and they told us this opera would never get made."

To unleash the creativity within him, he began making videos on social media, while earning a living working as a cafeteria monitor and as a clothing store clerk. Later, he invested in his own project by doing stand-up comedy: "That's when the world of social media, the world of Albert, the world of acting, and the world of the stage all came together again."

Although it took time, making comedy videos in Catalan on the internet is what has earned him the most money: "At the time of the theater, I had never managed to earn what I sometimes earn for making videos," he explains. However, in the world of freelancers, instability continues: "At the beginning, I was terrible at creating invoices, I suffered from making mistakes with the numbers... Now they help me," he confesses. Over time, however, he has learned to live without knowing how much he will earn each month: "I come from an unstable world like theater, where you don't know what you're going to do or where you'll be; it's a roller coaster, and now I'm in an equally unstable world, and on top of that, I'm paying more freelancers."

As for personal finances, the comedian is a natural saver: "I'm good at juggling to avoid spending. My only vice is buying strange shirts; it's what I've invested the most in." Although he is now thinking about investing in a home: "I want to buy an apartment to call my own, I would love to. But for now, I'm afraid of getting into trouble and then not being able to pay for it because I don't have a stable job." And while comparisons shouldn't be made, they're inevitable: "My parents, at my age, already had two children, an apartment, and a super-stable job; what do I have of that? Dignity, because I don't have anything else," she says, laughing.

For now, she's considering returning to the world of acting: "I miss Albert, who acts. I want to get back on stage, not so much as a stand-up comedian, but in a play or in the audiovisual sector. I'm looking forward to a good drama." And to combine it with creating content on social media. "Because five years have passed, and they've gone by so fast, I haven't had time to think about where I'm going. I'm really starting to think about the future now. I've never been one to have plans; I find them, and that's how I'm surfing," she confesses.