Translation from Maariv magazine issue 2011, FEB:
Not just B for blonde.
You’d be surprised, even though today she looks like a talking porcelain doll, it was only at the age of 16 that Yael Grobglas started to feel beautiful. This change led her to engage in modeling, and from there the road to the “Island” series, alongside good friends Ion Tumarkin and Oz Zahavi, was short. Today, with a lead role in the sitcom “The Foxes” and after starring in “Rabies”, she is getting used to living in the shadow of advertising.
Although, in the heart of Maariv’s studio, Yael Grobglas sits with curls in her hair and is entrusted to the hands of a meticulous makeup artist, but even before makeup and hair styling you can see that she is stunning, a thin and tall blonde, from the most beautiful girl genre in kindergarten. But surprisingly, when the conversation unfolds, it turns out that even though it is requested, Yael hasn’t actually been on the standard of the beautiful girl all her life. “I was a bit of an outsider. I always had two or three friends, but I wasn’t one of the popular kids. I was the lowest girl in the class, only at a later stage did I grew up. I was very white, with hair that never worked, plus my nose, eyes, ears and mouth. Mine were the same size, but everything else was smaller for me, so I was disproportionate. It’s easy, everyone wants to be the most acceptable, and if that doesn’t happen, it’s not pleasant.”
And when did the change occur? When did you realize you were very beautiful?
“Around the age of 16. I started to grow and change and everything worked out, suddenly boys started looking in my direction, and I didn’t understand at all what they wanted from me, it took me another year to grasp this change and get used to it.”
What Yael defines as change is actually more in the direction of a reversal. Just two years after that, at the age of 18, she was already much more similar to the improved version of today, and then the modeling proposals started to arrive. “I got some offers around the time I graduated from high school, and eventually decided to go for it. I signed up for the agency and started auditioning and got some jobs. I really enjoyed it, but I actually found the fun in auditions for commercials and things that also included acting. I got positive feedback from people who told me it was worth it. I have to go to school. ” Encouraged by her father, Yael enrolled in a theater course: “I realized that was it.” From there the road to audition for the successful children and youth series, “The Island,” was short.
How did you make the transition from acting in a class to theater to acting in a big and serious production?
“I worked hard. It was almost half a year from the moment I got the job until we started filming, and during that time I took many private acting lessons. Even during all the filming pressure I didn’t give up two lessons a week. For most of us it was a first experience in such a production, and we became friends I’m in touch with the whole cast of ‘The Island’ to this day, Ion Tumarkin for example is one of my best friends today, he’s like my brother. He’s an amazing man, I love him, he’s bursting with laughter. “We met a lot, go to the sea together. We entered this world together, and it was a very solidifying experience.”
And when did you decide to study acting?
“The truth is that the person who made me study acting is Oz Zahavi, who played with me on ‘The Island’. During the filming for the first season, he was already in the middle of acting studies, and I saw that he comes to the set and really knows the work, analyzes his texts and understands them in depth. For that, and he really turned me on to the idea.”
And it wasn’t strange to suddenly learn after you have already participated in a project that you usually study a game to participate in?
“Absolutely not, once you enter acting school everyone is on the same level. It’s an ensemble of people starting a process of learning together. It’s a place to make mistakes and learn from mistakes. Outside there isn’t this privilege of allowing yourself to be photographed for something and then saying ‘wow, it wasn’t are good…'”.
So yes, Yael started acting studies, but she didn’t even have time to finish her first year before the next glittering offer came: a lead role in the film in question “Rabies”.
Did you believe you would get into such a star-studded cast?
“I auditioned several times for the role. It’s not that it came out of nowhere, they examined me well. When I was informed I had it ‘wow !!!’ It was just amazing. I didn’t know who was in the cast when I entered and slowly I heard from here and there”. In short, people who have already learned more than one or two acting lessons.
Have with you in the cast people with years of experience in the industry. How did they receive you? After all, most of them have already collaborated, and you were the “new one.” Was it felt?
“It’s amazing, I came and just stared at people. It was like ‘wow, I want it too’. It’s a spectacular cast, the people were lovely and I felt at home. Most of my shots were with Anya Buxtein, who’s just a stunning girl, such a good person and an amazing actress.” .
How was the filming experience?
“It was intense, but amazing, and it was cold … Most of the time I walked around in a short mini, in the woods, in the middle of winter, and froze. Between the takeaways we had to be covered with blankets and bring ovens and tea and everything. We felt like on a hike.”
Suddenly you moved from the world of children to the world of adults. this is different?
“I don’t think of it as another job, work is work and I bring my maximum to every role, even though the children and youth audience, which I have been experiencing for about four years, is the most loving audience.”
There is such a stigma about child stars that they usually stay in their genre and fail to successfully move into the adult world. Was it a consideration in your decision to participate after “The Island” in the horror movie “Rabies”?
“I didn’t think in that direction at all. I liked the idea of ’Rabies’ without knowing what audience it was intended for. The same goes for ‘The Foxes’, I just read the script and it was brilliant in my eyes, creating super with amazing screenwriters and a perfect cast, and I felt like doing it. “
How was the work on” The Foxes “really?
“Laughing, really, there were laughs from morning to night – on the set, behind the scenes, in the afternoon … – We were a solid and loving cast, to this day we are really good friends, we talk almost every day. What’s more, this is a series by Giora Hamitzer, and it really flattered me that he still wants to work with me … ”
You think” The Foxes ” Also for youth? She’s a little childish, isn’t she?
“It appeals to everyone. I think this is the first time such thing has come out with this specific sense of humor in the country, and it’s something good, new, and there are a lot of people who have been thirsty for this. So of course it speaks to teenagers, there’s something silly and cool about it also friends watching the series and dying laughing for it. My parents are addicted to it, and I think they would have watched the series even if I wasn’t on it, it’s just a sense of humor that runs through our house. The truth is that in general, Eli, the character I play, reminds me very much of myself. “
What do you look like?
“She is a satanic and talks a lot and is all one big ADHD. She jumps to monologues and goes through topics at a dizzying pace until she needs to be brought back to the ground. It’s just like me when I’m with my guys. “
When you read project scripts that offer you to participate in, what kind of character are you looking for?
“Every time I look for something different. I want to embody characters as diverse as possible, not do the same thing twice.”But there is a certain resemblance between the characters you play: a beautiful and cute girl that everyone wants for exactly these reasons.
“There’s nothing to do, you can’t get rid of the blonde, I have no way to escape it. But in terms of personality they are very different. Ginny from ‘The Island’, Shir from ‘Rabies’ and Eli from ‘The Foxes’ are really different types.”You don’t feel that you may be getting roles because of the look?
“I would be very happy if it wasn’t like that. I don’t think it is still like that. Maybe at first it helped me, but I would be very happy now to do any role regardless of how I look. I prefer to think I’m doing a good job regardless of how I look. What, is it not a possible combination, someone who looks good and also knows how to play? This reference has never been up to me, it’s not something I control. I went to study acting to know what “I do and become an actress. If I entered the field thanks to my appearance? I don’t know. I think my personality structure would lead me to the game anyway, I have no idea if I would be successful in the field in the same way.”
You have no desire sometimes to run away from beauty somewhere?
“I don’t put on a beautiful tapecast of Yaffa. I don’t perceive myself that way. I am who I am, personality and appearance together. That is how I am and with that I will go.”
When was the moment when you realized you were famous?
“I think I dropped the token one morning when I got up and found out that I had some phone pictures waiting for me from friends who were photographed next to my poster on the street. I was in the market. This is the moment I said to myself, ‘Wow, maybe people really know me, cool’ …”.
How does it feel to walk down the street and notice your own poster?
“My heart is pounding and you’re a little embarrassed to stand too close to the poster because someone might be photographing you staring at your own poster … by the way, I have to admit I was photographed next to one poster, I had to, because who knows if it will happen again. So I ran and was photographed next to myself, and even the company that photographed me laughed at me. The truth is that it was a funny passage, when they started recognizing me on the street I stopped and thought about where I know the person standing in front of me, and then I remembered that I couldn’t see through the screen …”
And how do you deal with the reactions on the street, it embarrasses you?
“It’s lovely to me, a man who comes and tells me something about my work always makes me happy, because it means I made him feel something, and that’s the goal of the play, to convey to the audience something from you. In the theater you get the feedback immediately, when the audience laughs, cries or claps. “On television, I can’t see the reactions of the audience through the screen, and this is the way to get feedback, on the street.”
Well, it turns out we’ve got the kitschy ending question: so what’s next?
“Learning piano, French, horseback riding, some kind of carousel and swing dancing.”
Thank you to Divine Candice for the translation.