Adamari López Finds Her Dark Side and The Perfect Partner in Crime in El Diablito on '¿Quién es Mejor?' -INTERVIEW

Puerto Rican TV star Adamari López has apparently found her dark side, and she has Mexican comedian El Diablito helping her use it.

On ¿Quién es Mejor?, the new TelevisaUnivision talent competition premiering this Sunday, August 16, López and Mauricio Barrientos, better known as El Diablito, have emerged as the ruthless half of a celebrity panel completed by Yordi Rosado and Michelle Rodríguez.

At least, that's how Rosado and Rodríguez tell it. In interviews with this reporter, the four judges showed how fun and challenging the new reality TV show will be.

"We're the good ones who learned to be bad, and they're bad but never learned to be good," Rosado joked, prompting Rodríguez to pile on: "They're bad inside. Bad, bad."

"That's why there's a Diablito there," Rosado added.

López isn't exactly fighting the accusation.

The Puerto Rican TV star said she and El Diablito discovered almost immediately that they judge contestants in remarkably similar ways.

"I didn't have the pleasure of knowing El Diablito in person," López said. "We made an excellent team from the first day."

The two frequently agree on who deserves to stay and who needs to go, while Rosado and Rodríguez are more likely to give contestants another chance.

And sometimes they desperately need one.

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¿Quién es Mejor? is not another parade of aspiring pop stars singing power ballads while judges pretend to be shocked by the high note. Its contestants can show up claiming virtually anything as their special talent, during the show, which was filmed in Mexico City.

Rodríguez remembers a man who announced that he possessed "the most seductive look in the world." He was wearing sunglasses because, according to him, the audience needed protection from his gaze.

Then there was the man whose great talent was dancing with a broom.

"Without the broom, he couldn't dance either," Rosado deadpanned.

"Not even with Harry Potter's broom would he have made it," Rodríguez added.

Those gloriously questionable decisions are part of what makes the show work.

There are impressive performers too, from a wide range of disciplines, but the panel doesn't know what anyone is about to do. Contestants appear in groups, and the experts see only the person standing in front of them.

Then comes the trap.

They can keep that contestant or move on to see the next one. If they move on, however, the first performer is gone.

"We never know if the one coming next is better or worse," Rosado explained.

It means López, El Diablito, Rosado and Rodríguez aren't simply judging talent. They're gambling with it. Fall in love with the first act and an extraordinary performer might be waiting behind them. Pass on someone good and the next three could be disasters.

The viewers at home get the delicious advantage of watching the experts realize they made the wrong call.

That's where López and El Diablito's alliance becomes particularly dangerous.

"We're usually very much in sync with what we think about the person who's performing," López said. "If we like them, we like them. If we don't like them, we don't."

And when they really don't, ¿Quién es Mejor? gives them a lever.

"We've seen enough," López said of those moments. "We pull the little lever and ciao, ciao, you're gone."

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The panel insists the idea isn't to humiliate anyone. The show's strangest contestants can actually become its most memorable.

"There are people who are charming," Rodríguez said. Sometimes, she explained, the alleged talent isn't really the talent at all. "Your talent is who you are. You're fantastic."

That mix of the impressive, ridiculous and unexpectedly moving is also what caught López off guard.

One contestant performed an act that included a message about Mexico, leaving her emotional because of her long relationship with the country. "Mexico has always opened its doors to me and made me feel like one of its own," López said. "It moved me and gave me goosebumps."

The production also represents a homecoming of sorts for her. Returning to Televisa's studios brought back memories of arriving there for the first time and feeling as though she had entered "Latin Hollywood."

"Every time I come, it's like the first time," she said. After spending years away from Televisa and Mexico, López described reconnecting with former colleagues, technicians and production crews as particularly emotional.

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But ¿Quién es Mejor? isn't built around nostalgia. At the center of the show are four celebrities making impossible choices, an audience waiting to prove them wrong and contestants from across Latin America and the United States arriving convinced that whatever strange thing they do deserves to be seen on television.

Some are seasoned professionals. Others perform their acts on streets and at traffic lights.

And Rosado warned against assuming which one will be better.

"Sometimes that person at the traffic light is better" than the polished performer with the Las Vegas-ready show, he said.

The competition eventually pits the experts' choices against those of the audience, which means the panel doesn't merely have to live with its decisions. Everyone else gets a chance to demonstrate just how wrong they were.

And judging from the early trash talk, López and El Diablito are perfectly comfortable taking the blame.

"Obviously, in ¿Quién es Mejor?, you are the best," López said before inviting viewers to watch the premiere.

Whether she and El Diablito are also the villains is another question.

Rosado and Rodríguez appear to have already reached a verdict.

¿Quién es Mejor?, hosted by Marie Claire Harp with Adamari López, El Diablito, Yordi Rosado and Michelle Rodríguez as experts, premieres Sunday, August 16, on Univision.

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