Merlí actor Marcos Franz opens up about a toxic relationship and conspiracy beliefs

In Merlí, Marcos Franz played one of the characters who left a mark on a whole generation of viewers. Behind the scenes, his life looked very different.

The Catalan series first aired on TV3 (Catalonia's public broadcaster) in September 2015, with Francesc Orella as a philosophy teacher. It later reached Netflix and found a much wider audience.

While he was working on it, Franz was in a toxic relationship. He says it led him to believe in conspiracy theories. "I believed that a secret society controlled the world," he says.

Now he tells the whole story in a book, Cuando dejé de ser yo ("When I stopped being me"). In it, he describes what he went through during those years.