‘The ones in the last row’the new product with the Spanish seal of Netflix is now available in full for all its subscribers. The story of five lifelong friends, who is altered by the cancer of one of them, triggers an exciting story of discovery, adrenaline, changes and the search for happiness. Written and directed by Daniel Sánchez Arévalohis first series has had Itsaso Arana, Mónica Miranda, María Rodríguez Soto, Mariona Terés and Godeliv Van den Brandt as protagonists.
El Confi TV, the television section of El Confidencial, had the opportunity to chat with Arévalo and all the actresses to discover up to 6 curiosities of the project that will not leave anyone indifferent. Without spoilers, here you have the ideal complement to ‘The ones in the last row’.
An idea from about seven years ago
Sánchez Arévalo details the beginnings of the project: “I never remember the genesis of the stories. I had the idea for six or seven years. I had an original image that was five girls shaving their hair, one of them has cancer and the rest shave it in solidarity. But it is a story that stayed there. And after making ‘Seventeen’, shuffling quite a few ideas, I realized that I couldn’t tell this one in a movie, that it didn’t fit in an hour and a half, in two hours. That the level of deepening in the characters and in their worlds, in their lives, could not be counted in such a short time. It became a series.”
“Then there is three key moments for me. One, my need also to make an incursion into the feminine universe. My films are very male dominated. Two, my girl, Sara. When I told him this, his face changed. She told me ‘Dani, I want to see that story’. And the third was Verónica Fernández, from Netflix, a key person. One day he calls me and says ‘what do you have in mind? We would love to produce a series for you.’ He told him the story and he said ‘you’ve already beaten me, I also want to see that series’. It is very strong to see what you provoke in another person when you transmit something to them, “she adds.
shaved heads
Daniel reports that since the casting the five actresses said a resounding yes to the need to shave their heads, assuring that if they ever did it in their lives it would be for a project like this. Godeliv Van den Brandt celebrated what happened: “I had been planning a job like this for a long time because I wanted to shave my head, but I didn’t dare. And when they told me it would be necessary, I didn’t hesitate for a moment.” Monica Miranda ensures that the hardest thing was “when we were recording and every Monday they shaved our heads again… this process lasted almost the four months of filming. On weekends I always put things on my head, a scarf in the shape of a turban, a wig…”.
:format(jpg)/f.elconfidencial.com%2Foriginal%2Feaa%2F724%2F34b%2Feaa72434b2982c3b1a2fafeae49dfa47.jpg)
Bert Molina
Mariona Teres adds that “I don’t rule out shaving my head again because let’s see, it’s really cool. It’s a cool experience as a woman, removing all your hair, but it’s true that at times you also feel unprotected. In the town where we shot, they called us ‘las pelonas’ because five shaved women attract a lot of attention”.
For Maria Rodriguez Sotobeing an audiovisual work, reveals that it was not easy: “I started shooting with the camera directly on my face. That is, you didn’t look good in the mirror either, you look a little, half in the shade, half as you can… But the truth is that it was fun because deep down I said, ‘I’ll never be able to do this again, nor would I have done it if they hadn’t proposed it to me’. So I took it from that side and enjoyed it.”
the nudes
The five women, throughout the entire series, appear on many occasions scantily clad, something that Marion evaluates in the following way: “It goes on for days, but they call me ‘action’, I forget everything, I go and play it. The character is like that and you have to do it, but then see each other… during the process we don’t We didn’t see anything because Dani doesn’t like the actors to see each other in the ‘combo’ so they don’t get conditioned. But for me, seeing me later, has been the complicated part. The first times I saw images of myself on the beach, I cried…”
“At first, it’s a bit of a rush because we’re not used to showing our bodies. And since we don’t have a body, let’s say, to use, as you normally see in Spanish and universal fiction, well, it gives you a bit of a thing, but I think it’s very good. Of course it is, because here is my ass and it is what it is. I think we are doing society a favor, “adds María.
Work without ‘combo’
As for the ‘combo’, that is to say, the shooting monitor through which the director and part of the team give the go-ahead to the shots, which Mariona talks about, Itsaso Arana delves into the question of working without seeing little little by little the result: “The ‘combo’ is an element that must be treated with great responsibility. I understand that a director is very allergic to us looking at each other all the time, but I thought it was a bit excessive too. I consider that seeing your work, if you know how to see it… but then I was also aware that we are all shaven, in many moments naked… It has been a lot of exposure and Dani did not trust that if we saw each other we would not change. We weren’t going to get to control our work anymore. And it is true that there are moments that are very uncontrolled because of how we shot, so it was also part of the surrender that he demanded of us. It was part of the deal.”
No definite end, until the end
Daniel Sánchez Arévalo surprises with the way in which he has chosen to work on this project, which he details with satisfaction: “I decided that if I was going to make this game with the viewer, if I didn’t know until the end… I was going to write the series without deciding which one of them had cancer. Verónica Fernández, who is also a screenwriter, told me ‘you won’t be able to’. And I did, I got it. That took me to the moment of the last episode, in the middle of chapter six, and I said to myself, ‘Dani, now, it’s your turn to decide.’ I was, I think, three weeks without writing a single word, I just didn’t cheer up. In the end I said, ‘choose one, Dani, and that’s it… later on filming you can change it’, but in the end I didn’t change it anymore”.
The actresses, ‘blind’ before the disease
Daniel also chose not to reveal the great secret to the protagonists. Maria clarifies how he lived it: “I have gone through several points. At first, I thought I needed to know it to structure and deepen my character., but then the truth is that I took a weight off my shoulders. When I started working, I thought, ‘ok, Dani is clear, he’s done’. It made us all play a bit at that point and I broke free. It also helps that Carol’s journey is so heavy that I just had to think about it [risas]. We already had a lot of things to take care of.”
Itsaso explains his experience: “For me it was difficult, the truth, because I do believe, due to my way of working, that if the character knows it, the actress can know it and therefore not treat others condescendingly. I think that’s why we’re actors, that’s possible. What happens is that I understood it as Dani’s personal experiment and that’s how I took it. He wanted to see to what extent his script was also sustained with that unconscious part of the actresses and he too was going to play with all that in editing. So there we were giving him a power that had to be released. Good, okay, Dani, whatever you want [risas]. So it was a bit like that, a different artistic choice.”
Mariona details the moment in which they all finally discovered it: “When we shot practically the entire series and returned to Madrid, we still didn’t know who had it. I remember that they put us in a room, they give us the script and we finally found out. We couldn’t stop crying. This happened on a Friday, the weekend you learned the script, we shot on Monday and the end of the series was already here. It was very exciting”.
‘The ones in the last row’the new product with the Spanish seal of Netflix is now available in full for all its subscribers. The story of five lifelong friends, who is altered by the cancer of one of them, triggers an exciting story of discovery, adrenaline, changes and the search for happiness. Written and directed by Daniel Sánchez Arévalohis first series has had Itsaso Arana, Mónica Miranda, María Rodríguez Soto, Mariona Terés and Godeliv Van den Brandt as protagonists.
Source: Elconfidencial
