sisters Joana and Mireia VilapuigThe 28 and 25-year-olds were child stars ten years ago thanks to ‘Polseres verlles’. The famous TV-3 production has given them something extraordinary for their age, something they want to catch as soon as possible. ‘auto tape’, It is a movie series in which reality and fiction are intertwined, and topics such as success, failure, jealousy, rivalry are examined in a career as complex as the career of an actor.
How did the idea for the series come about?
Joana Vilapuig: After ‘Polseres’ casting calls started coming in for the same characters, so comparisons were made between us. For a moment we thought: The two sisters do not experience this, and apart from that, they are in competition. We couldn’t get a job either, and it was very difficult because the dream we envisioned did not come true.
Mireia Vilapuig: The first thing we had to do when we decided to do this project was to talk a lot with each other and talk about what each of us had experienced in that past.
Was it difficult to manage this constant comparison between the two?
Joana: It was ‘heavy’. Now that I’ve experienced with Mireia, I think I know better how to deal with jealousy or comparing myself to others. We are also very similar physically, we come from the same place, we wanted the same thing…
Mireia: The profession of an actress already puts you in the context of constant comparison with your colleagues, but it’s also a very small industry where we all know each other. We bought that house and lived with our sister. There was always the question: What if they catch you? What if they catch me? Where is the line between our profession and our relationship?
How much is fiction and reality in the show?
Joana: There is a lot of fact and a lot of fiction.
Mireia: It will be 50%.
The plot of ‘Selftape’ is already tense from the beginning, as Mireia is left with the role to be given to Joana.
Joana: We’ve always kept in mind that Mireia’s character has more professional success, but is worse off in terms of relationships. Joana, on the other hand, has a hard time finding a job, but has a much wider network of friends.
One of the distinguishing elements of the series is the ‘casts’ and family scenes that give the production its name, the videos that emerge from those ‘self-tapes’.
Joana: Archival videos interspersed with fiction to explain a bit where the ‘trauma’ of the two came from.
Mireia: One of the key points in the creation process was when we decided we wanted to use stock images from the series. Somehow it highlights the relationship of the two sisters.
Joana: And it blurs the line between reality and fiction even more.
Was it hard being a child actor? Or was it harder to grow up and accept that success could be temporary?
Joana: After.
Mireia: Everything has its pros and cons. We lived through that reality, but we have many colleagues who started later, which is logical and difficult for them to enter. Starting acting at such a young age, your childhood is stolen a little, you understand the profession from a very strange place.
Joana: And it distorts your view of the future. Our mother told us: You can’t think that you failed at 20, you have a whole life ahead of you. We had some pretty tough fears that made me realize that the profession was not the rose path I envisioned when I was 15.
Mireia: This profession has a very beautiful face, but you have a lot of difficult moments in it.
“Our mom used to tell us: you can’t think you’ve failed at 20”
“Seltfape” also explores how being a child actor in the past has affected even their closest relationships today.
Mireia: ‘Selftape’ is not a drama that explicitly talks about sex. But we were clear that we want to talk personally about the situations we’ve been through. We were very sexualized teenagers. It was something we had to digest, talk a lot amongst ourselves, and understand that in the profession, in a shoot, there are moments when you feel uncomfortable, where you have to set boundaries.
Joana: We had sex scenes during filming where we felt very vulnerable or naked even though we could get dressed, so we wanted to feel safe and protected while filming our drama. I think we had more nude scenes on set that were cut in editing because we undressed emotionally so much that maybe it was a little overwhelming. We wanted to protect ourselves because sometimes we didn’t and we realized that you can get into the porn page by making a sex scene.
Were you clear that the series should bet on combining Catalan and Spanish? Although it occasionally appears in English and Norwegian.
Joana: It was important that Mireia and I, who speak Catalan, do the same on the show. At Film and Filmx [la productora] They gave us absolute freedom to create in the language we wanted. As in life, I speak English with my partner, but I speak Catalan with my friends and family, who I speak Spanish.
Mireia: We wanted to be as consistent as possible with our lives and not create a language barrier. It was absurd to do this, and it has more to do with politics than we want to convey.
Has the series been therapy for you?
Miriam: Absolutely. Before we did this, we didn’t know each other that well.