Nerea Barros (Santiago de Compostela, A Coruña, 1981) has a depth in his gaze that allows him to approach characters with great emotional intensity. This is the case of the inspector who is desperately searching for his missing son from the movie ”.gypsy bride and in this ‘Purple Network’The adaptation of Carmen Mola’s second novel is out now atresplayer (this Sunday, part two) you will find it, but in the worst possible way: being involved in a ‘snuff’ video organisation. A fear he enjoyed. As an actor, of course.
What was it like returning to the universe that ‘Gypsy Bride’ started?
What is very positive about this second episode is that the plot is no longer outside of BAC as it was in the first, it just explores the case, which allows each of the characters to develop much more. Then, as a viewer, you begin to empathize. Because in the first one, being with Elena cost you a lot because she was the anti-hero. And even more so being a woman. Such a reserved man would say: Look how handsome he is, look how intense he is, how much of a ‘dad’ he is inside, but when a woman does not smile, when she is always under control, it creates a very strange thing. Rejection inside you until you realize what’s happening to it.
So sad.
There is an absolute evolution this season. Elena is broken, deconstructed much more easily, because the events that occur constantly change her. And BAC appears. You start to understand who each character is because something happens to everyone. I talked a lot with Lucía (Martín Abello) and Mona (Martínez) to try to find organicity in everything. The reason for this madness, what happens to this character, is to get there.
Many of them already knew each other and the team, so they had already done some of the work.
Yes, something happened here that rarely happens to me: Everyone was so involved. The team was a big fan of what was going on. You don’t see people yawning, which happens often, and I understand that because techs are human and can’t be there all the time. And you saw that people were excited about you. There’s something so beautiful about family there. Even though we talked about the atrocities we described.
This season is even harder for her character. He finally finds his son, but he turns into a monster. Would it be better if he died?
Very sensitive. How do you deal with this? I often told Paco (Cabezas): I don’t know what’s going to happen in this sequence. Many times I had to face things I could never have imagined. I have a job, I have a script, but I don’t know what will happen inside me when I get into the series. This has happened to me many times, because Elena is looking for her son, and it’s eight years of despair, a disgrace, growing inside you, and suddenly you find him and he’s not your son anymore. There is a very important part of this, among other things. Elena discovers that her son may be a psychopath and murderer. How does a mother assume this and accommodate this?
“When a woman doesn’t smile, when she’s always in control, it creates a kind of rejection in you.”
It’s hard to understand that kids don’t always do the same things you do.
Especially if he’s been kidnapped.
Clear. But it can happen in every family. This is the situation with Rodolfo Sancho’s son Daniel… It is a very current situation. Just like children learn about sex by watching pornographic images on the internet.
They already learned this. If you add to this the normal, everyday things you see, everything becomes even more distorted and confused. And I think ‘The Purple Web’ describes very well how the children drift away from each other with everything that happens to them. There is a loss. And they train to become the conscious human beings they will become in the future, then the parents disappear from the stress and their children are left alone with what they have: the internet and screens. And they see everything there. Then we ask ourselves: Why did this happen to me? Why is there so little empathy? The problem with the world is that empathy is decreasing, and now we can see a murder, and it seems extraordinary to us. There is something wrong in our brain.
And the series tells this with a fascinating story.
It’s a ‘thriller’, it’s of incredible quality on a visual level, it’s gorgeous, it entertains you, it draws you in, but underneath there’s a super powerful piece of work from each of the actors, Paco and I, as to why we’re doing this. and how to deal with this, which in theory could be hidden from something much more superficial to something deeper. That’s why it becomes a metaphor for the current situation that surprises us. As Paco said, Elena Blanco lost her son just as we lost our son, and we don’t even know we’ve lost them until something that transcends fiction occurs.
“Parents are losing their minds due to stress, and children are left alone with the internet and screens.”
How do you manage to disconnect when dealing with such difficult topics?
With sports. Yes, it’s true that I didn’t have much time to do what I loved, which was to go to the bar, but sometimes I took my skateboard with me to the movies. But I feel privileged. We are very proud.
Are there no boundaries between movies and TV series anymore?
That’s why I’m talking about privilege. A movie ends. You can enjoy making movies here. Movie, movie, movie, stop and more movie.
And also the privilege of rehearsing.
In the beginning, Paco revolutionized everything because we worked a lot in advance on the characters for what we wanted to say, but he rehearsed during the shooting. And this is wonderful. For me, given the way I work, it’s great. If I place the text before, it sticks to places from memory, not emotional memory. On the other hand, if I’m sitting on a chair, I don’t know who comes and touches me… This creates an energy exchange. So go with Paco an hour in advance, even if it’s four or five in the morning, and reserve that space… I’m making an offer, Paco, his, and there’s an improvisation. Everything is organic. And there are many facts. There is a journey, a transition in that wonderful series. Moreover, I never reached a series in Paco and there is a trace. Never. First we see and feel the space and what we want to do there, and when it becomes clear, the cinematographer comes in and starts talking to us about the light.
This isn’t a normal situation, is it?
No. Most of the time they do everything for the light. This has never happened here. So I believe there is something very powerful underneath, because this way of working brings it out in this way.