The actress has become accustomed to playing characters with a lot of emotional intensity
Nerea Barros (Santiago de Compostela, A Coruña, 1981) has a depth in his gaze that allows him to approach characters with great emotional intensity. It is the case of that inspector who desperately searches for her missing son that she stars in ‘The gypsy bride and that in ‘The Purple Network’the adaptation of the second novel by Carmen Mola, which is currently broadcast Atresplayer (this Sunday, the second chapter) you will find it, but in the worst way: involved in a ‘snuff’ video organization. A horror that he has enjoyed. As an actress, of course.
What has it been like to get back into the universe started by ‘The Gypsy Bride’?
Something very positive that is in this second part is that now the plot is not outside the BAC, as in the first, which only investigated the case, which makes each of the characters develop much more. Then you, as a viewer, begin to empathize. Because in the first one it cost you a lot with Elena, since she is the anti-protagonist. And even more so being a woman. A man so closed off would be like: how handsome he is, look how intense, how ‘pa’ inside’, but for a woman not to smile, for her to be contained all the time, is something very strange that generates a kind of rejection in you until you are understanding what is happening to him.
So sad.
In this season there is an absolute evolution. Elena breaks, she becomes destructured much more easily, because the events that occur continually modify her. And the BAC is revealed. You begin to understand who each character is, because things happen to everyone. I have spoken a lot with Lucía (Martín Abello), with Mona (Martínez), to try to find organicity in everything. The reason for this madness, what has happened to this character to get there.
Most of them already knew each other, and the team, so they already had part of the work done.
Yes. Rarely has what happened to me here: everyone so involved. The team was a big fan of what was happening. You didn’t see people yawning, which usually happens and I understand it, because technicians are human and can’t always be there. And you saw people excited about you. There is something very nice about family there. Despite telling the atrocities that we tell.
This season is even harder for his character. He finally finds his son, but turned into a monster. Would it be better if he had died?
It’s delicate. How do you deal with that? I often told Paco (Cabezas): I don’t know what is going to happen in this sequence. Many times he had to face things that he could not even imagine. I have a job done, a script, but I don’t know what is going to happen inside me when I am in the sequence. That has happened to me a lot of times, because Elena looks for her son and it is a desperation of eight years, an outrage, in which she is growing up and suddenly you find him and he is no longer your son. In addition to other things, there is a very important part of that. Elena discovers that her son may be a psychopath and a murderer. How does a mother assume it and how does she place that?
“That a woman does not smile, that she is contained all the time, generates a kind of rejection in you”
It’s hard to understand that children don’t always do what you would do.
Especially if he has been kidnapped.
Clear. But it can happen in any family. This is the case of Rodolfo Sancho with his son, Daniel & mldr; It is something very current. Just as children learn about sex by watching pornographic images on the Internet.
They have already learned it. If you add to that that what you see as normal and everyday something like that, everything becomes distorted and becomes much more tangled. And I think that in ‘The Purple Network’ it is told very well, how with everything that is happening to them, the children distance themselves. There is a loss. And they are training to be the conscious human being that they will be later. Then parents get lost due to stress, so their children are left with what they have at hand, which is the internet and screens. And out there they see anything. And then we ask ourselves: why did it happen to me? Why is there so little empathy? The problem in the world is that there is less and less empathy and right now we are able to see a murder and it seems like a supernormal thing to us. There is something not right in our brain.
And the series tells that with a captivating story.
It is a ‘thriller’, it has an incredible quality on a visual level, it is spectacular, it entertains you, it hooks you, but underneath there is a super strong work from each of the actors with Paco about why we are doing this and how we handle it , which in theory could be disguised from something much more superficial, to a deeper thing. And that is why it becomes a metaphor for the current situation that surprises us. As Paco says, Elena Blanco has lost her son like we have lost ours and we don’t even know that we have lost them until something appears that surpasses fiction.
“Parents lose themselves due to stress and children are left with the internet and screens”
Dealing with such hard topics, how do you manage to disconnect?
With sport. Yes, it’s true that I didn’t have much time to do what I like, which is go to the bar, but I did sometimes take my skateboard to filming. However, I feel privileged. We are very proud.
Is there no longer a limit between movies and series?
That’s why I talk about privilege. A movie ends. Here you can enjoy making a movie. Movie, movie, movie, stop and more movie.
And also the privilege of rehearsing.
At the beginning, Paco revolutionized everything because we worked a lot on the characters beforehand with what we wanted to tell, but he rehearsed while filming. And he is wonderful. For me, with my way of working, it is fantastic. If I place the text before, it clings to places that are from memory, not emotional memory. On the other hand, if I’m in a chair, I don’t know who comes, it’s my turn… It generates an exchange of energies for me. So go with Paco an hour before, even if it’s four or five in the morning, and have that space… I bring a proposal, Paco, his, and there is an improvisation. Everything is organic. And there is a lot of truth. There is a journey, a transit in that wonderful sequence. Furthermore, with Paco I have never reached a sequence and there is a mark. Never. First we see the space and what we want to do there, we feel it and, when we have it clear, the director of photography comes in and starts talking to us about light.
It’s not usual, right?
No. Many times they are doing everything for the light. That has never happened here. That’s why I believe that there is also something so powerful underneath, because that way of working makes it emerge like that.