Laura Novoa She has an almost mystical connection with the characters and is always attentive to what they are going to teach her. She says that taking on Sonia in “Para mí, para vos” (Multitabarís) was in principle a meeting with her ego. Since she was called in to make a replacement (Laura Oliva was the one with whom she had started this situation), she could have slipped with the “and why didn’t they think of me from the beginning”. For an actor, she says, working on the ego is a marvel because he is always very much at risk of that precipice. For this reason, she turned to “they didn’t think about me from the beginning, but now they do, look how good.”
Laura Novoa: I went to see the play and I loved it, and I understand that they didn’t think of me first because I haven’t seen comedy that much in the commercial circuit. Therefore, it was super interesting to be able to show myself as a comedy actress. No matter how old you are, in this environment and even more so as a woman, you don’t stop sowing. And I didn’t hesitate. But it was also a challenge for my methodology: in the rehearsal processes I am very demanding of myself and I tend to be there from the beginning of the project and that allows you a development as if on par, but I was super supported by my colleagues. Now, I’m sailing the comedy waters like a happy little fish.
News: How did you disarm that first situation of going through the ego?
Nova: I didn’t have to take it apart too much, because at this point in my life, I’ve worked on it quite a bit. It also happens to me that there is something that is fantastic about being a mature actress and that has to do with the fact that you are no longer giving proof, your work no longer tells who you are but your story tells who you are. So in some way it is only gratitude for what I have been given, not resentment. In a book that I studied many years ago, called “Women who run with the wolves”, there is a phrase that says that from the age of thirty-something onwards, women decide whether they become resentful or not. So many years ago I decided that she was not going to be resentful.
News: She says that jobs do not define her but that despite the path traveled, and especially being a woman, you have to continue sowing constantly.
Nova: Yes, this profession has something wonderful and something difficult. The wonderful thing is to do what you like, what you feel you have a gift for, and make a living from that. Then there is something complex which is that many times it depends on who calls you, who looks at you, who chooses you. We are in a society where the mature actress is less summoned and chosen., we have to go from the young heroine to the one at the heartthrob’s side. They don’t call me for a contemporary heartthrob, they call me for a bigger one because it’s difficult for a contemporary to be with a contemporary (laughs). Luckily, we are going to modify it or we are trying to modify it but it is still missing.
News: She said that she decided not to be resentful and Sonia, her character, starts out very resentful.
Nova: It’s true (laughs).
News: Personally, did you ever stay at the complaining victim’s place or did you never go there?
Nova: Let’s say that we always have a dead person in the closet, there will be many aspects in which one works on non-resentment. Perhaps the easiest point for me was to navigate it with respect to acting, because the profession has been very generous to me and because one also has other expectations and other projects. In my maturity, the projects become more and more interesting or I dedicate myself to seeing the full side of the glass, I do not place myself in a vacuum. And regarding Sonia, she has a beautiful curve, which I think had a lot to do with what was built, with what I was able to contribute to her, because the human situation put her in a place of great envy towards her sister and I think that when (at one point) of the play) she dresses up, something opens up to her, she can speak for the first time with her sister and love also comes out of the fury. It’s a very great, beautiful comedy, with tender places. And then there is something wonderful, which is to somehow compose Sonia’s ugliness, when in life one tries to compose beauty, it is a very interesting point.
News: Another test for the ego.
Nova: I don’t know about that because the uglier I am, the more my ego as an actress will rise.
News: I say dare to make yourself ugly and compose the character from there.
Nova: It happens to me a lot lately with the characters. Actually, I think it always happened to me. These days the Produ Awards are being defined and I am nominated for the series “María Marta: el crime del country” (HBO Max), where I also composed a character, beyond beautiful or not, based on my age. But I always had a very particular relationship with the stereotype of female beauty.. Going very far, in Poliladron, when the stereotype was of women with hyper makeup and hair, I was clean-faced and that had stuck. I had just come from France and I understood it as something else, I had a washed face, messy hair, I didn’t have tits and I wore tight t-shirts to show that I didn’t have tits. All of that also had to do with something that I’ve had for a long time, what happens is that at this point it’s starting to be more of a label.
News: Did you do it as a strategy to differentiate yourself?
Nova: No, I’m discovering it now. The other time I was on a note and I don’t know what they said to me on the air, “Oh, but you look divine!”, and I half raised my flag and said: “No, I’m not divine, nor do I want to be told that I’m divine.” nor that “you are just as young.” No, I’m not that young.” I’m older and that should deconstruct into “hey, you’re fine, but not because you look younger, but because you are what you are.”
News: Was it always like this or at some point were you tempted to rise to the demands of the medium?
Nova: With some things yes, what do I know, many people have insisted throughout my youth about why you don’t wear your boobs, for example. And with some things, of course I feel tempted to follow certain aesthetic parameters because I like to be liked, especially by the men I like, or by whatever I like, but I always had quite rebellious principles. I think I stopped wearing ripped pants and being totally leftist, but rebellion continues to transform me over the years.
News: Transformed doesn’t mean gentrified, does it?
Nova: No, it doesn’t mean gentrified. Although there are things about the bourgeoisie that seem divine to me (laughs). For example, having a car seems like a spectacular bourgeois detail to me (laughs). But somehow, now that I am a coach, that I already have children, that so much time has passed; I think that something of a limit that my father (Pepe Novoa) set for me when I was very young, that I wanted to be an actress from a very young age and he told me no, not until I was 18; It seems to me that going through that adolescence anonymously and with all the difficulties and benefits that anonymity has, helped me a lot to form myself and be who I am; To reach a wonderful profession more fully, but one that has many traps, you can step on quite a few mousetraps.
News: He wrote a play, what does it count there?
Nova: I talk about the future of two actress friends throughout their lives, with the complete opposite of what you think about fame and everything that makes me so upset. We are workers, we have a job like any other. So at times they will be divas and they will feel the ups and downs of being one, but talk about the pheasant and the feathers. I think that, with many jokes and with a lot of humanity, it deals a little with what Buddhists say: that being human is something complicated, no matter what you are. For anyone trying to be human in this dehumanized world, it is complex. It’s like building life by hand.
News: There are very hostile climates both nationally and internationally. What worries you the most?
Novoa: The lack of empathy terrifies me, when talking about such brutal cuts, I am concerned about the lack of humanity. It seemed to me that, in some way, the green tide had come to shed a little light, of love for others, of empathy, of putting oneself in the other’s place. And this surge of not having rights or wanting to cut back on certain things seems atrocious to me. And at the same time I think we have to reflect on everyone’s way of communicating. I am terrified of dehumanization and I try to think what I also did to make this happen. That’s why I try in every note, in every place, in every character, to show that it is not talent and that someone came and touched you (with the wand), but that it is work; and that he is respect towards one’s neighbor and towards oneself. And also on a planetary level, with ecology, now war… perhaps love is simply contributing what one can contribute, the grain of sand, the recognition of human pain. Like that song that Mercedes Sosa sang that said “at this exact time there is a child in the street”, well, at this exact time there is a bomb exploding. It has to hurt us all.
