They give life to the two most traditional friends of the five. Because they have a family and children within a conventional family (another of them, Alma, is looking for a baby, but her partner is a woman) and they are the least given to crazy things. At least until they start the annual trip of friends, that this time will be very different because one of the five has cancerr. Itsaso Arana (‘kings of the night, ‘The Virgin of August’) is Sara and Maria Rodriguez Soto (‘The Heirs of the Earth’, ‘Els dies que vindran’), Carol. Both have used different methods to build their characters (seeking inside her, one; turning him away from her, the other), but they have managed to give them a lot of truth. A truth that demands ‘The ones in the last row, this dramatic and at the same time hooligan series in which Daniel Sánchez Arévalo wanted to immerse himself in a female universe. Netflix premieres it on Friday, 23.
The initial image of the five friends shaving their hair is shocking and deeply moving. Was it hard to do it?
María Rodríguez Soto (MR S): At the beginning it was hard. For me it was more thinking about it than doing it. The idea of shaving in front of the cameras without knowing how I’m going to look… But when I did it I ended up enjoying it.
Itsaso Arana (IA): Yes. In part it is liberating, it exposes you a lot. I felt different. He struck me as super-transforming. The character you play in the world changes, because it’s either super trendy or it’s stigmatized or ideologized. The shave is a statement of intent. And it’s funny that you have to do it for your job.
It will also have helped them a lot to compose the character.
MRS: Yes, it’s like an impulse.
IA: And it’s like there’s no turning back. They weren’t going to throw us out after the shaved! It’s like the dip: now I’m going forward and from here I don’t get anything.
MRS: In addition, it unites us more, because we were like the shaven club.
AI:. A total ‘singing’.
His characters are the most traditional: they have a husband and children. What do they like and not about them?
MRS: I love Carol’s contradictions, because that makes her very rich and you can explore her a lot. She is also immersed in a very ugly place and this trip transforms her and she ends up remembering who she was. I feel very lucky to be able to tell this. It’s super wide and you can grab onto a lot of things. And she can play a lot of keys. For me that has been very nice. And what I don’t like about her is that she’s quite impressionable. Perhaps she gets too carried away with romantic partners, rather than herself or her friends. That’s what I don’t like about her. And I think she has to learn.
IA: I really like Sara. I have a lot of affection for him. She is super empathetic, super compassionate and caring. Then I liked what you say, María, that you can play various styles. Because at first she has the most romantic or dramatic part of the series. But, finally, there is a much more fun part, which we were able to explore in the series. Because she has a very powerful arc: she has a more romantic side, which I love, and a more naughty side, and she’s like a girl, pushing the limits, but she doesn’t know how. What I don’t like is that she’s a little rigid, poor thing, and that she’s a little afraid of living.
«My character, Sara, I really like her: she has a romantic part and a naughty part»
Itsaso Arana. Actress. It’s Sara in ‘The ones in the last row’
They are very real characters. I imagine that you used emotions and memories.
MRS : To create my character I tend to distance myself a lot from myself because my memories and emotions don’t help me. I prefer to create from the staff of the script and from listening to my colleagues. And the movement that the camera asks of me. I think it makes me contribute more to the character than myself, because I’m going to a place that I don’t like. That happens to me.
IA: On the other hand, I do feel that the character was very close and I have put many personal experiences there, which does not make it better or worse. But then it is true that the script set the tone so much, there was so much text, it was so choral, that it is not that you cannot make a character that I decide how things are done. Everything transforms you: the way you roll. It works for me. The way to shoot and, above all, the most important thing, beyond where I get my emotional material is to be alive, to be alive and in the present with my companions.
And have you taken things from your friends in real life?
(In unison): Yes.
IA: Yes, I have thought about my friends or about people in my life. Because, apart from that, the cancer issue makes you connect with many memories that we all have from people close to us. We know that it is a story that anyone who sees that and has had someone close to, any woman, and of course a man, but in this case, being such a feminine story, it evokes you and leads you to have those memories. Dani is playing with that emotionality that is so understandable and universal, with which I think we all had people in mind. Because you want to honor and dignify that.
After recording this series, have you also forged a friendship?
M. RS .: Yes, and three of us met in Zahara de los Atunes, where we shot. It was incredible. I had five days off, I had nothing to do and I said to myself: «I’m going there and I’ll find that little path that goes from Barbate to Zahara, which made me happy just to see it. As we became friends with a girl named Carmen, who has a bar there, which was precisely the location of the shoot, I told her: «I’m going there». Mariona (Terés) and Godeliv (Van Den Brandt) had already gone to a concert in San Fernando before and the three of us coincided there. It was super cute. For me it was like closing a stage.
The trip after the trip.
(Both): Right.
It is very good that it is not revealed which of the five friends has cancer, because they had agreed not to talk about it, and the viewer is played with until the end.
MS: It’s very interesting. Also for actresses. Because the fact that none of us knew which one was sick…
“We only found out who the cancer patient was the week we recorded it”
Maria Rodriguez Soto. Actress. She plays Carol in ‘The Last Row’
How? Didn’t they know?
We only found out just the week it was time to record it. It was weird at first, but then you think it’s okay. Because, if not, we would have been condescending or we would have treated the sick character differently. It is one more bet of the series.
One thinks that such an intimate and feminine series must have been created and directed by a woman. And no. It has been the director Daniel Sánchez Arévalo, more accustomed to dealing with male universes. Was it just as easy?
MRS : He is very sensitive and is very aware that he is a man, which gives you a lot of freedom. He tells you: “You take this and what you think is not right or that does not go with your character or with femininity, we are going to change it and absolutely nothing happens.” Also, he surrounded himself with many women, not just the five leads. The department heads were almost all women.
And his girlfriend seems to have also thrown some cable at him.
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MRS: Yes. But Daniel is super feminine. It was always in favor. And he loves being there watching.
IA: He loves to watch. But it is true that it leaves a blank space for you to create.