The day of the jackal last episode, plot, Úrsula Corberó, finale

Frederick Forsyth he certainly knew that The Day of the Jackalthe novel whose protagonist was a solitary killer tasked with killing General De Gaulle (guilty of having granted independence to Algeria), had cinema DNA. Not even two years passed and, in 1973, Fred Zinnemann made a film that immediately became a classic: it was nominated for an Oscar and the British Film Institute included it in its list of the unmissable films of the 20th century.

To find a woman’s name in the cast, however, you have to go to the end credits: the French Delphine Seyrig, seduced and abandoned in a hotel rooma couple of shots. It went a little better with the 1997 version – this time set in the United States – but how could Mathilda May divert attention from the exploits of the virile trio, Bruce Willis-Richard Gere-Sidney Poitier?

Úrsula Corberó in The Day of the Jackal

Frederick Forsyth, being the man of the world that he certainly is, must have imagined at a certain point that his story could be brought into the 21st century as long as the details were refreshed. So TV series, 10 episodes, European setting again (between London and Cadiz, but also Vienna, Budapest, Croatia) and, for the role of the killer, Eddie Redmayne (Oscar for playing Stephen Hawking in The theory of everything). The jackal no longer drives a white Giulietta Spider like Edward Fox did in the original, finally there is a woman who hunts himthe ambitious British secret service agent Lashana Lynch, and also someone who loves him, the lively Catalan Úrsula Corberó.

Úrsula Corberó, who for a long time (she has been acting since she was six years old) played, in her words, «haughty and fragile girls for Spanish TV», in The Day of the Jackal she’s pretty tough. She loves the reserved Englishman who awkwardly talked to her while serving him a drink at the bar, she is convinced that he is a busy manager, not a killer, but when she realizes that something doesn’t add up, she corners him. And he, who may be a ruthless killer, but cares a lot about his family, archives his Bruce Willis side and ends up going where his heart takes him.

From La Cada di Carta to the Day of the Jackal

For Úrsula Corberó there was an important link between the fragile girls and the tough ones: in House of paper«a cultural phenomenon rather than a TV series» she tells us, was Tokyo, narrator of the story for five seasons and, right from the start, «a symbol of female empowerment, like Natalie Portman in Lèon, Juliette Lewis in Natural Born Killers, but also Cruella De Vil, Harley Quinn…”.

All disreputable people.
But also Bette Davis. He remembers her in Eva naked (“Naked Eve”, the Spanish title of All About Eve, by Joseph Mankiewicz, a film symbolizing female rivalry, ed.). Bette Davis was so magnetic, a powerful, fearless woman. I’m not tough, but I’ve learned to be. Or seem like it.

Did you have to learn to be tough to play the characters or to deal with the world you are part of, especially now that you also work outside of Spain?
I stopped thinking that I have to obey. If you are a girl it is assumed that you obey. My mother raised me well, but when I started working, as a child, her recommendation was always: «Te portas bien!», behave well. When no one paid attention to me, however, I suffered from not being aggressive enough. “Hey, I’m talking to you (snaps fingers), why don’t you answer me?” I wanted to say. But I was 25 years old. Now I’m 35, things have changed.

How it went on the set of The Day of the Jackal?
For the first time I felt I was treated with respect. Maybe because I’m older, not everything has to do with gender, age matters a lot. I see young men ignored just like young women. They start taking you seriously at 33, 34, before what you say is “childish”.

Haven’t many things changed in the American cinema that you have been frequenting for a few years with the #MeToo revolution?
Sounds like it, right?

Isn’t that so?
Serious change is dangerous. And when you change things just to avoid having problems there is no real change. To have it you need to start with education, not sanctions. Changing attitude is the most complicated task for human beings. I noticed this in America.

And in Europe?
I think that here we have understood that women should be treated well, but not because they tell you or impose it on you. Because you know, you feel strongly that that’s the right thing to do. But not enough work has been done yet.

He spoke of the good education he received. She doesn’t come from a family of actors, her mother worked in a shop and her father was a carpenter. How did it go?
They have always supported me, mine is a humble family, but living in Barcelona, ​​which is a vital city, allows you to think creatively. My mother didn’t even have a car, we hitchhiked to go to auditions. And I remember that he helped me even if there were few resources. “If my daughter wants to be an actress, she will be an actress,” he said. At that time I didn’t know that they were making sacrifices for me, because they always tried to show me a perfect life. I understood it much later, and now I know for sure that if I’m here I owe it to her.

What did your mother feel when Madonna’s praise arrived, decreeing her definitive transition from local actress to polyglot superstar?
Madonna was crazy about Tokyo and the series. So he asked me: “Do you want to go on stage with me when I come to Barcelona?”. And I said: “I don’t know if I feel like it”. And she: “Come on! You are a star.”

Precisely…
We should all think that we are stars of our own life. I feel like a star, but not a superstar in the Hollywood sense. We are all special and unique. I trust myself and my intuition. And I believe that self-confidence is very important, but what I do remains a game. And very funny.

His latest film also says so, Kill the Jockeywhich was in competition at the Venice Film Festival and produced by Benicio Del Toro. Set in the world of horse racing in Argentina, it is about fragile masculinity. But her character, a jockey who is expecting a child from a colleague, eventually understands his desire for radical change. A very contemporary vision of man-woman relationships.
I was talking about it with Luis (Ortega, the director, born in 1980, ed.). And we concluded that men should always obey women, if they did the world would be better. The film says this in a very subtle and funny way. There’s a lot of love between these two people, it’s clear that they have to be together, but he totally lacks a sense of responsibility. She tells him: “I’m pregnant, what kind of father will you be? You’re a mess.”

Do we have to go through disaster to be reborn?
Since none of us know who he really is… Another skin, another world. And if necessary, even another sex.

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