The Llinás is incandescent, it is on, it stops you all. And if she has to avoid a trending topic, she knows how to get away with an irony or bullfight like in the Plaza Mayor.
He bombed the 80s with the “Gambas al Ajillo”, he was consort monarch in the Palacio de la Risa with Gasalla, he stepped on all the stages, he started a “Wild Laughter” with Darío Barassi with whom he will repeat the duo in “Canelones”, the series created by Orsai, won all the awards, she was the combative and sensitive wife of Ricardo Darín in “La odisea de los giles”, she co-directed an independent and beautiful film like “La mujer de los perros”, she will become Lali’s mother again in the second season of “El fin del amor” and it was in a “Loca de remate” with Soledad Silveyra.
Now it is the turn of Ignacia, an actress who perceives herself as magnificent, iconic and magnetic, but ends up being inevitably comical. Or tragic, just seeing “Antigone in the bath” we will know.
The work that she wrote with Facundo Zilberberg and co-directed with Laura Paredes (Yes, the great actress of “Argentina, 1985”, who is also the partner of the director and screenwriter Mariano Llinás, Verónica’s brother) confronts her with the major challenge of writing, direct and act. There she forms the heroic trio of comedy with Esteban Lamothe and Héctor Díaz, a semi-crooked triangle where all angles lead to humor.
News: We all have family themes, but you chose Antigone who is the incestuous daughter of Jocasta and Oedipus. Didn’t he have a more complicated family to approach the tragedy?
Verónica Llinás: (Laughs) The thing is that I found the story spectacular, the way in which Facundo Zilberberg wove the tragedy with a much simpler story, that of an actress who before going on stage suffers from a thousand insecurities. Bringing something of that Greek tragedy to Corrientes Street and approaching it from humor seemed super attractive and challenging to me. You don’t know what I have fought so that she could be called Antigone…
News: Why? Did you think the name was piantavotos?
Llinás: Ugh, it was a pitched battle, the producers believed that the public could think of something tragic and very intellectual. Logically I understand it, we came from making “Two crazy women” and suddenly putting Antigone in the title was kind of short of public…but we solved it by adding “…in the bathroom” and making the poster we made.
News: In that poster they are all naked in the bathroom, Lamothe covers himself with a bouquet of flowers, you have a sponge in your hand, it seems to me that the message will not be confused with one from the Cervantes Theater
Llinás: The thing is that I won the title battle, but the production won the poster battle. There was another photo in which I was much prettier, interesting, I was still not dressed, but I didn’t have this stupid face either! (laughs) You win, you lose, that’s life, it’s good to be able to bring people closer to what the great tragedies are like and the everyday ones too.
News: One of the biggest tragedies are some mental health consultants without degrees or licenses who swarm the networks. Does Héctor Díaz play an “ontological coach” lacking in roles?
Llinás: That character is spectacular and I come back to what you said, I swear that I got some of the delirious things in the play from YouTube, there are such dirty people who actually do that. The character of Héctor is very funny because he comes to try to solve the existential problems of Ignacia, this actress who always had to return to the theater with a great classic, a prestigious director and all the ball, but ends up in the bathroom with an attack of panic and a representative who inherited his father’s position. The coach bursts into that scene where everything is wrong and discovers a very comical link between those two characters, but because he wants to work with that he unleashes total havoc.
News: Why do you think we are so interested in divas? Are we going through a time of too much ego?
Llinás: The truth is that I don’t know if there is more ego now than before. What happens is a great image boom due to the explosion of the networks and there is that need to show oneself that happens to everyone, But in actresses that issue becomes more acute. For an actress, not looking perfect, not being young, not being skinny, means that her chances of working are reduced and her chances of ridicule and cancellations increase. It seems to me that this generates despair in many.
News: The battle against the Law of Gravity is already lost. How do we pilot it?
Llinás: If you cannot give a twist to the matter in which a certain wisdom and acceptance of the passage of time and the possibilities that open up emerge, if you are not able to deal with it, disaster ensues. hThere are people who do things to their bodies and end up destroying them.people who are transformed into a kind of horrible doll or, as in the case of my character, unleash a tragedy due to the gap between what they want to do and what they can really achieve.
News: Kind of like those expectation vs reality memes?
Llinás: Yes! You take photos here and there, you fix them, you put filters on them…then you look in front of the mirror without all that and you say: “What the hell is this?” (series). There are people who are unrecognizable in person.
News: A while ago you mentioned some doors that open over the years. What things come with the passage of time?
Llinás: Lose sight! (laughs), that comes for sure, but some senses are lost and others are refined. The capacity for observation grows over time and so does humor… although not always, it depends on the path you have taken in life. If you haven’t learned anything, you are becoming more and more stupid and if you were lucky enough to have crossed paths with interesting people, I think that time makes you wiser and takes yourself less seriously.
News: Your brother is always ready with suggestions and ready to propose some crazy cinematographic things like the voice-over for Extraordinary Stories, right?
Llinás: Always! And it also screwed up my life when I was adapting this work. I had worked on it a lot with Laura Paredes, who is its co-director, I was very lucky to have crossed paths with her for this. At one point, when we had everything settled, we read it to Mariano, who is not only my brother but also her husband. He told us: “This is bullshit! Get everything out!” (series). At first I felt hatred, I thought: “Why did I consult him?” But after staggering for a month and a half we found a way to incorporate what he had told us and the work ended up being much better.
News: Dancing with your sister gets bad press, but what is it like working with your sister-in-law?
Llinás: In this case it is wonderful, because we get along great in life, she is a blessing in our family. Living this experience together, being on an equal footing, is beautiful. With Pepón, my nephew, she was always very generous, she shared her motherhood a little and suddenly being united in this is spectacular beyond the result, how it turns out I don’t care.
News: In the play Ignacia has a debt and that is to do Antigone in style. Do you have any pending characters left?
Llinás: Oh, how difficult! I don’t have those acting whims, it seems to me that mine is more about being able to write an entire play, acting in something that I have written myself. There is no character from classical theater that keeps me awake, for Julieta I missed the boat a while ago. I’m also not dying to act in something like “A Streetcar Named Desire.” Although I remember that Urdapilleta told me (imitates her tone of voice): “You have to do Blanche Dubois, Blanche Dubuà!”
