Lucía’s perfect life comes crashing down when she is fired and accused of industrial espionage on the same day she picks up her brand new car and starts her job as CEO of her company. Then his life becomes a battle to dispense justice, uncover the real culprit while keeping up appearances so his family doesn’t get to the truth. This constant forward flight based on lies is the central theme of the comedy “Lies Passengeras”, a series produced by Pedro and Agustín Almodóvar through El Deseo, which premieres this Monday on the SkyShowtime platform. Elena Anaya (48 years old, Palencia) is its protagonist. She doesn’t know how to lie and knows the price of the truth: she was fired from a Hollywood blockbuster for being honest.
Questions. What fascinated you about the series and the character of Lucía?
Answer. I received three scripts from Nerea Castro [creadora de la serie] and I completely fell in love with his writing, his intelligence and his way of portraying a society. A female character leading the plot is very appealing because when we are young it might be easier, but as you get older it is difficult to see characters like those of my age, 48 years old. He is a longing character who, at the highest moment of his life, fulfills all his dreams and has to deal with a new reality. Everything I dreamed of is falling apart. And without being able to tell the love of his life, namely Basilio, played by Hugo Silva. He seemed to me to be a character who is not funny in himself, but everything that happens around him is very surreal and very crazy.
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Q To keep up appearances, the characters get caught up in a web of lies. Do you understand the obsession they have?
R. Yes, I understand you and I support you. When I have to play a character, I have to justify it to the death, and I understand what he’s doing, I support him and don’t judge him. It can give me a headache because I am more honest and prefer to come home and confess even if the consequences could be bad, but I understand Lucía very well. She believes that there are many things we need in life. She managed to check all the things that we as a society are sometimes told since we were little: you have to get a great job, you have to achieve your ideal partner, you have to be a mother, family, children, a nice house , a car, having money to be happy. On this journey, Lucía learns that all the needs she considered her own are not her own, and that by letting go of almost all of them, she finds a balance she hasn’t had before.
Q What did you learn from Lucia?
R. It’s very funny because I’ve been playing characters for 30 years that I would like to play again because there’s no one who said, ugh, no. I liked them all. But I have a special affection for Lucía. It has something to do with finding the balance that I’m always looking for in my life. I often listen to very wise people talk about how society gradually makes us poor while trying to get rich because we are overwhelmed and we want to achieve more and more things. They make us too much slaves, they take away our freedom and our availability. How much do you have to work to be free? To where?
Elena Anaya, protagonist of the series “Passenger Lies”, at the SkyShowtime offices in Madrid. Samuel Sanchez
Q The series is also about the obsession with physical appearance. Her character starts a secret beauty business. Have you ever felt like a slave to your physical appearance?
R. I’m an incredibly carefree person. I tend to do the opposite of what people my age usually do, which is to take a little more care of myself. I had to learn from dermatologists how to click and know what this business consists of and how to do it so that it doesn’t sing. I learned piercing, I saw how other people were treated, I went to four or five dermatologists, I wanted to see what kind of procedures were done. I’ve been working for 30 years, I’m also getting older and I realize that people want to see younger people and I just hope to get over the threshold of age where no one thinks you’re an interesting age to talk about things. It is a very complicated and sensitive issue that I suffer from. I ask that the photos are not retouched, I want them to be taken without a filter… Why do you have to put a filter on an actress to try to hide the passage of time, and not on an actor? I’m 48 years old, leave it to me. I hope to be able to rely on my facial features for many years to come, reflecting what it means to grow older. Much more interesting things happen to me at 48 than when I was 35 or 20.
Q Do you notice that you are receiving fewer suggestions?
R. I started when I was 19 and I realized that this was the first summer in 30 years that I had two months off. I also stopped voluntarily at two specific times for personal reasons and decided to do it when I was older because I wanted to. I didn’t want to be a mother and have someone else take care of my children. But I’m back, I’m back! Yes, I realized that it is a difficult age to receive projects. I really want to work, but hey, they will come. But in 30 years I haven’t stopped, other colleagues have had many more breaks and many haven’t done more. It’s a hugely unfair profession where only 4% of actors can make a living from acting.
Q He has done many more dramas than comedies in his career. How did comedy make you feel?
R. Yes, but my second film was a comedy, Familia, by Fernando León de Aranoa, and I felt very comfortable. Is more difficult. I find it more difficult because of the rhythm, because you have to shoot it so delicately, and the direction has to be impeccable, because high comedy is a very delicate balance, not a single chip can fall because everything is so surreal that it has to be above I started rehearsing with Félix Sabroso and Marta Font [directores de la serie]Félix returned to a Pedro film [Almodóvar], women on the verge of a nervous breakdown in which Carmen Maura isn’t on the comedy roster but everyone else is. The tide is rushing in on her, the world is constantly crashing in on her, she cries all the time, is devastated and she wanted us to go there. The other characters are more into comedy. I felt very comfortable, I had a lot of time to read the scripts. Esther [García, productora de la serie] He offered me this project when I was pregnant with my second daughter and told me that he would wait as long as I needed and that I would always be grateful because it wasn’t normal. And I had a close relationship with Nerea Castro before I started filming. We worked together a lot before the directors came on board.
A moment from the filming of the series “Passing Lies”.
Q As for lying… is it okay to use lies, even if they are pious? Or would you rather deal with the truth first?
R. I’m a mess. When I was little and we were doing mischief with my friends, they would say to me: “Elena, no, not you.” And he would always end up opening his mouth and annoying them. Well, that remains true, I’m 48 years old and still a terrible liar. I had to lie sometimes because they forced me to. At my first casting, my representative told me: She lies like a villain. You are 19 years old, but if you are over 16, I am not allowed to be part of the casting. I told them you’re 15. The director asked me my age, he told me: don’t lie to me, because 300 girls have come here and I already have a lie detector and a red light comes on and you go, you don’t take the test. . And I said, 15. And I saw that there were no red lights going out, and I said, well, let’s get started. And that lie was terrible because he swallowed it and they gave me the lead role. They told me who from my family would come to sign the contract, my father or my mother. But I wasn’t a minor. I was in Madrid studying at RESAD, where I lived with two French boys. I had to reveal myself and he told me that he would, but that I had to keep the lie throughout the shoot. I had to lie for two months. It was very good for me because my character lied throughout the film. I regretted that experience so much that I now say, “Hello, I’m 48 years old.” And in fact, I repeated it to you several times in the interview.
Q How do you choose your projects? Has your focus changed over time?
R. I rejected my second film. I didn’t have a dime, I was 19 years old, I was looking for a job, whatever, and they called me to do a film, but I didn’t feel comfortable, there was something in me that said, “Ugh! I’m not comfortable with this character. , with this direction, I don’t know where they want to go…, I won’t do it. And I said no, plus it was in a different city, and when I left the office I said, “Wow!”
Q Goodbye, racing.
R. Goodbye, racing. I can still remember saying: You won’t call me again. And because I left that film three weeks later, Fernando León de Aranoa was looking for me and he couldn’t find me because my representative had given me a cell phone and I never used it, and my representative pulled me out of an acrobatics class to take part in a family casting to participate. My career didn’t end, but I made the film that later gave me the name “Julio Medem, Almodóvar”…
Elena Anaya, this Friday in Madrid. Samuel Sanchez
Q Have you ever regretted saying yes or no to a project?
R. [Piensa] Yes, but I tried to leave with as much dignity as possible. I’m very argumentative, I’ve argued a lot with people because I’ve said, “This isn’t what we talked about, this isn’t the script we signed, my character has to do this and it doesn’t seem right.” be.” Me, so you have to change it.” . At that moment the production team says: “You’re right, how can we make you happy?” It happened to me in South Africa when we were shooting at 50 degrees, they gave me the new scripts, I read them and said : “That’s not it.” They changed because they wanted something more commercial. And what about values and ethics and what we want to tell the world, that it was a global epidemic before it happened? And everyone keeps their mouths shut, there is a minute of silence where people say “uffff”. Or well, it happened to me once in Hollywood during a mega production. The director asked me to be completely honest when reading the script with the entire artistic team and producers, 100 people in a room. I said what I thought. It was a script they rewrote over and over again, and each time it got worse. I said what I had to say and they fired me. I got fired. You asked me to be honest, and as I told you at the beginning of this interview, I don’t know how to lie. The others were silent, but the film was a complete failure, so I have no regrets.
Q What he got rid of.
R. I became free, I became free. I already knew people on the team and they told me what a smart person I was. But I had a terrible time, I cried for three days in a row because I said, oh, what a price you pay for your honesty… Then the story ended well in another way, because in the United States, when they expel you This way they will pay you for the entire film so that you don’t report them for unfair dismissal.
Q Lately he has been doing more series than films. Are there more offers from television than from the cinema?
R. Yes, last year I did Fatum and then Little Lies, and after that series there was another series, and before that I did a series with Brendan Fraser in South Africa and another with Richard Gere in London, and another independent in Canada… The last project I did for Disney was directed by Clara Roquet, who just won a Goya for Libertad and directed the six episodes [la serie Las largas sombras]. I feel the same responsibility, which is enormous, when I make a film with Woody Allen or a series with Félix Sabroso or Marta Font. They are my directors and the responsibility is maximum, you have to do it very well. There is no option for any nonsense, you have to do your best as if it was the last job you will do in your life.
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