He has a bewildered look and a tired body. He asks for the date – Saturday, July 26, 1952 – without knowing that it will be the last time, even if his pallor indicates a deterioration. Natalia Oreiro She barely has the strength to get out of bed and head to the window of a room that, recreated in the Sans Souci Palace for the new original Star + series, pretends to be Eva Duarte de Perón’s residential room.

In that atmosphere of fragility, mystery and outstanding questions – about the fate of the wandering corpse of the Argentine First Lady after her death – advances Holy Avoida thriller directed by Rodrigo García and Alejandro Maci which, based on the best seller of Thomas Eloy Martinezarrives on the platform on Tuesday, July 26, on the occasion of the 70th anniversary of Eve’s death.

Date that ends to re-signify a project that, without a pandemic, would have landed on the screen the previous year.

But it was rewarded. Months after those tightrope dance shots for health reasons, a junket in the Recoleta area reunites with part of the main cast led by the Uruguayan actress: Ernesto Alterio, Diego Velazquez, the Catalan Francesc Orella (via Zoom from Spain) and the team. The only thing missing from the Buenos Aires hotel is Darío Grandinetti, who plays General Juan Domingo Perón in the fiction created and co-produced by Non Stop.

Natalia is moved and not the mask. She says she is taken by the immensity of the project and attributes it to a role she devotes much more to than her body. But her unshed tears of hers make sense when the first symptoms caused by this premiere come out of her mouth: her dizziness. The same feeling she went through when they confirmed that she was cast in the casting.

Inhabited by a physical, interpretative and vocal need, Oreiro relied on two coaches, acting (María Laura Berch) and vocal (Mariana García, recommended by colleagues Mercedes Morán and Leo Sbaraglia) to reach the desired point and give wings to the most vulnerable role in his career.

“I was always connected with his voice during the five months that the shoot lasted. But also all the previous year that the pandemic gave us. I went through a trial to disarm her voice. Because I’ve been playing her since she was very young and then in those scarce six years of her political career “, he explains Clarione. And he acknowledges that he interrupted his usual singing lessons for months “because, for my teacher, it was terrible that I cracked my voice” and it was incompatible with the process.

The tireless “on and off the set” – as its director, Alejandro Maci describes it – has run out of resources. And in that explosion of sound and cinematic stimuli, he clung to more than one unpublished material provided by the Evita Museum.

“What I wanted most were things that weren’t public. I even pulled Spotify out for her. Because I wanted to listen to it all the time. Even though her speeches aren’t in the show, I had to keep her in mind. Then, suddenly, I took off my headphones to act ”, she clarifies and acknowledges that she has kept some of her original costumes. “We used some of her stuff on set, like a tiara that I still have, but I’ll return it. I also kept a tailored dress, a dress and shoes ”.

As for the more physical research, a key instance for Natalia on the tour, admits that in front of a mirror or monitor (they dyed them blonde in what is considered to be Evita’s exact tone) “it was harder for me to see myself. like Eva Morocha. I’m crazy, because I’m a brunette. But since there aren’t many photos of her as a young man, it cost more. “

The mystique around a living legend has given rise to collective emotions. All the more so during the 69th anniversary of Evita’s death, which coincided with Natalia’s last day on the set. The scene was set up in a recreated Luna Park – since the real one functioned as a vaccination center – together with Grandinetti.

“We finished shooting the scene and when I was about to switch to the camper I was alone, when generally one is surrounded by people. And I pulled out my cell phone, looked, and it was time. It was very strong. I went back to the set and they were all having a minute of silence, ”comments Oreiro.

Maci, present that day, completes: “The shootings are magical. It was a nice tribute to Eva to think about the moment it all started. When those two people meet at a charity event, they walk away together and never go apart again. “

Another key piece is Ernesto Alterio, the Argentine actor based in Spain, who has landed in Buenos Aires for hours. “There is little material in my character, I think it was Moori Koenig who left no trace”, he deduces from the figure of the colonel who gave him more than one scene next to Eva’s lifeless body.

“The first thing I did was go to Recoleta and ask the lady for permission. With all due respect and all love. Afterwards, I really enjoyed being able to explore these dark and sinister corners, ”she accepts.

On his sporadic return to the countryside, which naturally links him to his roots, he reflects: “In some way I experience him as: who would Ernesto be if he had never left here? It’s like giving a voice to that 4-year-old boy who was taken away from here and never knew how to say: why the hell are they taking me out of here? Because he could never speak or say: I don’t want to go. And through works like this, I can express some things that have to do with that ”.

With the big puzzle to solve (the fate of the hidden body for almost two decades), Diego Velázquez, in the role of the journalist behind the case, tells Clarín: “Why am I an actor and why I am fascinated by the cinema of the 70s, I had a bunch of accumulated data ready to play. Then I had all the real elements: the typewriter, the recorders … My car in the film is the same Citroën that my father had and I associate it a lot with my childhood ”.

With over ten years of work, the executive blockbuster produced by Salma Hayek and José Tamez recreates five different periods in the life of the political leader with a strong demand for art (Mercedes Alfonsín), photography (Félix “Chango” Monti) and technique , translated into 7 episodes.

“The fact that we shot before there were vaccines, with infections, protocols and a change of plans is incredible. I remember being filmed in what used to be military intelligence and they told us: take the last shot and we all leave, not even knowing if we would be back. We faced thousands of challenges and, above all, ticked the sticks to see when the vaccines would arrive ”, comments Maci, on the then uncertain future of the series just presented at European festivals.

And it focuses on the importance of extras in the service of history. “On the one hand it was true for history, because Peronism was a mass phenomenon, but terrible because of the contagion.”

A current look written by women

Its director, Rodrigo García requested it, but also the story: a different approach with a feminine gaze. This is how Marcela Guerty and Pamela Rementería came to the project in 2018. “While much of what we tell in this series is an adaptation of the novel (by Tomás Eloy Martínez), it’s a different approach. We try to enter into the intimacy of Eva and marriage to tell another part “, agrees the authorial duo who, in their professional beginnings, had already worked collectively on the script of a unit on Evita.

“Rodrigo wanted women to write it. And I think that’s correct. From the point of view from which the situation is taken, which is the manipulation of a woman by many men, I think it is something that represents all women in the world. The male manipulation of the female, in all fields ”, they expose.

Second Chances

Natalia trusts the times. She lived through a pandemic, when a break allowed him to wring the rag of productivity to polish himself (even more) and reach a key point in her performance: fragility.

“It was something I wanted to find because it gave me a lot of tenderness. You have that image of her as a woman, powerful, vehement, energetic, but there was another part of that woman, which is the most important in the political history of Latin America, that I wanted to look for. And above all in her outcome, on the way to the vice presidency, I felt I could rediscover that energy of infinite sadness. From someone who has a lot to do and who feels that life is getting out of hand.

He trusts even when, without knowing what the road foreshadowed him, he gives up a first proposal to embody Evita in the cinema. “I didn’t get excited. I felt I was not prepared as an interpreter and as a woman. And almost ten years later, I auditioned. And I loved it! She gave me the security of knowing that they had seen something in me, in such a big project where the decision is not made by one person. Perhaps the fact of being older and having traveled a wider path gave me those tools that I was missing. You always need trust. “

POS