Úrsula Corberó: “I have to remind myself that I am no longer Tokyo”

How do you bury a character that made you a global pop icon? Betting on another no less scandalous. The actress faces the curiosity of becoming Rosa Peral in the series about the crime of the Urban Guard, a case that shocked Spain in 2017.

Do not be fooled by the photographs that accompany this text. Úrsula Corberó no longer wears minimal bangs. And she will not return to that aesthetic in a while due to professional logic. It’s not a frivolous tidbit for whom she turned her hairstyle into a pop symbol. Hair, as Phoebe Waller-Bridge pointed out in the Fleabag series, is everything. And hers was the photo that an army of girls spread around the globe has taken to her trusted hairdresser in the last five years. They all wanted her bangs, blunt a few centimeters from her eyebrows, framed in a short mane that stylized her neck and exposed a black choker. The one that was inspired by Natalie Portman in León, el profesional (1994). The one that has ended up becoming the Tokyo hairstyle from La Casa de Papel. The hair of her character, which subtly mutated during the five seasons that the second most watched series in the history of Netflix lasted, became in 2018 “the most requested by the porteños”, according to the Clarín newspaper. And it didn’t just happen in Argentina. Corberó herself remembers going to Barcelona and coming across multiple clones from Tokyo. She was always stunned. “Hairstyle is one of the things that, don’t ask me why, is crucial when creating a character. And if I want to move forward, I need at least two projects in which I don’t repeat aesthetics. No one has asked me, but I had to tell myself: ‘As much as you look pretty and think it’s your style, if you’re smart and think like an actress, you have to let your bangs grow,’ she says in a telematic conversation, with a ponytail and without a trace of him, on a Saturday in September, admitting that he is in “full phase of mental imbalance”. For her next project, she touches melena. She will be very long, straight, straight, jet. She couldn’t be less iconic for who she represents.

Although we are in the same city, the calendar of this Barcelona interpreter is gibberish for a face-to-face meeting. At 33 years old, Corberó faces the filming of El cuerpo en llamas, the Netflix miniseries that will fictionalize one of the criminal and sexual scandals that has generated the most social debate in Spain in the last decade: the crime of the Barcelona Urban Guard. She will be Rosa Peral, the local police officer sentenced to 25 years for murdering her boyfriend, police officer Pedro Rodríguez (played by José Manuel Poga in the series) in May 2017, along with her ex-lover and also a member of the Albert Corps. López (Quim Gutiérrez), in a bizarre triangle that had public opinion on edge. An ideal case of sex, lies and mobile messages ready to be consumed in vein and exploited in the golden age of true crime. The one in which we compulsively gobble up —and in most cases, promoting sexual terror— the narration and recreation of crimes that drink from reality.

“I know that there is a lot of morbidity around Rosa Peral, but if I let this role go, I was going to die of rage. It is very difficult to find leading characters with that weight, nuance and depth”, says Corberó, and confesses to having taken more than reasonable time to debate whether she agreed to become the condemned after the impact of La Casa de Papel. Assuming the halo of collective fascination, he measures her words: “I approach the case with the utmost respect. My opinion about what happened does not matter, that is what the judges are for”, she insists on several occasions, holding back. So much so that she ignores, smiling, the question of whether she has gone to visit the condemned woman to work on her character: “I’m not going to answer you”.

Corberó wants to dive into the gaps of a character who has become an archetype of a noir erotic thriller from the nineties. As if Peral had been reduced to version 2.0 of Linda Fiorentino in La última seducción. Hers, she says, will be a polyhedral vision beyond that flat moral of the femme fatale. “I think that if it is so intriguing it is because people have a hard time imagining a murderer being a mother and sexually active. That’s what blows their minds; but these cases, unfortunately, happen”, she explains. The series wants to bring more layers, humanity. “This is also the story of how a woman can be buried. In my character there are many information gaps, and that is the most interesting thing about this project: exploring the grays. Because, even if you have done a horrible thing, that does not mean that bad things cannot happen to you too”, she clarifies.

In mid-September the first images of the project were leaked with Corberó in a minidress, long hair, red lips and hoop earrings. The internet fandom approved the casting instantly. Something that Jorge Torregrossa, creator and co-director with Laura Mañá of El cuerpo en llamas, already sensed: “Úrsula has the enormous charisma and magnetism that Rosa Peral demands. Her talent and playability add depth and dimensions to a very complex character”. The one who was the director of the series Intimidad —here he repeats the script with Laura Sarmiento— assures that seeing the Catalan in action is “a revelation”: “Her Rosa Peral is also vulnerable, and her interpretation is going to bring new light to the reasons that led her to commit such a crime”.

The protagonist knows that if she has said yes to this series it is because she is going. “There are projects that are done out of romanticism and others out of interest to reach other goals. I make Rosa Peral moved by my guts”, she reveals. She is awaiting the release of the action thriller Lift, she has also shot another movie in New York that she cannot reveal more about. Projects that she faced after a year and a half without working after finishing La Casa de Papel. A self-imposed professional break that led her to ponder what steps she should take after a series that made her so famous that Madonna stopped her on a plane and told her that she was also a groupie from Tokyo. “This impasse has not been pleasant”, recalls the actress. “I have asked myself some very strange questions and I have lived through it with ups and downs. After such a heavy thing you say to yourself: ‘Okay, now comes the decline, right?”

Her relationship with her career prospects is not to be taken lightly. Corberó has dealt with exposure since she was a child, since she made an advertisement for a bank with magnifying glasses and understood that this was her destiny. “More than being famous, I think I dedicate myself to this because I always experience pleasure showing myself to the world. I like knowing that people are watching me. In that ad, for example, I didn’t care if I looked ugly, I was delighted because I knew it would be something that would be seen. It still happens to me”, she clarifies.

Until becoming Tokyo, the Catalan had experienced what could be imagined as a gradual process in the construction of a successful career before the platforms. He sang in a children’s group (Top Junior, who shared the program with Tom Jones in Música sí), achieved fame in his homeland thanks to the Catalan midday soap opera —the scenes of Ruth, now accumulate hundreds of thousands of views on YouTube—and made the national leap by moving to Madrid at the age of 17 and participating in that adolescent hormonal bombshell that was Física o Química (FoQ)—he still stings that “we all fucked with everyone” that he said in an interview commemorating the series and that went viral without remedy: “I had to apologize to several of my colleagues”, he recalls—. After FoQ, and with the feeling that she had stuck in the role of the funny cock (Perdiendo el norte, Cómo sobrevivir a una despedida), she called the casting directors Elena Neira and Yolanda Serrano to find a way out of her. They understood that Úrsula would have to be Tokio. The rest is television history.

The earthquake came when La Casa de Papel went to the international Netflix catalog in full confinement. It became ubiquitous. He didn’t have to move to Hollywood or learn English to start with a romcom hinged on a blockbuster. She was already a global icon, only the entire planet was watching her locked up in her house. She was too. “It was a very rare experience. I spent the pandemic in Buenos Aires, away from my family. I went to see my boyfriend for 10 days and stayed for four months [she refers to Chino Darín, with whom she has had a relationship since 2016, when they filmed La embajada together]. There he hit everything and, if I’m honest, for me reading the pandemic is horrible, somewhat macabre. It completely blocked me, I had a tremendous mental cocoa. I was up and exploding on Instagram, with followers from India to the United States, and I spent two weeks promoting with crazy zooms, pretending everything was great and cheering people who were having a terrible time when I was the least suitable because it I was saying from the privilege”, he recalls.

Corberó now has 23.5 million followers on the social network he is talking about. And she is beginning to assume that number may change. “Since La Casa de Papel ended, they have been going down. At first it distressed me. He told me: ‘Am I going to lose them all?’ That series gave me an international following and ad campaigns. That’s a lot. But I have had to remind myself that nothing happens if they fall. That, in reality, they were not my fans, but from Tokyo. And if they followed me, it’s because I did my job well within that label, which was a much bigger project than me. I have to remind myself that I am no longer Tokyo”, she repeats calmly, as if trying to internalize that statement again. In constancy, and in understanding that in this life nobody gives anything away, Corberó comes with the assumed lesson.

Born 33 years ago in Sant Pere de Vilamajor, a town of 4,000 inhabitants in the Vallès Oriental region of Barcelona, ​​this daughter of a carpenter and a mother who has been a cleaner, a fishmonger, a dental clinic assistant or whatever it took to carry Money Home understands what’s at stake with every project. “I don’t come from an elite family, but in this profession it’s often taken for granted that I am. In 2008, when the crisis exploded, they interviewed me and asked me what my parents did for a living, and I said: ‘They are unemployed’. Everyone laughed at the answer, they thought he was joking. Those prejudices always surprised me, here not everything is glitter”, she clarifies. She says her background gives her perspective to keep her feet on the ground: “Being from the fringes hasn’t made me feel like an outsider in the industry, but it has made it easier for me to understand this game. If I talked to my friends in town like on the red carpet, they would say: ‘Who are you trying to sneak in?”

She thinks we live in a very punishing society. “Self-esteem is confused with things going to your head and with being believed. And sometimes we also confuse being professional with being complacent and submissive. It’s exhausting being a woman and feeling like you can’t screw up. I have felt guilty many times for not knowing how to stop someone or not having said what I thought. It’s understandable: you don’t want them to think you’re a diva. But you are neither being true to yourself nor expressing your needs. I’m learning how to say no. Now I say: ‘This makes me uncomfortable'”.

As her next leading lady, she likes to be liked. “Sometimes I want to think that Daft Punk were the smartest because they became famous without most of the world knowing what face they have, but then I say: ‘Bah, if I go from low profile. I love to brag about good things. “My boyfriend is the complete opposite of me, always discreet, but why shouldn’t I be able to feel pleasure in sharing that things are going well for me? Yeah that’s fantastic!”

Source : elpais.com


Úrsula Corberó is Ready for her Next Big Act

As Úrsula Corberó wrapped the final season of the global phenomenon La Casa de Papel, she was, to put it mildly, zapped. “It was exhausting”, she says from Madrid, where she’s currently filming a new project. “The characters were always feeling this anger and a lot of violence. Every time I arrived home after work, I felt evil—I wanted to hit somebody”. But over a semi-choppy transatlantic Zoom feed, the 32-year-old actor is marked by a naturally sunny, chipper disposition, so to hear her describe the anguish brought on by inhabiting Tokyo, the long-suffering robber who serves as one of the protagonists of the Netflix thriller, is jarring.

After debuting in 2017, La Casa de Papel (known in the U.S. Money Heist), which follows a group of professional thieves, quickly became Netflix’s biggest global hit, and it thrust the Barcelona-born Corberó —the daughter of a shopkeeper and a carpenter— into the international spotlight. As the series unspools part one of its fifth and final season this fall, Corberó has become a social media sensation, boasting more than 21 million Instagram followers while becoming a burgeoning fashion muse, fronting campaigns for the likes of Bulgari, Jacquemus, and Shiseido. “To be honest, everything happened so fast after the success of La Casa de Papel“, she says. “We weren’t expecting this at all, so I’m still trying to process it”.

Corberó rode out the early stages of quarantine last year with her boyfriend in Buenos Aires (she spent 10 days during that time filming the music video for the Dua Lipa/J. Balvin/Bad Bunny/Tainy hit “Un Dia”, which her boyfriend shot at their house). Now that the demands of shooting a television series are behind her, Corberó wants to embrace her newfound freedom. “My goal as a person and as an actress is to travel”, she says. “I would love to work all around the world”.

As she begins this new chapter, Corberó cites Penélope Cruz as someone whose career path she hopes to emulate. “She is my goddess”, she says. Corberó made her English-language acting debut in last July’s G.I. Joe spin-off Snake Eyes, in which she played the villainous Baroness, opposite Henry Golding. (She was offered the role without an audition, as one of the producers was a fan of her work in La Casa de Papel.) After learning English for Snake Eyes, Corberó now speaks it fluently. She explains that while confidence is key in learning a new language—”don’t judge yourself”, she advises— she can also be “very self-critical”. She pauses, and then continues, “I’m always between the angel and the demon”.

Source : interviewmagazine.com


Úrsula Corberó on Principles, Vulnerability, and exiting Money Heist

[SPOILERS AHEAD]

Úrsula Corberó exudes energy. She can open up any room, even if it is a virtual one on Zoom. There is an authenticity to this energy, and she attributes it to her Spanish heritage. She is full of passion and zeal, and over the last few years she has been able to explore her creative energy on Money Heist as the superheroine, Tokyo.

The role was made for her, but Úrsula Corberó will be the first to admit that she wasn’t ready. She was the posh girl in comedies and dramas, and felt clumsy and awkward during the first few test shoots. These feelings of vulnerability allowed her to transform because her sensitivity to these bouts of emotion was an opportunity to learn.

Fans of Money Heist saw the transformation and our benefactors of her incredible performance as an acrobatic bad-ass running toward gun fights, and leaping out of explosions. Our conversation with Úrsula ran deep, and her honesty allows everyone to understand how a leading enigmatic character is not born, but perfected and crafted over various trials and tribulations.

Money Heist is a thrilling action story from Spain entering its last, and final, fifth season. It has become a world-wide phenomenon with a storyline and action-sequences that have Hollywood’s jaw-drawing. Producers, directors, and cinematographers salivate over the amount of talent and action in each episode. It is easy to understand why when you can speak to Úrsula Corberó.

Hello. Hello. Hello. So nice to see everyone!

Wow, hi Úrsula. Thank you for the opportunity. If you don’t mind. Let’s get right into it. You got bit by the acting bug at a young age. You have been on multiple television series, and have been on many successful Bulgari and Maybelline campaigns. Which job made you feel that childhood dreams were becoming a reality?
Whoa, that is a big question. Hrmm, I am really thinking. It has to be Money Heist. After the first and second season I just had this feeling.

It must be a special feeling because you have been in horror movies, cartoons, and comedies. And now with Money Heist you have the chance to play with guns and explosives. Which of the genres do you enjoy the most?
Let me tell you… Action. It is hard work. I am very small. I am only 5’4″ and the action is super demanding on my body. As a heroine there is a lot to focus on. You have to focus on the acting, but there is also a lot of things going on in the scene. So you have to be ready, and that involves a lot of training. But, why I like action so much are the results. When you watch it on screen, that is when I can tell myself, “it was worth it”. But, when you are doing it, you feel exhausted. I would tell myself, “you can’t do this anymore”. Because action scenes are long. It can be intense, or it can be a lot of waiting and sitting around. But, when you see it, then you know it was worth it.

The original Money Heist was a two-part series that was complete in many ways. It has some nice twists at the end, and wraps things up nicely. At the end of production did you feel proud of your work?
It is hard to be objective, but I am really happy with Money Heist. Especially because a production like this is always moving. There is so much momentum because all the scenes push the story. It is always so intense, so that is why it is so important to wait for the results. While you are filming it can feel like a super mess. We are Spanish, and that means we are passionate. Sometimes it means a lot of shouting. But, you focus and wait for the results. So, thank you.

Great answer, you are leading me right into the next question. You were originally narrating the story, but Part 3 has a different tone. The dynamics of the characters change, and new ones are brought on. Did you like the new pace of what Netflix was able to bring?
This is when I realized that this was a BIG production. I also feel that each season the new characters made everything more refreshing. They can provide a new perspective, or gaze into the show. But, it also didn’t feel different. The roles were the same from before, and it was the same way of working. It can still get very messy, but it was the same energy.

Energy is definitely a big part of the show. Tokyo is incredibly fun, yet she can be a deep character. She has a rich backstory that slowly unfolds before the audiences’ eyes. She is a real bad-ass. Was it difficult to play a character with multiple complex traits?
Yes, it was super difficult. This was really new to me because before Money Heist I was in comedies. I played a lot of posh girls. When I was offered the role. I thought, “this is not me”. But, they trusted me more than I trusted myself. It was a lot of experimenting, and a lot of learning. But, I love Tokyo. She is a lot of fun, and she epitomizes the superheroine. She is this superhero, but she makes these mistakes and these mistakes bring you closer to the character. So fans don’t like that, but I think she is more relatable. I love that! She is more human.

The characters on Money Heist have a lot of unique personality attributes. Your character, Tokyo, really works well with The Professor. Why did you think you had so much chemistry with the Professor?
Sergio Marquina is super meticulous, and he is detailed about every scene. We can do a scene multiple times, and he is so disciplined that he will do that scene the same every SINGLE time. I am the opposite, and I need to feel the acting. And things can change. I have never seen someone so detailed and focused as The Professor. I guess I am more chaotic, but I need to test and fail to know how to play that particular part. We are very different, but I believe our differences generate the chemistry that you see on screen.

The chemistry is quite obvious, and I really like your explanation. Explosions and wild gun fights are a staple in Money Heist. How did you train for such exciting and realistic action scenes? Cause everything looks like it would be difficult.
YOU ARE RIGHT! Everything IS very difficult. We weren’t used to these shows in Spain. These big budget action scenes are only for Hollywood, right? And I remember when we first shot Money Heist we felt very clumsy. We were experimenting a lot, and there is so much learning. The action was super challenging in the beginning, but there was always something new. I felt vulnerable, but I love feeling vulnerable when I am shooting because it means that I will learn something new. I learned from season 1 and 2 that I had to be strong to do this. When season 3 was announced that is when I said I really need to train harder, or I could get hurt. There was more of everything, and it is so hard because I am so small. The days are long and the guns are very heavy. I remember one of the first test shoots for the show. These days can easily go 12 hours and my back was really hurting. I was looking for another position to hold the gun. So I just threw the big heavy machine gun over my shoulder to rest. “Oh, my God! THAT IS SUPER TOKYO”, screamed Jesús Marquina. But, this look is just because I couldn’t handle the gun any more. So I believe the training is important, but a lot of things happen naturally too.

This is really fun to learn because the way you play Tokyo seems so effortless. So, while the show has a lot of action it also keeps it fun and entertaining. The characters inject a lot of their own quirkiness onto the show. Which characters did you like working with and why?
Just one? It is difficult to choose one, because I love all of them. The cast is just amazing because we are so different. SUPER different. But, we are family. It has been five years together and the nature of the show is super intense. We share a lot of things, and as time passes we have even more things in common. If I were to choose one it would be Rio, Miguel Herran. He is super talented, and just so young. I don’t know if you know what this means, but he had to become an adult when he was super young. A lot of things happen to him, but when he smiles it seems as nothing bad has happened. He is pure because he is sweet and naive. I know the life that he had, and that makes him magical, and a brilliant actor. I love him, and we are super close friends. He can never surprise him. His smiles are radiating.

I can tell Toyko and Rio have this special rapport. Your answers are always leading me to a next question.
We are very connected.

Your character meets her demise in Part 5. It was a very sad and unexpected ending, especially because you were the narrator and a big part of the show. Did you feel the way the show sends you off gave your character justice?
YES! I wanted this ending, and if there was someone from the band to die it had to be Tokyo. This bank heist has already added years to her life, and this is a calling for her. I remember discussing with the writers about the possibility of jail for Tokyo. But, we all agreed that was not Tokyo. It was a risky decision, but we all agreed that Tokyo had to die. So we worked on crafting her departure. I feel like Season 5 is like an homage to Tokyo. Sometimes I regret being responsible for my character’s death, but this was the right thing for Tokyo.

Tokyo seemed to always be searching for more than just money. The way she was able to detonate the bomb, and smile before she dies was a beautiful scene. That must have been a difficult moment to shoot. What did you do to prepare for such an emotional moment?
It was super difficult. I remember having to stop shooting because I was crying. The last two weeks was just me crying. I was quite melancholy, it was a deep sadness. I remember when they said we are ready for your last scene. I was super nervous. And I thought maybe I could not act, and this scene was going to be a mess. It was going to be the worse scene of the series because I was nervous, anxious, and sad. I thought maybe I need to go to bed, and ask my mom to come from Barcelona and hug me. I was exhausted, and I knew that this was the end for Tokyo. This is life.

Money Heist was already a successful show in Spain, but Netflix and the quarantine made it into a global phenomenon. How has your life changed after the success of the show?
In many ways! The show has always been intense and that intensity grew for the last five years. The worldwide popularity is hard to handle, and it is taboo in many cultures, but I believe in therapy. I believe in the importance of mental health, and I have been more thankful of those around me. My boyfriend, friends, and family are incredibly supportive. The fame can be a nightmare, and it is important to have the right mindset and be thankful. I am just very lucky to have the education from my parents! Now that people are getting vaccinated and Europe is slowly opening, what are some of the things you look forward to doing? Go to MARS! It is hard to believe that the moment has come. I have been in fourteen countries shooting Money Heist, and it is time to sit in a nice restaurant with friends and family.

Source : thelaterals.com


How Netflix’s Money Heist Became a Worldwide Phenomenon

As it heads into its fifth and final season, the small Spanish drama has grown into one of the most-devoured shows in Netflix history.

Every worldwide phenomenon has to start somewhere, and in this case, that place was a hammock on a beach in Panama. There lay Álex Pina, trying to dream up his next project. It was 2016 and the Spanish producer had just wrapped Vis a Vis, a brutal drama about day-to-day life in a women’s prison. He wanted this new venture to be lighter in tone and needed it to be cheap to produce—something that he could film almost entirely in a studio but with a premise so explosive that it would make you forget you were stuck within the same four walls. As he lounged, his mind drifted toward the possibilities.

What about… a heist?

Okay, yes, a heist. Pina got together with his team and soon they were on a roll. This heist would take place inside the Royal Mint of Spain (which would conveniently satisfy the real-life in-studio requirements), where the perpetrators would take the employees hostage and print billions of euros for themselves. The show would have the flashbacks and the ballsiness of Reservoir Dogs, spiced up with the surreal black comedy of Spanish director Luis García Berlanga.​​ The characters? An outcast gang of career criminals brought together by a mysterious brainy figure known as The Professor. They were each assigned a code name corresponding to a major city: Tokyo, Rio, Berlin, Moscow, Nairobi, Helsinki, Oslo, and Denver (one of these things is not like the others), a random decision that would turn out to be inadvertently prescient. A wardrobe of crimson jumpsuits and Salvador Dalí masks would give the show a bold stamp of pop iconography.

The final product, La Casa de Papel, premiered on the Spanish station Antena 3 in 2017 and it did… pretty good! By season two the ratings cratered, and the production shut down. The cast and crew packed it in and returned to their lives and families.

But even before it first aired, Pina had slipped a flash drive with the pilot to Diego Ávalos, a V.P. at Netflix. The streaming giant had an ongoing licensing relationship with Antena 3 and Pina, which turned out to be fortuitous for both parties. “I watched it on the plane ride back to L.A. and knew there was something special”, Ávalos says.

The streaming platform asked Pina to recut it into more digestible chunks—from 15 long episodes to 22—and added subtitles and dubbing, a few small modifications that primed it for a much larger potential audience. For English-speaking markets, the show was renamed Money Heist, a title so hilariously simple that it circles back around to wild and brilliant. Otherwise, Ávalos tells me that they put exactly “zero marketing dollars” toward the first season.

It was an astute addition to the Netflix catalog. By 2018, Money Heist skyrocketed to become the most watched non-English-language program on the platform (in early 2021, that distinction belonged to Lupin, a French series about a preposterously charming thief) and cracked the top five for most watched series overall. The ability to binge without commercial breaks turned out to be exactly what was missing. “Having to wait until the following week can seem fragmented”, Pina says. “This can make the viewer not really get into the series, or into a state of addiction”. Netflix has since released two more seasons to satisfy demand, and now fans are impatiently awaiting the fifth and final season, which will drop in two parts: five episodes in September and five in December. The close hold that Netflix keeps on its streaming numbers is tighter than the security at the Royal Mint of Spain, but it has revealed that 65 million households tuned into season four soon after its release. If you made an autonomous Republic of Money Heist Watchers, it would be the 23rd most populous country in the world, sandwiched between the United Kingdom and Tanzania.

The statistics are one thing, the massive cultural wave the show kicked off is another. Take the distinct outfits the characters wear as disguises, which director Jesús Colmenar pushed for. “George Lucas says, ‘Everyone knows what the Star Wars characters look like'”, he tells me. “I wanted that same thing”. It worked: The red jumpsuits and Dalí masks began cropping up everywhere, from protests against sexist and homophobic leaders in Puerto Rico to soccer games in Greece. Real-life criminals in Brazil, India, and France staged copycat robberies. Stephen King and Neymar raved about the show, and Bad Bunny referenced it on multiple tracks. The show’s anthem, “Bella Ciao”—a protest folk song written by laborers in 19th-century Italy and then adopted by antifascist partisans during World War II—became a revitalized hit, inspiring several covers, including an EDM remix by Steve Aoki. On TV, the fictional band of thieves end up winning the hearts of the public, a parallel that played out in real life too.

Instant fame struck each of the actors in a specific, bizarre way—made even stranger by the fact that this was for work that they had long moved past. Úrsula Corberó, who portrays Money Heist’s feisty narrator, Tokyo, breaks into an electrifying grin when she remembers how the realization of her celebrity hit her. At the end of 2017, she was at a New Year’s Eve party in Uruguay with her boyfriend and his family. “Suddenly everybody started coming up to me and saying, ‘Tokyo, you’re a goddess, you’re incredible, I love you'”, Corberó tells me rapidly. Not quite understanding what was happening, she thought: What are the odds that all four people who watched the show happen to be at this party right now?

Miguel Herrán, the actor behind Rio, a boyish hacker and Tokyo’s love interest, says he watched his Instagram followers tick-tick-tick up from 50,000 to 1 million over the course of a 45-minute car ride. Esther Acebo, or Stockholm, so named because she’s a bank employee who’s held hostage before switching sides, was also overwhelmed by a flood of social media attention. “My phone started beeping like crazy, kind of like a slot machine where all the cherries line up”, she says. “Then it just turned off”. Pedro Alonso, who plays Berlin, the gang’s resident sociopath, says he was in Florence admiring the statue of David, “just studying this beautiful sculpture”, when he suddenly realized that everyone else in the Galleria dell’Accademia di Firenze was staring at him instead of Michelangelo’s masterpiece.

Pina recalls driving through Italy with the actors shortly after fans started losing their minds. “People were running after us like we were the Rolling Stones”, he tells me. “We thought: The world is upside down. What’s happening?”

But why Money Heist? And why—no, how—did it keep us captivated when the temptation of constant entertainment is a mere smartphone tap away and we all have the attention spans of Petco goldfish? Well, for starters, the series grabs you within the first minute and hooks you up to a steady IV drip of high-octane action. The twists are constant and clever: Think Soderbergh, but with the melodrama cranked up to 11. For all the show’s fun, it also taps into the widespread anger and indignation bubbling in the aftermath of the worldwide financial crisis. “The series is meant to entertain, but an idea runs underneath. Skepticism toward governments, central banks, the system”, Pina told The Guardian last year. Another bit of universal appeal? The characters are lovable, well wrought, and, let’s be frank, genetically blessed. If there’s one thing humanity can agree on despite our differences, it’s that we enjoy watching supremely hot people fight and have sex.

After the first two installments hit big, Netflix came to Pina with a proposal to revive the show for a third season. So in late 2018, he got the gang back together, satisfying their implacable urge to heist by having them attempt to rob the Bank of Spain of its gold reserves. Long gone were the days of swinging in a hammock, trying to devise ways to keep costs down. The Netflix backing meant something crucial: money. Lots of it.

Javier Gómez Santander, the head writer, recalls the most immediate effects of this change. “I’ve always wondered, ‘How would it be to write with a big budget?'” he says. “And you realize what it is when you write on your script that it’s actually raining money and it happens. When you write on the script, ‘This takes place in Panama or in the Philippines’, and nobody says no. It actually happens”.

Even though Money Heist concludes this winter, its unexpected global success will undoubtedly be studied for years by executives eager to bottle lightning again. It provides hard evidence that the rules of the entertainment game have shifted in real time. And Netflix, which has set up shop in over 190 countries and has a frighteningly powerful algorithm, is the undisputed juggernaut in this new landscape. The platform makes it possible to go to one place to watch a heady Weimar Republic epic from Germany (Babylon Berlin), a supernatural Egyptian horror series set in the 1960s (Paranormal), or a South Korean medieval zombie drama (Kingdom), all from the comfort of your couch.

Streaming puts a dent in American cultural hegemony by allowing viewers to get served stories directly from all over the world—though not always in their original or intended form. Foreign shows on the app default to the more awkward dubbed setting for first-time watchers, for instance, because of the data-driven (though perhaps imperfect) assumption that this will inspire more people to watch. Money Heist, in part, spurred Netflix to invest hugely in the quality and scope of their alternative-language options, expanding the idea of what a show’s target audience could be.

More than that, it helped expand the idea of what makes for a global story. If Netflix nabbed Money Heist‘s creators a gargantuan viewership, it didn’t alter the inherent DNA of what they were making. “We didn’t want to turn our backs on Spain. We’ve got this Latin passion”, Colmenar explains. “We don’t betray this essence at all in the third and fourth seasons. In fact, we actually have some very specific Spanish references—maybe even more than were included in the first and second seasons”.

Instead of sanding down cultural idiosyncrasies in the hopes of arriving at a big and bland common denominator, they’ve triumphed by employing some old-fashioned storytelling wisdom: The specific is universal. And Money Heist‘s success is a lesson that it’s always worth peering outside your bubble, even and perhaps especially if your bubble is a country that believes itself the center of the universe. Case in point: The show did not do as well in Anglophone areas as it did everywhere else, but it still surpassed Tiger King in viewers.

For Netflix, Money Heist didn’t change its strategy, per se, but it did affirm it. “It just solidifies the fact that great storytelling can come from anywhere”, Ávalos says. “It’s no longer Hollywood determining what stories can work around the world”.

The actors feel the shift too. “Here in Spain you actually hear, ‘Hey, I like the show even though it’s Spanish’. That was the way we used to talk about it”, Acebo says. “I have the feeling that Money Heist has changed the way people regard Spanish fiction. It’s like suddenly a window has opened”. That includes room for criticism: Herrán, for example, thinks that his character could have been “much more” interesting. “I’m a hacker who, in four seasons, never touches a computer”, he says, smiling. “Also, the way I have to handle my relationship with Tokyo—there are things I personally would’ve done differently. But then again, maybe that’s why the show is a success, because the professionals are the ones handling it”.

The show has, however, reoriented the career arcs of its actors in meaningful ways. To make it internationally as a Spanish talent, you previously had to go through Hollywood or be Pedro Almodóvar. But take Corberó, who starred in the American action flick Snake Eyes this summer and has the highest crossover potential. “Imagine you are a Spanish actress. Before, if you had wanted to work in the United States, you would have had to go to the United States”, she says. “Now what has happened is, without leaving our homes, they are watching a series in the U.S. that is not even in English. It’s a Spanish series. This makes me really proud”.

A few days before the Money Heist finale was due to be shot, the entire script was scrapped and reworked. The writers had always worked up until the last minute, right as filming is happening, but this pressure was something else. After all, they had to try to nail the ending while a formidable percentage of the planet was watching, as if they were navigating a moon landing.

“We just didn’t sleep”, Gómez Santander tells me. “We’d be on the phone with each other early in the morning. We were obsessed. I told Álex I didn’t think I would ever get another night of decent sleep in my life until we finally wrote something we liked”. Corberó says, “I don’t know what came over me over the final two weeks, but I couldn’t stop crying. They even had to stop the shooting”. Herrán believes viewers will be pleased with the ending “but for one simple reason—most people like the things I don’t like, like series and things whose success is a mystery. So I’ll start to worry the day I think something is going really well”.

Even with the show wrapped and their futures once again wide open, Money Heist‘s stars are still processing how to be famous. Corberó and Herrán, the two biggest names, tell me that they’ve ended up spending much more time at their homes in Madrid to avoid attracting attention when they go out. Corberó says she sought out therapy to process the shift, saying that it’s “important to do things like that, to keep yourself grounded”. Herrán, meanwhile, has been exceedingly open about how fame has affected his mental health. “I always ask people things I find interesting on social media, like ‘Are you happy with the society in which we live?’ And people aren’t happy”, he says. “I don’t want people to believe that just because you’re famous, you’re happy. And that love, money, work, and life, everything is just fine and great because you’re popular. I’m still a human being like anyone else”.

Fans are clamoring for character spin-offs, and though Pina does not confirm anything in the works, he says that he thinks Tokyo, The Professor, Berlin, and Denver could all carry one. In any case, the Netflix perpetual motion machine keeps grinding along: It’s currently in the midst of producing a South Korean remake helmed by director Kim Hong-sun.

The creators are keeping the details of the final two-part season of Money Heist close to the chest, but they tell me it has been conceived of as a kind of war. As the grand breaking point between the beloved characters and the state, with all the attendant messiness and intensity and difficult decisions that come with that. It’s one last chance to flex a bit, to show just how big they’ve made it since the early days. “We built an entire set—this huge set that only lasted a minute and a half before we exploded it”, Ávalos eagerly shares. And it will, inevitably, include some heartbreak—as Colmenar puts it: “A victimless war is hard to find”. But regardless of the outcome, they’ve managed to convince the world to watch and care about a small local story—and isn’t that, in itself, a victory?

Source : revistagq.com


Úrsula Corberó is Coming for Hollywood’s Badass Action Roles

Úrsula Corberó was at a New Year’s Eve party in Uruguay when a handful of strangers approached the then little-known actor to proclaim her “a goddess”. “What a coincidence—the only four people who’ve seen La Casa de Papel are at this party”, Corberó, who at that point had only ever worked on small projects in her native Spain, recalls telling her boyfriend.

Technically, Corberó’s admirers hadn’t seen La Casa de Papel, but Money Heist—Netflix’s re-edited version of the show that came and went without any fanfare on Antena 3, a local Spanish network, in 2017. After she wrapped shooting Money Heist, Corberó barely gave the series another thought. Meanwhile, it had become an overnight sensation. Forget Spain—the show was suddenly a full-on hit across the globe. Within four months, Money Heist was the most-watched non-English series in Netflix history—a “cultural phenomenon”, as the streaming giant put it in a 2020 documentary about the craze. And Corberó was a key part of it: Her beloved character Tokyo is a fan favorite among the motley crew of bank robbers at its center, and narrator of all the action.

And yet, if you’re American, there’s a good chance you won’t recognize the face currently front and center at the top of the Netflix homepage, signaling the long-awaited arrival of the first part of Money Heist‘s fifth and final season. (Antena 3’s plans to call it quits after two seasons, citing lack of audience and interest, remain a distant memory.) Corberó only recently began making a splash among English-speaking audiences, having learned the language herself about two years ago. Not that you’d be able to tell from her Hollywood debut alongside Henry Golding in the action-hero movie Snake Eyes earlier this summer. Corberó had even herself fooled. Speaking over Zoom from her apartment in Madrid, she recalls her reaction upon seeing her final performance: “Who is this person? You liar!”

Corberó, who grew up near Barcelona, was just six years old when she realized acting was her “trade”. At least, that’s what her mom tells her; as a child, she was evidently so convinced that her mom and dad, a fishmonger and carpenter, set off on a daunting quest to track down a child talent agency. In 2002, at age 13, Corberó finally made the leap from advertising to acting. It took a number of years and small Spanish-language TV shows, but she finally made a splash as a troubled adolescent in the racy teen drama series Física o Química in 2011. More increasingly high-profile series followed, including the period drama Isabel and the sitcom Anclados, costarring Rossy de Palma. (Still, apart from Money Heist, her highest-profile role to many Americans is the music video she self-shot for “Un Día”, J. Balvin’s collab with Tainy, Dua Lipa, and Bad Bunny, while in lockdown last summer.)

Corberó has always stayed booked and busy, but until recently, only ever in Spain. (Netflix baffled the Money Heist cast and crew with the news that they would begin shooting season 3 in actual Thailand, not the makeshift version they’d previously created in Madrid). The changes in location and production level felt monumental, but were nothing compared to what the actor found when she stepped onto the Snake Eyes set in Vancouver. She literally couldn’t understand what was going on. “I had, like, two sentences: ‘Yeah, sure, of course’, or ‘Oh, yeah'”, she recalls with a laugh. If those failed, she’d simply smile and nod.

Naturally, that made for quite the challenge when it came to filming—especially because Corberó plays the Baroness, the terrorist group Cobra’s resident badass who rightfully gets to use the PG-13 film’s single allotted F-word. Unfortunately, Corberó had the most difficulty understanding the film’s director, Robert Schwentke. Ever mystified by his feedback after each take, she’d simply try something different each time. “I was like, I don’t know what he wants exactly, so I’m just going to try something else”.

Her efforts paid off. Snake Eyes ends perfectly poised for just what producer Lorenzo di Bonaventura has told Corberó he has in mind: a Baroness spin-off. “It’s not a fact, but a lot of people are talking about it”, the actor says, clearly thrilled. The Baroness is not, as Corberó put it, “a huge character” in the reboot of the G.I. Joe franchise (Sienna Miller played her in the original), but the demand is clearly there: When I saw the film in theaters, for example, the audience full-on cheered each time she pulled a move like digging her towering stilettos into the body of a man she’d just knocked unconscious. “I still want to go a little bit more deeply with her”, along the lines of a Black Widow, Cruella, or Harley Quinn, Corberó says. “I think it’s really nice to see the human parts of these villains, and these female characters with such powerful attitudes”. Corberó is grateful to have already had experience with such a role in the form of Tokyo, whom she describes as “a little bit more chill, more mature” in the show’s final chapter. (But her character is still impulsive enough that fans post questions on Reddit like “Why is Tokyo so fucking stupid?”)

There is, however, one thing Corberó won’t miss about playing Tokyo: her weekly visits to the physical therapist. “The [Money Heist] characters are always in this constant violent behavior, and that’s not good for your neck or your head or your back”, she says with a laugh. “The producers, the creators—they’re rock n’ roll. They just want to do as much as possible, as risky as possible, and sometimes you just want to cry”. Despite having actually feared for her life on occasion, Corberó, for her part, has no regrets: “You know that you are taking the risk, but that’s part of its magic”.

The role of the Baroness hasn’t been without its own physical demands: Those stilettos may look glamorous, but took such a toll on Corberó’s back that she soon had trouble simply getting out of a chair. The actor is ready to take the Baroness’s action scenes to Tokyo level, but first up, she’s tackling something just as, if not even more, difficult: “My goal is to speak English without getting tired”, she says with a laugh. “That is my goal in life right now”.

Source : wmagazine.com


Úrsula Corberó: a perfect makeup routine in pink tones | Beauty Secrets | VOGUE Spain


Exclusive: Ursula Corbero Says Bella Ciao To ‘Money Heist’ & Tokyo

It’s impossible to imagine Netflix without Money Heist, but the hit Spanish series will come to an end with the upcoming fifth season. And there’s no one better to discuss the end of an era than Úrsula Corberó, who plays the erratic Tokyo on the show.

While it was initially intended as a limited series to be told in two parts, it didn’t take long for streaming giant Netflix to swiftly acquire streaming rights, which thrust Money Heist into full view of the global audience. It was the adrenaline-fuelled entertainment the world needed. In 2018, the show bagged Best Drama Series at the 46th International Emmy Awards. It also became the most-watched non-English-language series and one of the most-watched series on Netflix.

Fans were hooked, devouring episode after episode, and the show went on to achieve superb success, copping 65 million households with its fourth season in its first month, and earning a cult following. Not only has it become a worldwide phenomenon, it also transcended into one of the largest pop culture phenomena of this generation i.e. the Salvador Dali mask and red overalls are instantly recognisable anywhere in the world.

Undoubtedly, the series will leave behind a legacy of being one of the most beloved international shows ever made and a beacon for more Spanish-language content to hit the global market. As it comes to a close this year with its fifth and final season, Tatler speaks to Money Heist actress Úrsula Corberó as she prepares to say goodbye to the world’s greatest heist and her character, Tokyo.

Money Heist has undeniably opened the floodgates for more Spanish-language content. In your opinion, why do you think the global audience loves the show so much?
That’s the big question. We talked a lot about this with our colleagues, the cast, the crew, and each one has a different theory. I believe it’s not just one thing, it’s an amalgamation of a few different things that took place. If I had to choose one, I would say that what the audience loves is that they feel like what they see could potentially happen to them. If you take a look at the characters, they’re not powerful or special people. They’re just vulnerable, regular people in difficult circumstances and they have the courage to stand up to the powerful people, to face them, and to confront them.

In a blink of an eye, four years of Money Heist have come and gone. In what ways has this global success impacted you both personally as well as professionally?
Both are intertwined in the sense that my job’s very much connected to my personal life. This is the kind of job that you have to be born for. Money Heist‘s unexpected success is such a big surprise, it’s something that has made me change things in my daily life. I remember when I worked a lot in Spain and mainly in Spain, I never had the opportunity to travel for work and now it’s the opposite. I feel so fortunate! In the last three years, I’ve travelled more than I have in my entire life for work. It’s incredible being able to go to Japan, Vancouver, and Hong Kong–these crazy places that aren’t just around the corner. I never thought I would travel for work. Also, I’ve to say that people actually recognise me wherever I go, which is something that I’m still digesting. I consider myself to be an outgoing person and I like talking to people but it’s something that I’m still trying to process.

What was it like watching Tokyo grow through the years? What are you proudest of in terms of her growth?
Tokyo is very unpredictable and she’s always faithful to herself. I thank the writers for having maintained how faithful my character is to herself because, I mean, she’s a woman and she doesn’t always make the best choices. I think it’s a beautiful thing to give that opportunity to the women characters to make the bad choices and to mess up. Sometimes, people want to kill Tokyo, I’ve been told, because of the choices that she makes, but I think it’s a beautiful thing to let her do that. I feel she has matured with time, from one season to another. She doesn’t go with her guts so much and she’s beginning to reflect more on what she does yet she still goes for what she believes.

Aside from shooting in Spain, filming also took place in other locations including Panama, Italy, and Thailand. Which has been the most memorable working trip for you?
That’s very difficult! One of the craziest things was shooting in Thailand and Panama. It was the third season and we had just started shooting for Netflix and the international audience. We just finished shooting the first two seasons and we came back to shoot in the midst of its sudden international success. Imagine, just one month after seeing each other. I’ve to tell you that we came from a low budget production and everything was shot in Spain so reuniting with the team in Thailand, shooting together, was pretty crazy. From a visual standpoint, Panama blew my mind. We were able to shoot at Guarana and I was actually able to see all the planktons light up at night in the sea and it was like being in the film Avatar.

Imagine if you could just pack up Tokyo’s traits in a box and go home with them, which ones would you pick and why?
If there’s something that I’d like to emphasise, it’s how brave she is and her boldness. I wish I was as bold as she is. The rest of them? (laughs) I’m not sure if I want them. It’s true that she’s deep down a good-hearted woman, but what I’d take with me and keep is how incredibly brave and bold she is.

Now that the series is coming to an end, what was it like for you on the last day on set? Can you describe that to us?
No, I can’t! (laughs) That was too much! In the last two weeks, I was crying non-stop. Actually, for most scenes, at some points, we had to stop shooting because I was crying. I’m a person who tends to grieve in advance in my life–I don’t know why! My mind is always ahead of what’ll happen. Also, on the final days of shooting, we were exhausted from a physical and mental standpoint. I tend to cry a lot in my life but I was actually surprised at how much I was able to cry. The last two weeks were so, so sad, you can’t imagine. It’s the end of an era.

Due to the nature of Netflix, Money Heist will continue gaining new legions of fans. So, without giving away too much, what do you think new fans will enjoy most about Money Heist? For the existing fans, what do you think they will enjoy most about Money Heist Season 5?
For those who’ve never seen Money Heist, it’s very difficult to describe how they’ll feel when they watch it. We’re already in the fifth season so what I’d like to emphasise is the adrenaline. People tend to start, like, “Oh, let’s watch one episode and see how it goes” and then they can’t stop. They have to watch all the seasons. I think it’s an ‘at the edge of your seat’ type of show and you need to know what’ll happen because you can’t stop watching it. For the ones that have and are now waiting for the last season, I can tell you that it’s a totally different season. It’s much more war-like and much more epic. It’s an ending so it has to be this way but I think it’ll surprise the fans. When you believe that something cannot be bigger and crazier, here, it can and it does, and this is our fifth season.

Source : tatlerasia.com


The end of ‘La Casa de Papel’ and the quarantine with the Darín

The Spanish actress talks about how the Netflix series changed her career, her landing in Hollywood and her relationship with Chino Darín.

Úrsula Corberó is still Tokyo for all of us who saw her in the Spanish series La Casa de Papel. Her character, a thief with a capacity for action and strategy, not only made her globally famous, but catapulted her into Hollywood. But this will be the final year of the saga, the farewell to the character and a new beginning for this 32-year-old actress, born in San Pedro de Villamajor (a town an hour from Barcelona) and girlfriend of Chino Darín, with whom she shares a house in Madrid.
“When they ask me what it was like to say goodbye to Tokyo, I actually know that I have not done it because it has not only taught me a lot on a professional level but also on a personal level,” she tells Viva. Let’s remember: for half a decade and five seasons, Úrsula was the one who gave life to this assailant as complex and unpredictable as the city that gives her its name.
La Casa de Papel, a Netflix series that positioned Spain as a global success powerhouse for new TV, is now coming to an end with its fifth season. The great outcome will be seen in two parts: one to premiere on September 3 and the other, on December 3. Úrsula is aware that a stage in her life is closing.

Adventures with spectacular twists and turns, millionaire robberies in the style of La Gran Estafa and an iconic visual sense (red rompers and Dalí masks, who would have thought?) Were the ingredients of the boom, with Úrsula at the head, who today has more 21 million followers on Instagram and a homeless career.
The actress remembers that she only realized the turn that she had taken in her life when she noticed that they began to call her “Tokyo” on the street. “It was like everything changed from one day to the next, and even, I admit that I felt a certain fear,” she confesses.
Her carré-cut thief opened the doors of the whole world to him. She went from young promise to star for export: she stopped being the girl of the local teenage strips to become a name in the big leagues, a new Penelope Cruz in the making.
And now, she had to take the next step: say goodbye to Tokyo (the character) to welcome him to the real city of Tokyo, where she filmed scenes for the action movie Snake Eyes for Hollywood. That is, she got the first production in English.
“It was getting out of my comfort zone, because the last few years I worked in my country and in each shoot I already met a lot of people: suddenly, I felt a bit like the first day of school”, says Úrsula.

It is that with the character of Tokyo you made a leap to the international level.
There is a part of me that has not yet finished digesting it. I have lived experiences of all kinds. It is very difficult to be aware and objective when something this big happens to you. It was a strange feeling, that things were happening that I could not control. He constantly doubted if he was doing this right, if he was doing the other thing wrong…

You couldn’t get out of amazement.
Very little by little you digest the situation and realize that what is being offered to you is something very beautiful, and that that feeling is what will prevail. In the end, it beats everything bad and those doubts that run through you… But it takes time. People are loving: one day, walking down the street, they can tell you something you did not expect and it touches your heart. That goes beyond fiction: the audience empathizes with the characters on a different level than yourself.

Unexpected situations are the order of the day in his life and there seems to be no respite. “I don’t know where I live, I haven’t stopped traveling,” she repeats. One of her fixed trips is Madrid-Buenos Aires round trip, following her heart. In 2020, she came to Argentina to visit her boyfriend, Chino Darín, for 10 days. But she ended up living four months in the middle of the global health crisis. The place where she was quarantined? The house of her father-in-law, a certain Ricardo, another who knows a thing or two about playing thieves with wit…

When you’re here, how do you get along with your boyfriend and father-in-law’s fame and fans? They are very loved in Argentina. Are you jealous?
I’m sure I love Chino more than anyone else (she laughs)! But we will not compete. I love Argentina, its people, its everything… The crazy thing is that, before the pandemic, she had already traveled many times. But of course, at first I was going to enjoy my anonymity. And now the opposite happens to me: they recognize me! It is an incredible country and, to this day, I lost count of the stays I have had.

Because of the pandemic, you had a longer one than expected.
With the pandemic, what happened is that I was going to be there for ten days, to visit Chino, and I ended up staying for almost half a year. We were in an impasse in which we moved and they had not given us the house, so we had to settle in the house of the “gray in-laws”. It was quite shocking for everyone, but the truth is that Ricardo (Darín) and Flor (Bas) treated me like a queen.

How was that coexistence?
I couldn’t think of a better house for a quarantine. It is a divine place. The isolation with four people becomes a bit of a Big Brother sort, but at the same time it was very dynamic and fun. We spent all day playing, trying to occupy our minds as best we could. Sometimes we made it. Others, the truth, no.

What was the hardest?
In reality, the hardest thing was seeing how everything was rotting in Spain, and being away from my family caused me a certain discomfort. In that sense, I had a bit of a hard time. I was very worried about being so far away and that something might happen to my relatives… I suffered because I couldn’t have them close. I lived my quarantine, in a way, like the success of the series: they are experiences that you never finish assimilating.

Corberó’s relationship with Chino Darín (32) also has those unpredictable overtones that Úrsula describes. They met in Spain, when he disembarked at the end of 2015 for professional reasons: acting in the film La Reina de España, starring Penélope Cruz, and joining the recordings of the series La Embajada. It was in the latter that he met with his current girlfriend, who had just ended a relationship with the actor and model Andrés Velencoso.

In the strip, they were a couple: almost a practice for what was to come. “With Úrsula we understand each other with a glance: this is what happens when you start to get to know yourself more and more”, revealed Ricardo Darín’s son. When he arrived in Spain to join the series, he did so with the intention of it being for six months. Now, they have been in a relationship between both sides of the world for five years.

As a stage ends with the end of La Casa de Papel, Úrsula’s emotional state is as special as that of Messi leaving Barcelona. “I fire a character who embodied half a decade of my life. Personally, it was quite a drama: I’m not going to lie. The last days of filming we were all very touched. I’m a crybaby myself, but in those final two weeks, how I cried!… We had to stop the scenes because I couldn’t stop crying. I am anticipating events: the most natural thing would have been to go through ‘mourning’ after filming ended, but I went ahead and for the last recordings the end of the cycle was already throbbing with tears”, he confesses.

What atmosphere reigned in filming during this last season?
We were all very tired. And I knew that, despite everything, this had to end. I felt that we were partly in need of it. This is a very, very demanding series.

A challenge as an actress?
No, not just at the interpretive level. Although the characters are all the time in extreme situations and making very strong decisions in each scene. It is physically demanding, due to the action. Especially this last season, in which a real war is unleashed: it is the most warlike thing we shoot and all that action can be very laborious. There was one scene in particular that we shot for two weeks. It was like living in El día de la marmota: I had been saying the same text day after day.

Were you satisfied with the closure that was given to the story?
There is something that happened in all seasons and that is that, at one point, I thought: “That’s it.” He supposed that everything had been told, that all that there was to be shown had been shown. But, suddenly, the announcement came: a new season. And I don’t know how they do it, but they always get a little better! That capacity, added to the fact that we knew it would be the last chance, made us throw all the meat on the grill, as they would say in Argentina: choripán, molleja (pronounced Argentine), strip roast. Has it all.

What did all this pressure mean to you as a performer?
It was amazing to live. She would read the scripts and think, “These people are crazy!” He even sometimes asked the main director of the series, Jesús Colmenar, how we were going to shoot everything he had in mind because he saw it as impossible to do. And he admitted to me: “I have no fucking idea how, but we have to do it.” I think that is the beauty of the series, and it is what has made me not demotivated for a second, even though I have spent the last five years of my life shooting scenes. It all has to do with that element that there is always a new challenge.

The Corberó-Darín couple will have to adapt to new scales if Úrsula agrees to become the flaming Spanish promise of Hollywood, the new Penélope Cruz. Her landing in the US market is through Snake Eyes, directed by Robert Schwentke, filmmaker in charge of two installments of the popular teen action saga Divergent. But this new movie belongs to a different franchise: G. I. Joe, inspired by the famous line of action superheroes. Snake Eyes works like a G.I. Joe reboot had already had two films with Channing Tatum and Bruce Willis among his ranks – from the cinematic universe, in addition to narrating the origin of the character that gives him his name, a ruthless ninja. In this production, Úrsula plays “La Baronesa”, a villain of the terrorist association Cobra. The film finally opened on July 23 in the United States. During filming, Úrsula overcame a first challenge: acting in English.

“When the opportunity to participate arose, it happened to me that I didn’t speak a lot of English,” he reveals. My level was pretty basic, to put it mildly. I like challenges. But I suffer them, of course, especially before facing them, there appears that fear that one feels when one does not know something. But once I am there, I am to put a grip on the matter. I traveled to Vancouver, where I settled alone, and it was a reunion with my most vulnerable and childish side”.

You managed to enter the US film market, and now?
I would like to continue working in the United States. But also in other places. I love Argentine, Asian, and Italian cinema. So I wouldn’t say that I’m focusing on Hollywood. Although if things come out, welcome: to everything that leads me to improve as an actress and person, I could never say no. I improved my English a lot, and I have made friends from all over the world. Something very crazy is that the recordings began in Vancouver, the same name as the production company of La Casa de Papel, and then continued in Tokyo, as my character. I feel that everything is linked in a very magical and strange way.

Now, playing futurology, where do you see yourself in a decade?
So much has happened to me in just the last two that I have lost all references. Life has only surprised me. The only thing I would like is to be able to continue working on what I am passionate about and that I continue to be given the opportunity to make powerful characters like these, from whom I learn as a woman. With continuing to give life to a Tokyo, I am satisfied. That, and traveling a lot.

Source : clarin.com


Qué hay en el bolso de Úrsula Corberó | Vogue España


Úrsula Corberó and Tristán Ulloa confess their anecdotes in the filming of ‘Snatch’