Goya Winner Carmen Machi Reunites With ‘Spanish Affair’ Co-Scribe Diego San José for Sardonic Movistar+, Mediapro Title ‘Celeste’
The thrill of the chase meets an offbeat character study in Diego San Jose’s latest series “Celeste,” a six-part episodic set to bow at San Sebastian’s Velodrome on Sept. 22.
Produced by Movistar Plus+ and The Mediapro Studio’s 100 Balas, with The Mediapro Studio Distribution handling international sales, the slyly enthralling first season follows Sara, an uninspiring tax investigator inching through life. On the cusp of early retirement, she’s lured into staying on the job for one last case – running down Latin pop star Celeste, who’s rumored to be taking advantage of her status to evade paying dues.
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Setting out to make a thriller he likens to “Zodiac” or “Seven” but with a twist, San José manages an act of rebellion certain to shake monotonous algorithms and pull a curious, rapt audience. While not a masochist, he admits to craving change – and as he crafted this wily, dark tale that centers a lifeless tax office he envisioned a middle-aged woman anchoring the plot’s mayhem.
“The thriller genre never has heroes who work in an office with boring jobs. The tradition is that the thriller usually stars a cop, or a detective, or a commissioner with a stormy life-living with a bottle of whiskey and a gun,” San José told Variety. “What seemed challenging for me as a screenwriter, a challenge that I really wanted to pursue because it generated adrenaline, was answering the question: Can you make an exciting thriller, with plot twists, starring the most boring person in Spain?”
San José wrote the mature, marauding and dogged female lead with renowned Spanish talent Carmen Machi (”Cerdita,” “Broken Embraces”) in mind – the pair having worked together on his wildly popular 2014 comedy blockbuster “Spanish Affair,” (“Ocho apellidos vascos”), the highest-grossing Spanish film ever on Spain, co-written with Borja Cobeaga and directed by Emilio Martínez Lázaro. Machi’s role as Merche earned her 2015’s Best Supporting Actress plaudit at the Goya’s.
“In the same way that she’s able to make people laugh, she’s also able to move and conquer an audience that doesn’t watch comedies. Carmen Machi is one of the very few people who has the capacity to do both,” San José relayed.
She eagerly agreed to board the project before a full read of the script, citing an unshakeable faith in San José and the team behind “Celeste,” which includes triple Malaga Golden Biznaga-winning director Helena Trapé (“Las distancias,” “Rapa”) alongside the world-class production team.
“Diego’s admirable, very intelligent-with a capacity, a wit, with a quickness, mental agility, very funny. When he called to tell me he’d thought of me to develop this story I gave him the go-ahead, I trusted him completely,” Machi stated. “I was very surprised when I read the whole script and saw that suspense, that rhythm that I love.”
Machi was pleased that San José was the mind behind Sara’s psyche, his attention to her idiosyncrasies served to create a synergy between the male writing team and female director and show leads.
“The series is directed by a woman, but who’s written the lines, who’s thought about what she wanted to say, what emotional state this woman is in, what pain, loneliness, absence, fear and sadness are in store for her? It’s all been written by a man,” she mused.
San José, who penned the series with co-scribes Daniel Castro and Oriol Puig, points to the similarities in lived experiences when recounting the force behind writing the vivid characters, who grapple with despair, insecurity and ambition.
“I understand a woman’s fears, because it’s likely that they coincide with fears I also have,” he relayed. From writing through to the execution phase of the series-consisting of rehearsals and script rewrites, he admits to relying heavily on Trapé’s creative gaze.
The opening sequence of “Celeste” presents pop diva Celeste, played by Mexican actress and singer Andrea Bayardo, as she braces for a performance, walking with her entourage toward the stage, the sound of her sharp heels fiercely hitting the ground as her dazzling silhouette stands tall. Save for glimpses of her throughout the episodes, she remains shrouded in mystery to the viewer as much as she remains out of reach for Sara.
Though she lives on the periphery, her presence is felt in every corner of the narrative, she’s beloved – and this proves a constant hindrance for the inspector, who seeks help from an invasive paparazzo (Manolo Solo) and an obsessed fan, both unsympathetic to her pursuits.
Driving down dead-end leads, Sara slowly folds into herself as she’s increasingly drawn to the perceived freedom that comes with Celeste’s lavish lifestyle. An existence wholly alien, she begins to unburden herself from a life she’s lived for others to morph into the salient version of a woman she’d never imagined she could be.
“There’s something that’s been lost along the way for Sara, and I think it’s well reflected in the series,” Machi admitted. “I think she goes on a journey – on a personal level, on a vital level. Now, in her solitude, now that she’s outside the scope of the Tax Agency, a woman begins to bloom. A woman that I find very interesting, very funny and very pleasant to be with.”
That solitude is portrayed not only in the lack of intrusive dialogue but in the wardrobe, set dressing, the way that Sara disappears into every crowd she encounters. Abiding by a strict daily routine, she utilizes the sound of her radio or television for company while reluctantly caring for her deceased husband’s incontinent dog.
“We confront two very different types of women. One, a woman who’s had an education which entails effort, sacrifice, studying hard and she faces a second, modern type of woman, Celeste, where the artistic capacity of seduction, of enjoying life, of improvising, of beauty, are a priority,” San José explained.
Crediting production with allowing him the freedom to produce such an ambitious project, he concluded, “We’ve gone to the extreme and created a narrative around a Treasury Investigation told to an audience with the same weight as a narrative that has us releasing 200 hostages from an airplane.”
The daring first season of ”Celeste” is set to bow on the platform this autumn with Antonio Durán Morris, Aixa Villagrán, Clara Sans, Jesús Noguero and Marc Soler rounding out the cast.
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