Bea Segura received an unusual assignment. Netflix had hired her to read a script to the managers of the platform so that they could get an idea of ??what a production they had going on would be like. “They needed an actress who spoke English very well and had a Latin accent,” he explains. As she lives part of the time in London, where she has worked on the stage of Shakespeare’s Globe, she was available to do the reading in Richmond Park. It was the first episode of the sixth season of Black mirror.
“They paid me a day’s work because Salma Hayek couldn’t go there to read and, since the character is very forgiving, I dressed up as an animal print and read the very sexy, very Mexican chapter,” admits the actress , who is part of the Catalan television imaginary as Laura Peris from El cor de la ciutat or Blanca (la pija) from Cites. And since director Ally Pankiw was there, she didn’t hesitate to ask if they had any roles left. This is how she got the role of a psychologist in the most applauded episode of the season after doing a test in which she “disguised herself as a psychologist, very serious, very modern”.
In the episode, Annie Murphy is Joan, a woman dissatisfied with her marriage who reveals details of her private life to Dr. Atkinson, played by Segura. Then, as is the tradition of Black mirror, everything takes an unexpected turn when Joan discovers that a streaming platform broadcasts an adaptation of her life, the most disturbing sophistication of the algorithm. “I only recorded one morning, but I could smell what it’s like to shoot for a series like Black mirror, they treat you very well”, he shares.
Working face-to-face with Murphy, winner of the Emmy for Schitt’s Creek, was also a pleasure: “She was very easy to shoot with, she’s very nice and she’s great.” And the episode, rather than making him think about the use of artificial intelligence to replace actors, a topic that is discussed and which has been thought about for some time in the profession, made him suspicious of the cookies and online contracts: “You usually accept them because you’re too lazy to read all those paragraphs and you click on them without thinking about the consequences.”
This surprise appearance in one of the cult television productions, for the record, is still an anecdote in the present of Segura, who lives between Barcelona, ??London and Madrid. She answers La Vanguardia’s call from a car that takes her to Segovia, where she shoots Beguinas, for Atresmedia, with Amaia Aberasturi and Yon González. “I will have a leading role and the project is very interesting because it will talk about the women who in the 16th century refused to be “wives of”, “daughters of” or “go to the convent”, he said of the filming, which start in April and end at the end of July. She also hopes to return to the London stage, where she was Catherine of Aragon in Henry VIII and Queen Hermione in Shakespeare’s The Winter’s Tale, as she regards the Globe as her family and believes she can aspire to the same roles as actresses english
And, before uploading the video call, she warns that she would be delighted to play Blanca de Cites again, after not being part of the resurrection on Amazon. “Now I’ll leave a message for Pau Freixas telling him that, if the hooker and the tattoo artist aren’t there, Cites isn’t the same,” he says jokingly as he recalls how he had a good time with Isak Férriz in the romantic comedy.
