Bea Segura received an unusual order. Netflix had hired her to read a script to the platform’s managers so they could get an idea of ??what a production they had underway would be like. “They needed an actress who spoke English very well and had a Latino accent,” she says. As she lives part of the time in London, where she has worked on the stage at 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 to read and, since the character is very cool, I dressed up as an animal print and read the chapter very sexy, very Mexican,” admits the actress who is part of the Catalan television imaginary like Laura Peris from El cor de la ciutat or Blanca (“la pija”) from Cites. And, since the director Ally Pankiw was there, she did not hesitate to ask if they had any spare parts. This is how she got the role of psychologist in the most applauded episode of the season after doing a test where she “dressed up as a psychologist, very serious, very modern.”
In the episode, Annie Murphy is Joan, a woman dissatisfied in her marriage who reveals details of her private life to Dr. Atkinson, played by Segura. Then, as she commands Black Mirror tradition, everything takes an unexpected turn when Joan discovers that a streaming platform is broadcasting an adaptation of her life, the algorithm’s most disturbing sophistication. “I only filmed one morning but I could smell what it’s like to shoot for a show like Black Mirror, they treat you so well,” she shares.
Working face to face with Murphy, an Emmy winner for Schitt’s Creek, was also a pleasure: “She was so easy to shoot with, she’s so personable and she’s terrific.” And the episode, more than making him think about the use of artificial intelligence to replace actors, a topic that is being discussed and that the profession has been thinking about for a long time, made him wary of cookies and online contracts: “ You usually accept because you are lazy to read all those paragraphs and click without thinking about the consequences.
This surprising appearance in one of the cult television productions, for the record, is still an anecdote in the present for Segura, who lives between Barcelona, ??London and Madrid. She answers the call from La Vanguardia 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 those women who in the 16th century refused to be ‘women of’, ‘daughters of’ or go to the convent”, advances the filming that began in April and ends at end of july. She also hopes to return to the London stages 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 family to hers and believes she can aspire to the same roles. than English actresses.
And, before hanging up 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 will leave a message for Pau Freixas telling him that if the posh and the tattoo artist are not there, Cites is not the same”, she jokes while she remembers the good time she had with Isak Férriz in the romantic comedy.
