One thinks of Carmen Machi and is surprised that, even in a symbolic way, she had never appeared in a production by Javier Calvo and Javier Ambrossi, the authors of Paquita Salas and Veneno and producers of Cardo. “She was familiar with them, because we all know each other, but there was a mutual desire to work together,” says the Goya-winning actress for Eight Basque Surnames. So, when they called her in case she wanted to participate in La Mesías, which Movistar Plus premieres this Wednesday with the broadcast of the first two episodes, her response was: “Where do I have to sign?”
She is the matriarch of fiction, Montserrat, a role she shares with Ana Rujas and Lola Dueñas: “They told me that the character had different ages and that mine would be the one from the current era. From there, they sent me the scripts and they blew me away on a level that you can’t even imagine.” Montserrat is a directionless woman, a mother who is too young, who finds faith when she locks herself in a farmhouse with a disturbing man played by Albert Pla. There she begins to dialogue with God to manipulate those around her, with the mission of saving the world through music and children whom she refuses to send to school or let out on the streets. As adults they are played by Roger Casamajor, Macarena García or the singer Amaia Romero, for whom he only has good words: “Amaia’s thing is not surprising: she is a person with a sensitivity and a stratospheric artistic quality given how young she is. She has a exquisite palate.”
“He is a fictional character but there are many people like that: manipulative, selfish, self-centered. You can understand her: she is afraid of being alone, she is afraid of not having anyone to manipulate,” she says of the character. Calvo and Ambrossi never forced him to blend in with Rujas and Dueñas. She was offered to see the material filmed by her colleagues and they gave her the freedom to recreate the character as she saw fit. “Montserrat is very different at each stage but there was the feeling that we were playing the same character. The viewer is very smart and does not need us to be alike in everything,” she defends.
With The Messiah, the Javis settled in Catalonia, from Santa Susanna to Girona, to explore a story about the perversion of faith, religious fanaticism, toxic motherhood and traumatic childhoods, even using Montserrat’s reputation as a site linked to UFOs and extraterrestrials. This implies a peculiar communion in the cast that ranges from Rujas, Machi, Dueñas, Rossy de Palma or Cecilia Roth to Catalan talent such as Casamajor, Pla, Biel Rossell, Irene Balmes, Nora Navas, Monts Plans or Francesca Piñón. And, as Movistar gave them time and budget, they were able to explore a new dramatic look, less based on humor and more naturalistic.
“The Messiah is not like anything they have done but they always have a connection in their work,” says Machi. She herself had trouble understanding what Calvo and Ambrossi’s secret was, but she understood it when filming with them: “They have an incredible culture. They know everything. They see everything. They hear everything. I don’t know how they have had time with their age. They have a very rich universe, very creative, that goes beyond. They have a level of enjoyment that sets them apart from the rest. They are very clear about what they want to tell and to what extent. And above all they come to the end. They don’t stay halfway. Sometimes you read something they have written and you doubt that they dare to film it. But they don’t just shoot it, they enhance it.”
With the career he has behind him, Machi admits that he has never been on a film set with such generosity and rigor: “If I hadn’t been in La Mesías, I would have missed something extraordinary.”
