The agreements signed by television actors usually include a clause that establishes that, if that production is renewed, its shooting has priority over other projects that may be offered to them. They are required to participate. With Everyone Lies, which features Irene Arcos, Natalia Verbeke, Juan Diego Botto, Ernesto Alterio, Miren Ibarguren, Carmen Arrufat and Eva Santolaria, this obligation did not exist. When Movistar Plus renewed the series for a second season, the contracts had lost their validity and some of them had not directly signed such a clause.
So when creator Pau Freixas was commissioned to produce new episodes, he had an intense round of calls to cast and managers. “It was essential that they wanted to do it and, as we talked to them, we saw that they were delighted to return: they had been amused by the tone of the series and they were in tune with this madness,” explains Freixas on the occasion of the end of filming for the second season.
If such sought-after actors agreed to return to this universe that mixes thriller and comedy, it was because of the atmosphere that had been created during the first season. “It is obvious that the actors cannot say in an interview that they worked on a fake series, but when something works, it can be seen because it goes beyond the screen and the viewer notices the feeling”, defends Santolaria.
Santolaria, who is part of the cast, describes the first experience as a “collective madness” with which they felt orphaned when filming ended: “We wanted more, we wanted to continue with these characters, so it was easy for everyone to come back.” They had the opportunity: last weekend they recorded the last sequences in Sant Feliu de Codines after twelve intense weeks of filming.
Together with Blanes, La Garriga and the Sánchez-Casal club, this municipality in Vallès is one of the locations that serves to recreate the fantasy of Belmonte. It is a town with an urbanization of ideal houses in the middle of the forest, of well-being people who want to live near the sea with their own pool, and with some secrets that must be protected from gossip.
In the first season of Everyone Lies, the façade of their families collapsed when it was revealed that a teacher (Irene Arcos) had slept with a student (Lucas Nabor), the son of her best friend (Natalia Verbeke), which triggered a murder. And, after a second murder, the series said goodbye in January of last year with an open ending: Macarena and Ana, played by Arcos and Verbeke, sharing a lethal secret that is jeopardized when the police find a body in an abandoned cabin.
The team promises to maintain the distinctive tone that mixed thriller, comedy and drama, while improving the way of telling the story. “I think the series could be more accessible since sometimes there was too much distance between the viewer and the plot, and it wasn’t necessary to be so demanding,” acknowledges Freixas, “but we’ll keep Cluedo because we had a lot of fun with the puzzle.”
He and Santolaria, who are a couple in real life, work in the following way when they are at home: he stands in front of the keyboard but they both think, plan and discuss how the story should unfold. They have a blackboard to structure ideas and plots. Since Santolaria does not technically write, he appears in the production as a script analyst although, according to Freixas, “he deserves more credit than he has.” Of course, when it comes to anticipating details of the new episodes, they refuse to let go for fear of spoiling the viewer’s experience.
“The series reinvents itself, extracts a plot that previously seemed impossible to explore”, they dare to comment. They are inspired by the conflicts of middle-aged people who have responsibilities, a job and a family. “You play with the idea of ??being fed up with everything you have but at the same time not wanting to lose it,” he explains. They are polyhedral characters but very little Machiavellian because “they do not find brilliant, intelligent and thoughtful solutions” to their problems but rather improvise as they go, “they do what they can”.
In addition, Santolaria introduces a variable: the way in which lies become a constant in adult life. “As we get older, you lie more, you lie nonsense, because you don’t have any need to be honest in the school chat room or at friends’ dinners,” she confesses, “and because you start to be afraid of losing or what will they say? And, when these lies get out of hand, everything can only get worse.
“Sorry, there is something we can advance,” says Santolaria at the end of the conversation. “What would you do for your children? How far would you be willing to go to protect them? And what does it mean to be a good father or a good mother? ”, she poses as the central theme of the upcoming season.
She is not clear about the definition of a good father because here lies the dilemma: whether it is about protecting a child until the last consequences or forcing him to face the consequences of his actions so that he can have a life without lies behind it.
At the end of the year we will leave doubts about his conclusions at a dramatic level in Movistar Plus.
