What the comedian Henar Álvarez experienced less than a month ago was an almost premonitory experience.
She was in full presentation of the most important LGTBI + event in Extremadura when a joke about her former mayor Miguel Celdrán, who died 11 years ago, brought with it complaints from the public and the City Council.
In her case, the consistory estimated that her words remained as "anecdote, because unfortunate or not, they lacked relevance and path."
One step further goes the new fiction proposal starring Arturo Valls,
Dos años y un día.
In this situation comedy, directed by Ernesto Sevilla and Raúl Navarro from Albacete, Valls plays a version of himself under the name of Carlos Ferrer: the most popular presenter in Spain and the one most loved by viewers.
But in this fiction signed by LaCoproductora, which premiered on July 3 on Atresplayer, its protagonist is sentenced to prison for a joke.
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The series comes from the hand of Raúl Navarro, Miguel Esteban, Sergio Sarriá and Luismi Pérez, minds from which works such as
The People's Queen
,
The Neighbor
or
The End of the Comedy came out.
.
And the conflict that they tell now serves as a starting point to raise several issues on the table: the limits of humor, the right to feel offended, the culture of cancellation, popularity and the power of fame or acceptance of oneself .
Although beyond the opinion that may be held about it, the series advocates more for entertainment than for brainy debate.
“It is true that in Spain we have had some cases and these limits on freedom of expression is an issue that is there,” explains Navarro on the phone, “here we know that there are musicians, comedians, people who are being judged and even imprisoned for issues of freedom of expression.
But it is true that in the series it is only a starting point, the series is not really about that.
It's a theme that he brings up at the beginning and end of the season, but the rest of the time it's a
prison sitcom
, a fun choral comedy that goes in another direction”.
When the format was outlined, series such as
The Office, Parks and Recreation
or
Community were very much in mind, “
very crazy comedies where each episode can have a very different tone
”,
says Sevilla
;
but above all, a part of Brooklyn Nine-Nine
was inspiring
that take place in jail.
The idea was to make a prison
sitcom
that was far from realism, with picturesque secondary characters that would nurture the stories that take place inside and that could last for several seasons.
Everything, the directors say, "avoiding the easy and recurring humor" that is usually related to prisons.
And just like Dunder Mifflin in
The Office
has Michael Scott, or the city of Pawnee has Leslie Knope in
Parks And Recreation
, this prison needed its lynchpin.
The secondary characters are in charge of nurturing the plots within the prison.
From hero to villain
For the leading role, and to enhance the duality of prison confinement, they were clear that they wanted to base themselves on the figure of someone who never got into trouble and who was loved by the public, such as Roberto Leal or Karlos Arguiñano, whom their creators They give examples in real life.
Although they admit that the script was written with Arturo Valls in mind, whom they always had in their sights.
Not only because of his history as a presenter, which he met the requirements, but also because of his facet as an actor, which they already know well after having coincided in works such as the recent
Camera Café: The movie
.
“Although his name is Carlos Ferrer, he is still someone very similar to Arturo Valls.
But the character has a fundamental difference with Arturo Valls, and that is that he wears glasses.
It was the way he had of separating the character and the person, like Clark Kent and Superman”, jokes Navarro, “he thought that with the glasses no one would recognize him”.
Arturo Valls, who feels comfortable in comedy, also appreciates the hints of drama that the series has at specific moments, a challenge at an interpretive level that he would like to deal with more from time to time.
But he also confesses that what he wanted most was to rest from the daily programs, such as
Now I fall
, to which he dedicated too many hours to focus full time on other projects: "Before I used the breaks in the recordings of
Now I fall
to convince to a director of photography, calling an actor for whatever, looking at the financing of a project.
That makes you enjoy neither one thing nor the other.
Now I get involved and I have a much better time with what I do”.
Arturo Valls surrounded by Fernando Gil and Javier Botet, two of the secondary characters in the series.
The actor feels "lucky" for never having been involved in a similar situation.
But he makes it clear that, in case of suffering from it, he would not hesitate to "ask for forgiveness and move on, even taking into account that, paradoxically, that same joke could be a palliative for many people."
Does that mean that humor faces self-censorship?
Valls is blunt: “Not at all.
There are jokes that 10 years ago could be funny and today they are not.
And you don't have to stop doing them because of a matter of imposed censorship, but because society has changed and the comedian has to be with that evolution."
And while he evolves, the actor crosses his fingers so that, as before, he can continue to be closer to Arturo Valls than to Carlos Ferrer.
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