'The ones in the last row', Daniel Sánchez Arévalo's journey to the female universe

Daniel Sánchez Arévalo (Madrid, 52 years old) had a pending account with the female universe.

The audiovisual world that the filmmaker has drawn in his films, from

to

passing through

​​and

is mostly male.

That debt is paid off with

, a story about friendship and an optimistic, transformative journey to overcome self-imposed barriers, which Netflix premieres on September 23.

Five women, five friends in their thirties are the protagonists of a story that Sánchez Arévalo had been thinking about for about 10 years, but that he had left fallow, he says sitting in the Netflix offices in Madrid.

The idea was simmered until three elements came together: first, that need to enter the feminine universe;

second, her partner Sara, who reacted enthusiastically to hearing this idea when she told it to him;

and third, Verónica Fernández, Director of Fiction at Netflix Spain.

She “she called me and said they would love to produce a series for me.

We met for lunch and I told her

and she told me that just with the start she wanted to do it, ”explains the director to EL PAÍS.

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In its six chapters, the series recounts the journey made by five childhood friends, a custom that this time has a different tint: one of them has cancer.

The conditions they set for this summer getaway is that the five of them will shave their hair, that they will not talk about cancer at any time and that each one will write on a piece of paper something that they would like to do if they knew that they had little time left to live and all they must do so, as a collective challenge.

Godeliv Van den Brandt, Mariona Terés, Itsaso Arana, Mónica Miranda and María Rodríguez, in the second episode of 'The Last Row'. JULIO VERGNE/NETFLIX

Sánchez Arévalo, who writes and directs the six episodes, was clear that he wanted his protagonists to be between 35 and 40 years old.

“I wanted women in adulthood and at that point where, supposedly, your life is already pretty much on track and any transformation is more complicated.

As we get older, the changes are more complicated, but at the same time they are more interesting”.

He also knew that he preferred his actresses not to be well known to the general public.

María Rodríguez, Itsaso Arana, Mariona Terés, Godeliv Van den Brandt and Mónica Miranda are the protagonists, who are accompanied by secondary characters with better known names such as Javier Rey, Macarena García, Carmen Machi, Michelle Jenner or Antonio de la Torre, whose participations are sometimes reduced to mere cameos.

“In my obsession with generating a group of thirtysomethings that you think are friends from school, working with actresses who are not as well known to the general public makes it easier to enter the story.

Although I have also searched for the best actresses for the characters I have written.

It's what I always do, regardless of whether they have a more or less long career”, says the director.

The physical journey of the protagonists will also place them before an emotional, transforming journey.

"I like to put the characters at a time when the wheel of life stops and forces you to look at yourself and ask yourself if you are where you want to be and who you want to be with," explains the screenwriter.

“I have that image of the hamster in the wheel.

Many times in life we ​​are on that wheel and we don't stop to think.

You push forward and there are things that start to get dirty, you swallow them and don't clean them, and they accumulate”.

Mariona Terés, Godeliv Van den Brandt, María Rodríguez, Mónica Miranda and Itsaso Arana, in the fourth episode of 'The Last Row'. JULIO VERGNE/NETFLIX

For that trip, the group chooses Cádiz.

The decision is not accidental and responds to several reasons.

The series takes place in June, but the filming had to take place out of high season, between September and November, and a place had to be found that would generate the feeling of summer at that time.

"I visited several areas in the south and Cádiz was love at first sight," says Sánchez Arévalo.

"There is something of the spirit of those beaches, that freedom that creates a bubble between them that fit very well."

In addition, he asked groups of friends where they were going on vacation, and Cádiz was one of the winning destinations.

The team traveled there for three months to shoot at various points between Tarifa and Conil de la Frontera.

But first, the filmmaker had to face his main challenge: to reflect the feminine world.

“Using a tennis expression, at first I felt that my arm was tight, it was difficult for me to let go and hit, enjoy it.

He had a certain fear because he wanted to do it very well, for women to empathize, for him not to seem like a man writing about women”.

To do this, he tried to make a conscious immersion in the feminine universe.

Taking advantage of the fact that the confinement caught him writing the series, he approached his partner with a thousand questions to tell him all the details about what he talks about or what he does with her friends.

In addition, he has had the help of an expert gender psychologist who reviewed scripts, characters and situations.

And he also asked both the actresses and the technical team, mostly female, to let him know if something in the text squeaked.

Daniel Sánchez Arévalo, in a corridor of the Netflix offices in Madrid.

Claudio Alvarez

In this process of joint work with the actresses, what Sánchez Arévalo highlights as his favorite scene of the series emerged, a sequence from the third chapter in which the protagonists talk about their defecations.

“I can say that it is my favorite sequence because I have not written it myself.

I wanted to talk about it because it seems very taboo in the female universe, guys don't have that much modesty.

But it is a topic that is there and they recognized me that they all talk about it.

Two days we began to improvise while I took notes, and all the phrases that appear in that sequence were said by them, they wrote them”.

Just as the viewer does not know which of the friends has cancer until the end, neither did the actresses, who had to wait until the filming, already in Madrid, of the last sequence to reveal their identity.

“I wanted to achieve that feeling that everyone experienced it in a very personal way.

Speaking with associations fighting cancer and patients and families of patients, it is something that you experience very personally, and I wanted to reflect that pineapple that is generated, that everyone suffers and embraces it and that everything is very close to the surface”.

The protagonists of 'The last row', in the fourth chapter of the series.JULIO VERGNE/NETFLIX

Although Daniel Sánchez Arévalo began in the world of scriptwriting in the series with Antonio Mercero in

to continue in titles such as

or

, this is his first series as a creator based on his own idea.

“There was a project that they told me if I wanted to start it and I said yes, but that I wanted to shoot it handheld, in 16:9 format and rehearse with the actors.

They told me no to all three things.

I felt that the director was still no more than a filmmaker, and that's why I wasn't interested.

Once I made

I went back to writing series scripts for financial reasons.”

With

He has been able to verify the differences of taking care of a series with respect to a film.

“The most complicated thing is the question of time, 16 weeks of filming, which is like recording more than two films.

And the writing and post-production part… In addition, I was caught being a father, I shot with my daughter who had just turned one year old.

I remember one day, when I had less than a week to shoot, and I was at home in the playground with my daughter asleep, I was sitting there and crying, a somewhat pathetic image.

Sara asks me what's wrong and I tell her I don't think I'll make it to the end.

I was letting go of tension.

I did get there, but the toll you have is not so much physical, it's psychological, a lot of pressure”.

Has the experience left you wanting to repeat at the helm of another series?

"No, no, what's up.

I have film mono, do something more controlled,

seven weeks of filming… I have it very clear.

Although it has been a wonderful, full, incredible experience, ”she concludes.

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