2024-09-14 03:01:00
“Is this anguish due to sadness or envy?” the therapist asks Vicky. “I don’t know, it seems unfair that I, who do everything right, am single at almost 40 years old,” the patient answers, between reproach and the fatality of a situation that takes away her sleep and also dictates her life. For Vicky, it seems that her time in this world is reduced only to getting married, having children and raising them in a house with a backyard and sunny days. A situation that she thought she was about to fulfill, after ten years of being together, but that collapsed due to her own and always harmful impulse. “I envy that everyone has what I want and I don’t. Am I bad for that?” she asks herself with a certain candor and without being able to escape that feeling that assails her every time she sees her idyllic dream fulfilled in another. Will Vicky be able to get married or, at least, stop living comparing herself to others? That is the question that runs through the plot of Enviousthe serie that with humor and a dose of delirium Netflix will be uploaded to your catalog from the Wednesday 18th.
Far from the costumbrismo or the naturalistic white comedy that the Argentine audiovisual industry usually produces ad nauseam, Envious part of a trigger so often traveled but to take it to the extreme and build a comedy that is not afraid of the absurd or pushing the boundaries of the genre. A tone that rests, fundamentally, on the performance of Griselda Sicilianiwhich gracefully composes this insecure, untimely, reckless, intense, suffering and impulsive Vicky. A woman whose father abandoned her when she was very young and caused her an absence, a trauma, and perhaps the cause of her “need” to form an ideal family.
“Envious It has a conflict that is universal, because it is about a woman who is suffering from a frustration that almost prevents her from living. There is something about that, about feeling frustrated, that we all know, and the humor that goes through that brings you much closer. It is a very funny series, very crazy,” Siciliani explains to Page/12The actress shares the cast in the series written by Carolina Aguirre (Fakers, Blind to appointments, Beautiful girls) con Esteban Lamothe, Benjamín Vicuña, Pilar Gamboa, Violeta UrtizbereaMarina Bellati, Barbara Lombardo, Martin Garabal, Lorena Vega, Susana Pampin, Leonora Balcarce and Adrian Lakerman, among others.
“Vicky is someone who suffers, which is in favour of humour and truth,” Siciliani explains. “When you want to tell that pain and you tell it crudely, really, Vicky has those moments in which she goes from fragility to a burst of joy in seconds. That’s where humour appears.” Suffering taken to the extreme to generate humor is what makes me laugh the most. Vicky is always on the loose. That is, when she sees that she is not getting what she dreamed of, that when she turns 40 she will not be able to have the picture she wanted to have, which was that family with children, she goes crazy. She is a girl who is always on the loose, doing what she can.
-The tone of the series and the personality of your character allow you to play with many acting resources, even with the pouts typical of comedians, but without losing authenticity. Was that a challenge?
-The character gives me that possibility. I love it. The character and the structure of the series give it to me as well, because as an actress, knowing that the story is going to be with me the whole time, I had the possibility of raising the register a lot, because I knew that there were going to be moments in which I could lower it a lot. That is a gift for an actress. Because sometimes if you have little space, you have to dramatize in the same scene or only show one facet, it is more limited. By having the whole series written in advance, one can organize and do the ant work, to be able to say “here I’m going to shit, but here I have to achieve true vulnerability so that the viewer believes in this woman and empathizes with this crazy woman.”
-The series talks about envy, to the point that Vicky is unable to see herself because she can’t stop competing with her friends. How do you deal with envy, a feeling that can be part of the human condition but if not managed well can be dangerous?
-Envy is having your gaze far outside yourself all the time. If you’re always in that, it’s a problem. As a sporadic feeling, we all have it. It comes in, it goes out, it travels like something more fluid. Vicky is very aware of the gaze of others. She can’t stop looking outside. That’s why she doesn’t know what she feels or what she wants. She’s not even taken by the mandate. She’s a very patriarchal woman, who has very structured ideas and has never thought much about anything. She’s had this picture of what she wants for her adult life since she was 5, 6 years old, and she never looked at anything and she goes there. And when that picture that she thought she was going to have starts to fall apart, she bursts out because she never built anything else. The series shows this process of rebuilding Vicky, of trying to find out who she is. And that’s the most beautiful thing about the character for me. Envy is a horrible feeling.
-In the series, her therapist tries all the time to let her know, but Vicky doesn’t want to face the reality that’s trapping her.
-The therapy session was one of the most fun things to film with Lorena Vega. Also, we filmed the scenes from the 12 episodes in a row, in seven days, all in a row. That was a great production decision, because when you watch the entire series, when you watch the episodes, there is something very powerful in the bond between Vicky and the therapist. The fact that it was done in order and in one go was a luxury for the production because it helped us build the bond between the two, making the composition easier. In fact, those days with Lorena we would go to lunch together and we continued working hard on the relationship, very passionate about acting. We would not have been able to build such a deep bond without the production’s decision to film them like that. The same thing happened with Vicky’s relationship with her mother and sister, with Susana Pampin and Pilar Gamboa, with whom we recorded entire days of all the scenes of that family bond. That is why the delirious humorous story manages to build very powerful bonds.
-In your case, did you dream of the idealized family?
-No, I never had that dream. I kind of have that ideal family as a foundation, with my parents and my siblings. I have a family that is very much a dream. But it is very much a dream in the sense that it is a very happy family, where we all respect each other and have fun with each other’s uniqueness. We are all very educated in freedom and respect. I feel very, very grateful for what I got, because anything can happen to you… And I got two parents who are teachers, now retired, enjoying life. My old man is also a pedagogue and wrote a lot about education.
-Neither marriage nor motherhood were childhood dreams in your case?
-No. Never. I don’t remember dreaming about getting married. I don’t even remember myself as a child, eh? I always remember dreaming about dancing, dreaming about singing, about acting. Of course, from a very young age. But as far as relationships with men, I never ever had that desire. Not even the desire to be a mother. The desire to be a mother seemed to me to be older and already with a consolidated partner, more like a step to take together. It wasn’t a personal need. Then, the moment I decided to be a mother, I was struck by everything that happened, I didn’t expect that to happen to me. I was crazy about being a mother. It still drives me crazy. My daughter is already 12 years old and I really enjoy being with her, the bond we built between us. I don’t know if it’s enjoying motherhood or enjoying the bond with that person who was my daughter.
-You made a lot of fictions for television in the old style. What are the differences you see today between those productions and those offered by streaming?
-It depends on the project, in principle, because all projects have a different production scheme, it depends on how many chapters there are, it depends on how many actors there are, it depends on many things. But it is true that filming in streaming is more similar to film. Also the old Polka units, for example, were quite similar to film. I think about To dress saintsfor example. The way of doing it was quite similar to the cinematic one and the result too, beyond the fact that it was 16 years ago. And then there is the issue of reach, which is not minor, but it is also different. On the one hand, platforms allow you to reach other audiences, although there are platforms that are much more popular and others that are not, that are more niche. Netflix is clearly the most popular and this series aims to be popular, because it is a comedy and because it has many issues that are going to conspire towards that. We will have to see what happens later. But it is also true that many people do not have any platform. Many people in this country do not have any platform and, in that sense, fiction on free-to-air television was another type of offer for another, much more massive audience. And that fiction should also exist. But this way of producing, this way of being able to do something on a platform, a comedy with as much reach as it will have on Netflix, excites me a lot.
-How do you see what is happening with Argentine culture?
-I see what is happening, not only with culture but with everything, with all the decisions that are made and with all the speeches, I think it is all very desperate… Everything is so outdated, what is happening is so incomprehensible, what is being said, it seems that we are part of Years and Yearsthe British series… It seems like fiction, it seems like everything is exacerbated… The other day, my sister Paulina, who is a sociologist, and we were talking a little about this and we came to the conclusion that it is difficult to analyze, it is difficult to reflect, because one feels as if one were inside a tsunami, which makes reflection difficult. You are inside the disaster, the catastrophe, and it is very difficult to be able to get out and have a reflection, an opinion, beyond the feeling of drowning that overwhelms us. And in that desperation you also think that it will pass, and that we will continue making films and we will continue doing things. You have to be attentive because everything, every news item you read, every decision you see being made, always hits you… Sometimes you don’t know what to say, because everything can be taken, everything is used, everything is very cynical. And you don’t know, and at one point you even suspect, if it might not also be that our profession is so visible that it helps distract from other issues. And you say, “I don’t want to contribute to distracting, I don’t want to say something that has so much impact and that distracts from other things that are perhaps more important, or from other problems that are more complex.”