Poga and Villagrán star in ’33 Days’: “We filmed horrible things that really happened and it makes us dizzy for the victims”

Next June 7, atresplayer premieres ’33 days’the first fiction series of Carles Porta. The production starring José Manuel Poga and Julián Villagrán is inspired in the real escape of two prisoners from the Ponent prison in Lleida in 2001. For more than a month, the fugitives committed several crimes, including the murder of a young man, the sexual assault of his partner and the shooting of a police officer who became a paraplegic. The actors have recognized the hardness of the filming because they filmed ““Horrible things that really happened and it produces a lot of vertigo, especially for the victims.”

“It is modest and respectful to interpret and enter the privacy of real people who have families, who have children.. They are people who exist, who are there and who are going to see your work,” says Poga, who plays Prieto in ’33 Days’, in an interview with Villagrán granted to Europa Press.

Poga considers that the rise of true crime is closely related to the growing social exposure to violence. In his opinion, “We live in a time in which we now see men killing women in the middle of the street” and that precisely for this reason “murders and atrocities are very normalized“. This context, he explains, means that “the fact that it is a real case awakens in the viewer a morbid feeling that there are those who enter and there are those who do not.”

For the actor of ‘Money Heist’ or ‘The Body on Fire’, one of the keys to the interest generated by these fictions lies in the possibility of getting closer to the minds of criminals. According to him, it is “interesting to enter that psychological profile and try to understand why they came to do the things they did.” Poga argues that one of the most curious aspects of ’33 Days’ is placing the viewer in front of the internal conflicts of characters who are considered villains.

In this sense, the interest of delving into the psychology of characters such as Prieto, marked by anger and “fascism”, to understand the origin of his behaviors and come to see him “really as a victim.” However, Poga emphasizes that understanding does not mean justifying: “It is clear that these two guys who were released from prison committed an atrocity and have to be in prison. I’m not going to whitewash or defend it, but as an actor I don’t have to judge and understand them.“.

BETWEEN VICTIMS AND EXECUTIONERS

To build the Calatrava, Julian Villagran explains that they had “access to the letters they wrote in prison to plan the escape, the letters he sent to his mother and a letter they made him write once they caught him to explain why he had done it, in addition to the psychiatric report that was carried out on him when he entered prison.

To all this he added listening to judicial recordings that allowed him to get closer to Calatrava’s personality. “I listened to audios of the trial and that helped me a lot. The sound he had and his beliefs. Then you put it into the script and build both the characters and the story.“, he explains. During this process he also had the contributions of journalist Mayka Navarro, who makes a cameo in the series and who, as the interpreter of ‘7 vírgenes’ and ‘Grupo 7’ recalls, “followed the case very closely at that time.”

Beyond the documentation, Villagrán tried to understand the internal conflicts of a character marked by addiction and the lack of emotional references. “I have tried to find his weakness, his conflict,” points out. In his opinion, Calatrava finds in Prieto something he had never had before: protection and recognition. “The heroin addict had never hurt anyone and, When he meets Prieto in prison, he finds a brotherly figure for the first time in his life.. “She knows he’s there for murder, but she finds refuge in him,” he says.

This relationship of emotional dependence helps explain some of his later decisions. Regarding the motivations that led Calatrava to commit a crime, the actor also points to a deep feeling of personal failure. “I read that he felt very bad about his family, he saw himself as a failure, and that he wanted to compensate his brothers and parents by organizing the coup.“he emphasizes.

“WE ARE PRISONERS OF MOBILE AND SOCIAL NETWORKS”

Beyond the reconstruction of an escape, ’33 days’ poses a reflection on the meaning of freedom. Both Poga and Villagrán agree that the relationship between Prieto and Calatrava transcends simple friendship or criminal complicity to become an emotional dependence that ends up conditioning their decisions. Poga defines the link between the two as the meeting of “two alone together” and, in his opinion, the paradox of the story lies in the fact that, despite their obsession with escaping from prison, they end up being “prisoners of each other.”

Villagrán shares that reading and takes it one step further by connecting history with today’s society. The interpreter remembers a reflection present in the series about the apparent contradiction between freedom and dependence: “You can be on the street and feel like the freest person in the world, but in the end that is when you are the most prisoner.” Furthermore, consider that this lack of freedom is not exclusive to them. “We, who are free, are true prisoners of the cell phone, social networks and our environment,” concludes.