the ship, Dream to dream, The Money Heist… It is enough to mention these titles so that the reader is reminded of some of the most famous successes of television fiction in our country in recent years.. Well then, In the creative backroom of all these television hits lies, sharing creative merit, the screenwriter and show runner Esther Martínez Lobato. With his partner (in life and creative), screenwriter Alex Pina, also, Esther has been the founder of the company Vancouver Media with which she has launched, along with some of these titles, the Movistar+ series, The pier. Filmed largely in Valencian locations, the series mixes drama and thriller to tell us the story of two women, Alejandra and Veronica, united by the fatal death of their romantic partner. The problem, As many of the viewers will already know by now, is that that couple is, in both cases, the same man, Oscar. Oscar's inexplicable death will unite two very different women. Alejandra, an architect linked to conventions and an organized life, and Veronica, a woman who lives, on the opposite side, very far from them. Here they both embark on a complicated journey to discover what has happened to the love of their life., without knowing that, maybe, the greatest discovery was through themselves, because of who they are. On the occasion of the premiere of the second season of The pier the next 17 January, We were talking with Martínez Lobato about the series, of the industry and the role of writers in this new stage in which digital platforms have burst into force against traditional television. She told us she wasn't much of a public speaker., that his thing was more about the silence and intimacy of writing, but, as shown in the interview, he's pretty good at it.
I imagine that you already said many things about the series when the first season premiered at the time., but if you had to give us a brief now pitching or presentation about this second stage that is being released, what would you tell us?
Well, compared to the previous season, I think several bombs explode in this one.. In the first season the bombs were cooking and in this one they go to extremes and explode. Each character is located at the antipodes of where the series began and, although the second part is continuous, because we pick it up at exactly the same point where we left them, Their arcs and emotions are extreme in such a way that they will reach surprising and very unexpected places with respect to the place where they were born..
The series is based on a fact that is a catalyst, Oscar's mysterious death, husband of one of the protagonists and lover of the other, but little by little this mystery seems to be moving away from the center of the story to make way for a reflection: how a chance event can push and encourage us to analyze who we really are. I don't know if this was a starting point or something that has developed over time..
I love that people reason about series because one of the wonderful things about telling a story is that people receive it and make their assumptions about it.. The series was born with an original idea of, indeed, stir up the hornet's nest a little of those types of love triangle stories where we tend to be, by culture, by education or because we are so furnished in the West, very biased. We wanted to put ourselves on an impartial side where we could explain if it is possible to love several people at the same time or if there are certain places of freedom where it is really possible.. Not a story of cuckolding or betrayal, but a love triangle where all parties involved will feel honest love. That was the main objective of the series. other element, almost of the Vancouver editorial line [his production company with which he has designed the series], is to take lives and characters that always oscillate in a shadowy terrain between good and evil, between what is judged as convenient and inconvenient, between the little angel and the devil, between what is politically correct and what is not, between the passions we hide and those we show. Each of the characters (and this series is like that) is very polar or bipolar, whatever you want to call it (laughter). They all have a very bright side and a very dark side that coexist very well.. And that just because it is dark or light, they are not condemnable or not., but, from the viewer's point of view, both are interesting, and from a psychological point of view, they are both human.
Thinking about the main characters, Alejandra and Veronica, They are like two sides of the same coin, somehow, they confront and contrast each other, and when contrasted, their values come into play. At first, Alejandra's character seems more conservative and Verónica's character seems more daring or wild., however, both influence each other.
Yeah, they are mixing, they complement each other and in this second season they turn. I think one of the cool things that I really liked doing in the first season was the change of focus at the end., in chapter eight. The look of the first season is always that of Alejandra's character, which may be the closest, with which we can identify. Y, through your gaze, we are entering a world with other perceptions, in Veronica's world. Finally, in chapter eight, the focus changes and we look from Verónica's eyes. Somehow, at the beginning of the second season it will remain there, with the focus on the gaze of the two women, and we are going to turn the two characters towards a place that, as I told you before, It is at the antipodes of where they were born. That is why this complementation. They have both learned and we are going to take them to make the complete trip, so that each one understands the place where the other was.
The series questions certain roles in sexual relationships. The ability of television to influence our behavioral habits has always been highlighted., whether social or cultural. What is your position on this?? In that sense, How do you watch television and this series in particular??
For us it was a great pleasure to work with Movistar and Antena [Atresmedia] in a super-free way in which at no time was the editorial line of the series questioned., or what the content was and how far we were going to get wet and get into. It is a series that lives from that freedom, in which the parameters that have been established since the first season are from their own microcosm. With this I want to tell you that we are not trying to make a social appeal, much less, but these two women feel that way and decide to cross the bridges they decide to cross. I think that's where series can be honest., in generating own content, different, with fictional worlds built where everything you want to tell makes sense without trying to make a flag and without trying to make another type of genre, neither a documentary nor a (laughter) report or socially agitate anything, just be honest with your own story. In the end, It is fiction and I believe that honesty must be in the creation of that fictional world.. Besides, I think the viewer is ready to see that and more. Above all, the new generations, who are far ahead and have many things to teach us about freedom and compromise, and about looking at the sexual freedom of the individual in a more generous way. Thanks to the platforms and the overwhelming level of content that exists, both in their quality and in the amount of them, I think that right now there is room for things to be told in very different and very rich ways.. I think that, in fiction, in the series, The projects dialogue with each other and the viewer chooses for the first time what he sees. Now the viewer is the owner, much more freely than two or three years ago, to see the content you want. I believe that we are more at the service of what the viewer wants than at any previous moment in the history of fiction., at least in this country.
If we compare it with other types of audiovisual works that can be more personal, I think it may be a less common question., but, in this type of televised fiction, What about you or what can we find about you in the characters you build?, either in this series or in others in whose creation you have participated?
Well, If you ask that question, I'm going to turn out to be a super-bipolar person. (laughter) because really the job of the screenwriter is to put yourself in the shoes of people that you are not.. It consists of arguing about things you don't believe in., It consists of defending characters as extreme as Berlin in the best way possible. [character of The Money Heist], with that cloudy look about many issues, and do it with grace, and then put yourself in the shoes of a character like Alejandra, which is a woman who can be super-identifiable socially because she is a current woman, with work, She is not a dead fly nor a prude from twenty-five years ago.. What about me? Well, my desire to put myself in different perspectives that are foreign to me and in which I can believe or not believe, but I'm going to defend to the death. In a way of writing about what I think of those characters that comes out of your guts and guts..
How we are in Valencia, I think it's time for me to ask you about the issue because our city is the bottom, the landscape of the series. It seems that now there is a tendency in the series to look for spaces outside the center, from Madrid, which was the place that fictions generally occupied. Do you see this as a passing fad or is it a trend that will last and has been established in the industry?
I think it is very good because there is an overabundance of content (let's say it like this) and anything that gives identity to the project is very important. When you can integrate the environment, as is the case of The pier, in a city, in a very specific environment or culture, the series grows. It's like when you put muffins in the oven, They grow because they are in the best conditions for the circumstances of the series to occur.. Years ago there was a tendency for series to be very cosmopolitan, generated in very large cities. It was put, For example, Madrid or Barcelona or New York for an aspirational issue that made the viewer look and look at those urban centers so full of life and so visually attractive.. But I think that, finally, large cities and large environments have become more uniform and the identity that a place has, maybe smaller, but it has other contrasts, gives you other possibilities. In the case of Valencia, It had the perfect contrast.. We had a story where the two poles of the same person are going to be pointed out.. How can this be reflected? Well, in a city that had both. We always think about the series based on that paradigm.. We had the horizontal part, which is the part of La Albufera, the part where the character of Verónica is. It is the part where the instincts are, the beauty of the sunsets and the tranquility of the most animal part, ancestral cases, of the human being and the senses and sensibilities. And then we have a vertical part, which was the part of the city, of tall buildings, where there is a character who is Alejandra, who builds buildings, where everything is organized and people look through the windows at how life goes by. In this case, It was essential to the identity of the series to find a place that had both elements.
How does that space condition you when considering a project like this?? what is before? Does the idea condition the space in which it is developed or is it the space that shapes the idea?? Or do both things happen at the same time??
Well, in this project it was totally amalgamated because it had a deep meaning within the story.. It was something that could not be told without that space or that would have been told worse.. The pier has a narrative part, which we have talked about, but the visual part also has a lot of work on the part of the creatives who were making it. From the directors, Jesus Colmenar, Alex Rodrigo, Jorge Dorado and Eduardo Chapero-Jackson, The search for spaces and environments was a job that required very measured planning and that became one of the topics of all the meetings.. In this case, they were totally even. In other projects I don't know how to tell you... For example, in Dream to dream The prison had to be designed in the same way that the Valencia environment was sought here..
The series is already part of the new fiction formats that are being developed, above all, digital platforms. I'm referring to the length of the chapters or how the seasons are designed.. However, For me it has elements of soup opera or the traditional serial. For you, How have platforms and these new ways of distribution changed the way we conceive television fiction??
Well, for us it has changed very positively because now you can watch the episode whenever you feel like it., whenever you want, and we're not so burdened by having an end-of-chapter twist, another half for advertising, or we are no longer obliged to start each chapter with a kind of summary to reposition the characters. I think the way series are being conceived is changing a lot.. The minute is changing [the duration] of the same, but it is also changing how chapter by chapter and the entire series are conceived horizontally.. Now we hope that a viewer can see the episodes, well followed, or even that can stop them halfway (laughter) or five minutes after starting and continue watching it the next day. This leads us to the fact that the narrative structures with which we worked before have become obsolete., they are no longer useful. On one side, we are freer in the narrative. And on the other hand, it's also a little tougher because you have to be constantly alert.. Now you have to take into account that the viewer can cut off a chapter at the fifteenth minute and want to come back tomorrow, and you have to be able to offer the possibility of continuing with that journey without losing anything. Give you the feeling that you don't have to go back to pick up the chapter or that you don't have to move forward for something to happen that you find stimulating..
The series is based, within the genre in which it belongs, in a constant game of coincidences between the characters. A game that is sometimes taken to the limit of plausibility. How do you consider these limits of fiction or verisimilitude when facing a series like The pier? I say this because the current trend is to create fictions that seek realism.. Against this, We have a series like this that plays within those limits that, however, They continue to work and find viewer acceptance.
I think we have to create a world. He pier has its world, The Money Heist has its world, Dream to dream has its world, and the series we are filming right now has a very specific world. The viewer who enters the series accepts the paradigm, the rules and keys of that universe. Within those keys, of that universe, we are going to try to entertain you, ask you some questions (laughter), question him about some things and try to take him on a journey with characters that will surprise him, that are constantly spinning so that nothing you can foresee is what finally happens. It's about establishing the rules of the game. I think that to be daring and be entertaining at the same time, you have to skip the harsh reality, so to speak. I believe that the viewer understands perfectly when they are faced with a fictional product and what keys they can apply to their morals., or in what you learn or in the questions that arise, or which are simply dedicated to pure and simple or more playful entertainment.
Regarding the appearance of the platforms and all the open channels that currently exist and, with that, all the material that the viewer can access, I wanted to ask you, How does this fractionation affect, such radical segmentation of the audience when conceiving the series?
Yeah, This division of the audience has affected us all our lives and the truth is that it is a pretty hard thing because,when you generate a story, When you imagine a story it's a bit like a whiting eating its own tail.. Bueno, I speak in the past tense (laughter) why, Since we are on Netflix we don't have this problem as much. As I told you, I think it's also a problem of honesty.. The chains, the producers, producers look for differential projects, original, and when they had it in their hands (this has happened to me), they told you: “vale, But now you have to put a grandfather here because older people have to see this.”. “Oye, there are no children here, put some children in. So, that original product, genuine, was distorted. Us, the first time we were very badass with this (thanks to the fact that they bet on us and let us do it) it was with Dream to dream, where we said: “no more being complacent about this, “We are going to make a genuine product for adults and harsh in terms of violence.”. Our big surprise was the public's reception.. But not only the reception of the public to which it was directed, but the reception of the global public: older people, very very old people, and children, I'm talking to you about ten or eleven years, who watched the series. Some people told me that, in moments of violence, They went to the kitchen to get some yogurt., but they didn't remove the TV. I mean, that there was a certain morbidity. With this we realized that the viewer, The audience was much smarter than what we were appreciating and they received content without the modesty that we creators have or the extreme care that the networks had at that time. (or maybe they still have it open, I don't know). I think this is already falling under its own weight.. Platforms are showing that the audiences we are used to protecting do not need that protection, and look for content that stimulates them in a playful way, intellectual, telling him something in which the hand of fear is not seen. I believe that the viewer is in charge and is often more intelligent than any of us., that we are overprotecting him.
In that sense, Do you think the direction of the one who imposes the product has changed?? Before it was from the producer to the viewer and now it is more from the viewer to the one who produces?
The viewer is the one who demands, the viewer is the one who consumes. Besides, It has a wild power because it consumes television on its mobile phone., For example. The viewer consumes television in a super-ruthless way because, How do you not fall in love with a series?, or it doesn't stimulate you or it doesn't entertain you in ten, fifteen or twenty minutes, it's over. Now the trend is also to make much shorter formats. We in Spain have passed, in a very short time, of the seventy minutes (that they were going to ninety with advertising), because we are making a series in which the footage was going to be thirty minutes and they are already asking us to make it twenty-two. It is very difficult for us to equip our heads and be able to count in twenty-two minutes what we previously counted in fifty or seventy.. It's very hard, It is very stimulating, but there he is telling us who is in charge. The spectator is in charge because, like you're not up to par, there is no truce.
It is said that, especially in the United States, The screenwriter has gained great prominence in the industry. I don't know if, already with some commercial successes behind you, is your case, but, Do you think that screenwriters have gained that weight within the audiovisual industry in Spain?
Yeah, I don't know who did it. I don't know if it was thanks to Netflix, who has been looking for creatives around the world, or that the tables have turned. My personal experience is that now people look for the creative. Look for the creative and look for the story. We screenwriters are summoned for interviews and to go to premieres, when before the screenwriter was a gentleman geek with glasses who wrote at home and no one knew him on the set. Right now, is required. It seems to me that this speaks very well of the audience., of the viewer, who is interested in knowing who came up with the idea for the series. We have gone for different periods. Before, the most important thing was the actor, the face. The audience went crazy with the actors and almost identified the actor with the characters. Then, the directors, especially in the cinema; those wonderful minds that made us travel with movies. And now we are in an era where the audience seeks to know who came up with the idea, who writes it, Which seems wonderful to me because that tells you that she is interested in the literature of the series itself., if you can call it that. Now the literary narrative of the audiovisual has weight and I find it very stimulating.
You are the author or co-author of series such as The pier, The Money Heist…Your name is already associated with many successful projects. To finish, I wanted to ask you, What has this success meant to you?, both personally, as in professional? I guess it went well for you (laughter).
Bueno, Personally, the truth is that it is very good because it is very stimulating.. On one side, Eighty percent of emotions are gratitude. Gratitude to unknown people who, from everywhere, they give you their support or, as I told you, they want to meet the writer. Besides, Personally I am very cautious (laughter) and I tend to doubt what we could say “success”. I think it's very ephemeral, very fleeting and it is good to disconnect from all that and connect with work, What has led you to be where you are?. Personally, what I like is to write, more than explaining why I write. I don't think I'm very good at talking, that's why I make my living writing (laughter). On one side, It is greatly appreciated and on the other hand it is a little distressing.. We are writers, We are that band of people with glasses who were almost apologizing for the filming and now, suddenly, People shine the spotlight on our faces and tell us, what do you think?, and taking that leap is a little complicated. But, besides, Having visibility is important from the point of view of a professional woman, because that is another stretch that is still a struggle, and in which to gain ground and visibility, let the new generations know, the girls, in schools, that they can dedicate themselves to some writing and that they can get somewhere, It's very motivating.
The series ends in this second season…
Yeah, The series ends in this second season for several reasons. The first is honesty with the project of taking all the characters to the extreme. You will see the end and you will realize that the story ends there. And on the other hand, because we are also going to answer the whole Oscar mystery.. The mystery ends and is revealed.
