On June 23, 2023, Save me closed Telecinco. An hour before it ended, and after various rumors, EL PAÍS announced the news: the universe Save me moved to Netflix with a reality that would take eight of its collaborators (Belén Esteban, Terelu Campos, Kiko Matamoros, Lydia Lozano, Chelo García Cortés, Víctor Sandoval, Kiko Hernández and María Patiño) to Miami and Mexico in search of new job opportunities. That was the result of several weeks of conversations between the production company La Fábrica de la Tele and Netflix, an alliance that emerged almost immediately after the announcement of the end of the program on Telecinco.
Now, Óscar Cornejo and Adrián Madrid, heads of La Fábrica de la Tele, remember that moment. “Four days after the news was leaked and two after they officially communicated it to us, we received a call from Netflix, telling us that we have our doors open for whatever we consider, any project related or not to Save me. It arrived at a very delicate moment for us in many ways, especially emotionally,” Óscar Cornejo told EL PAÍS this Friday.
The idea of removing the collaborators from the controlled environment that was the set, outside the ecosystem that has created them as characters, had been on their minds for a long time, but they had not found a way to do it. Doing it while they were looking for work outside of Spain, in the circumstances they were in, occurred to them almost naturally. “We take them off the set and from the country that loves them or hates them, which in television terms for us is the same thing,” Cornejo continues.
Netflix was not the only platform that called La Fábrica de la Tele. “That week there were several surprising calls, but they were all that week, not before. We have the feeling that from the outside everyone identified us so much with the group and the channel, and they saw us so well, that no one saw the possibility of getting closer,” says Cornejo. “And we have never done the exercise of getting closer, because we were so involved in Mediaset programming that we were very focused there,” adds Adrián Madrid.
The eight protagonists of Every man for himself! —that is the title of the program that came out of that process and whose first three episodes, which take place in Miami, premiere on Netflix on Friday, November 10 at 9:00 p.m.; Three other episodes, in Mexico City, are reserved for early 2024—they signed up for this new adventure without hardly any hesitation. Cornejo and Madrid recognize that some were afraid to face the challenge, especially María Patiño. “She had many prejudices with the subject of reality“I was afraid that it would distort her image as a presenter,” says Adrián Madrid. “She is a very perfectionist and he told me ‘I’m not going to know how to do that’,” recalls Óscar Cornejo. However, upon her return, she herself acknowledged that the experience had been cathartic and healing. In fact, it is striking how many times Patiño gets emotional throughout the first three episodes.
Before packing your bags, Every man for himself! It involved a lot of work. The trip from Spain had to be prepared to the millimeter. A production team looked for programs that collaborators could attend and personalities they could meet there. “Our surprise was that they knew them there. Maybe not the viewers, but the television professionals all knew them,” says Cornejo. From there they began to think about which collaborators attended each program and each meeting. “There we began to play what has always been Save me, to see what plots we put in them and how they deal with those situations,” continues the producer. Because although there is no script as is, behind the program there is a writing team that provokes situations. “Just because the collaborators are 100% authentic does not mean that what happens has not been prepared in part by professionals who are dedicated to entertainment. What is 100% real are their reactions,” says Cornejo.
And so we arrived at the end of July 2023, when a team of 45 people plus eight collaborators and a total of 86 pieces of luggage headed to America for an 11-day shoot. In four planes and three minibuses they traveled more than 19,170 kilometers. The team occupied four floors of hotels in Miami and Mexico and, with recording plans of 14 hours a day, they filmed in 40 different locations. In total, all the recordings from those days occupy eight terabytes. Among the team of 45 people is the director (David Valldeperas), assistant directors, cameras, sound technicians, editors who follow the collaborators in all their steps and take note of key moments to facilitate subsequent editing, production staff whose role is to go ahead of everything and prepare the next step… Among that team were also some of the makeup artists and stylists who worked with collaborators for years at Telecinco and who had left Mediaset months before after the group outsourced those services. .
The result, as explained by those responsible, is a program in which the collaborators have freed themselves from the corset of the set. “It was a coexistence in an artificial place, and here the set is the streets, life itself. It’s María Patiño losing the hotel key seven times in one day. Life creates very Martian situations for you, like a desperate Terelu as soon as the trip starts, at the airport, when she realizes that she had not put her Cola Cao envelopes in her suitcase. Since the airport cafeteria did not sell loose packets, she spent 35 euros to be able to order all the glasses of milk that corresponded to taking the Cola Cao packets. A set doesn’t give you that nor can a scriptwriter write it, no one thinks of it,” says Óscar Cornejo.
These are situations that do not appear in the realitynor does the flight, which also generated moments with the crew and other travelers that could have been material of the reality. The cameras were constantly recording because “with them you never know when the spark arises,” says Adrián Madrid. Upon returning, it was time to select the material from all the content they had, an arduous task. At that stage, they kept in mind the question of what audience they were targeting on Netflix and whether it was the same as the one that watched them on Netflix. Save me. “Is this going to be seen by a younger, more adult audience, a new fan audience? It has been one of the doubts we had. They have built their relationship with the public on another program and another channel, and when you leave, your story is still present. All of this has influenced when choosing material, because the goal of any producer and of Netflix is for this to be successful, but above all for it to be understood, to entertain, to have fun and not to get lost,” says Cornejo.
“I told Adrián that it is like an X-ray of a group of heroes who thought they were defeated and in this experience they discover that heroes never die. They were immersed in this adventure with a mixture of encouragement, discouragement, relief… And they came back absolutely renewed, it was cathartic, a turning point,” summarizes Óscar Cornejo. “It is the most genuine thing the universe has given Save me since that breath of fresh air that was its arrival on television 14 years ago. It is a song to freedom, to friendship,” he adds. “For them it was a recognition of all these years of work, and at a very delicate and uncertain time for them. It was a lifesaver,” adds Adrián Madrid. “Netflix has made it very easy for us, there has been no type of condition in any sense,” adds Madrid. “The freedom with which we have worked reminds us of the best times of Mediaset,” Cornejo adds.
Now that The TV Factory and the universe Save me has jumped beyond Mediaset, will this new adventure continue? “For us, [los colaboradores] They are inexhaustible. This will end the day they want it or that the viewers don’t want us or that no platform wants to offer them a place. It is an absolutely recognizable group and the idea of belonging to a group has been reinforced among them. That armors them and gives them incredible strength. If the answer was yes or no…, yes,” says Cornejo. “More than a job, with this program they are looking for a way out of their professional future, and I think they have found it here. And, therefore, it will have more travel,” he adds.
In this continuity plan in the future, could Jorge Javier Vázquez, presenter of Save me? Cornejo and Madrid are silent for five seconds. “We are not going to speak out,” they say.
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