For 18 years William Coppola He was a professional representative and personal shadow of Diego Armando Maradona, whom he followed everywhere – from glory to hell – and with whom he lived an “unconditional love story” that now appears narrated in a “frivolous” series that pays tribute to the 90s.
Nevertheless, Coppola, the representative, which the Star+ platform premieres this March 15, does not have the Argentine star as the protagonist – in fact, he is only mentioned as Diego, “one of the most famous soccer players in the world”, and he does not even appear on screen. Although, inevitably, his figure is present.
This is a series about 'Guillote', as the 75-year-old former manager is known, a self-made playboy, full of chiaroscuros, “an antihero (for whom) things don't go perfectly and he fixes them with Argentine mischief.” Ariel Winograd, director of the Pampa Films/Gloriamundi Producciones production, explains in an interview with EFE that, above all, he seeks to entertain “and not judge.”
“You are going to find a very playful series, very fun, with many excesses, frivolous. It is a series about Coppola, but also about the 90s: with things that can attract a lot of attention, a politically incorrect series that , also in a certain way, represents what the 90s were like in Argentina,” he describes.
Shortly after arriving at Naples (1984-1985 season), where he continues to be revered as a 'God', Maradona won the World Cup with Argentina (1986) and was runner-up in 1990, the year in which his country faced the beginning of Carlos' Government. Menem (1989-1999), a president as well known for establishing parity between the dollar and the peso as for his extravagances.
Guillermo Coppola and the actor Juan Minujin, who plays him in the series Coppola, the representative.
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The 'Pelusa', the “largest” – as Coppola himself called him to EFE in an interview in Buenos Aires in 2022 – was the only one he represented, after he took around 180 local soccer players for 16 years. But, above all, he was his best friend, to the point of accompanying him halfway around the world and living countless anecdotes with him.
“It's a love story and I talked about it a lot with Guillermo and he also tells it from that place. And we always approach the scenes with that emotionality,” actor Juan Minujín, who recreates Coppola on the screen and highlights, highlights to EFE. that every anecdote portrayed in the series and of all the known ones starring him and Maradona have to do with the fact that “he is in the middle of a very loving relationship.”
Throughout six 45-minute episodes, characters from Argentine entertainment from those 90s parade, such as the actress and presenter Susana Giménez (only mentioned by name), the also performer Amalia 'Yuyito' González (Coppola's second partner and mother of his daughter) or the businessman Poli Armentano (his inseparable companion in the 'Buenos Aires night' and murdered in 1994).
Coppola's constant exposure in the media was a challenge for Minujín, explains the actor who played the young Jorge Mario Bergoglio in The two popes (2019), since “he is such an iconic character” that “we had to find what is behind that, what shortcomings, what fragility, what vulnerabilities.”
However, says the interpreter recognized by the series The marginal (2016, 2019-2022), the constant dialogue with the former representative and the physical characterization helped him in a work that sought to be “plausible”, but “not an imitation.”
In this regard, Winograd values the previous research work and the filming in “very nineties locations”, which allow the
viewer to be taken on “an immersive journey” and participate in “the 'Do you want to be Guillermo Coppola' experience”, he states among laughter
“We know the Coppola of today, but we have to see what he was like before,” says the director of Mom went on a trip (2017) or Manager (2022), who highlights the “game” of imagination that the team developed to recreate situations.
With a script by Emanuel Diez and the successful couple Gastón Duprat-Mariano Cohn (The illustrious citizen, My masterpiece, Nothing), the series -shot in Buenos Aires and Naples- took four years to make from the beginning. Now it's time to see the portrait of this controversial “recontra” figure, as defined by 'Wino', who does not spare unpleasant episodes, such as his imprisonment in 1996, but who did not want to “judge” from the mentality of 2024, but rather “invite people on a journey through time.
By Concepción M. Moreno. Efe
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