‘7 lives’ made it known to the general public. Suddenly, Carmen Machi (Madrid, 58 years old), an actress who had tanned on stage boards, became one of the most popular faces on television. So much so that five years later she starred in the ‘spin-off’, ‘Aída’. She was 41 years old. After six seasons and almost five years at the helm, Machi broke away from fiction to tackle other projects, and her move worked out more than well. She is now presenting ‘Amor de madre’, a comedy directed by Paco Caballero that is also a tribute to all mothers. The story begins when José Luis (Quim Gutiérrez) is left standing at the altar. Concerned about her emotional situation, her mother Mari Carmen (Machi) advises her to take advantage of the honeymoon in Mauritius with her.
-Let him know that one of the last times I was scared seeing something on the screen was when you appeared knitting in ’30 coins’.
-(Laughs). That lady! Thank you very much.
-What you like more? Make the viewer laugh, cry or scare?
-I don’t hate anything. It’s really about having good material in hand and then we sign. Actually, it doesn’t matter if it’s comedy or drama, our work is exactly the same. Yes, something that I have not done much is horror and I would love it, because horror movies seem exciting to me because many things happen beyond what you interpret and it is cool; but I absolutely do not care.
-Here he goes back to comedy mode. What does a story like this have to have to attract you?
-There has to be something interesting to tell, with a good script and some good wicks, if it is then articulated with humor then great, but it doesn’t necessarily have to be that way. In this case, I entered the project before the script was written and it was a film that sought to honor mothers. From there, a script was developed with the idea of reaching the whole world and that it be a tone of truth. I don’t find it funny to make people laugh for laughs.
-It must have been a very fun shoot, right?
-Not because you do comedy a shoot has to be fun, that’s very misleading. It was a wonderful shoot, although it was also very eventful because it was interrupted several times due to the pandemic and in the end it took us almost a year and a bit to shoot it. But the film was wonderful because of the team that was there, because of my work with Quim Gutiérrez. I adore and admire him deeply. All that is what makes you have a good time. Just because it’s a comedy doesn’t mean it can’t be torture. In fact, with so many breaks, we went through many places, but in the end it is a film that we are very proud of.
-There is a lot of chemistry between mother and son, but they had never worked together, right?
-No, and Quim and I are a bit surprised because it is a comment that all your colleagues are making and it makes us quite proud because that means that it is full of truth. I’m not surprised. All the interruptions that there have been to make the film have brought us together a lot. But the thing is that I think Quim is also a hell of an actor, with that way of doing comedy seriously, which is exactly what I like. So we both found ourselves on the same common ground, being very clear about what we didn’t want to do and that’s what makes it work.
-When one gives life to a mother as true as the one in the film, isn’t it inevitable to end up thinking a little about your own mother?
-Well, my mother doesn’t have much to do with the role of Mari Carmen, first because she was the mother of a large family, and also because she took care of her own mother and didn’t have as much time to dedicate to protecting all your children. It is true that I have not been a mother, but I have been a daughter and I remember more how I have behaved as a daughter, than how my mother has behaved with me. In other words, you are not aware of what that woman carries behind her back, children are always a little selfish.
Yes, it is something that repeats itself. Why?
-I guess because they play a role of taking care of you to infinity and that makes us relax a lot and not think about them. In any case, both my brothers and I have always wanted my mother to have a lot of fun. My parents have had a happy marriage and, although they are grown up now, it is true that we have been there for them to enjoy and especially my mother because she has been a great caretaker, not only of her children but also of the mother her. Caretakers must be cared for.
-Has there been a lot of room for improvisation or was everything strictly marked by the script?
-Everything is marked. Improvisation is not as good as it may seem. There may be an accident in a sequence and someone decides to stage that accident and here I think it could have happened at some point, but everything was very close, every word and every comma. If it’s not very difficult to work, because you don’t know when the other ends and it’s a pain in the ass, you have to be very clear about when it’s your turn to speak.
Quim Gutierrez and Carmen Machi.
-Don’t stop. On June 10, ‘La volunteer’ premieres, on 24, ‘Llenos de grace’. The career of an actress or an actor is very unstable, but it does not seem so in her case.
-Not seeing work in sight must be quite dizzying. I personally don’t remember and I don’t know what to tell you. I am very lucky and I have worked on projects that I have liked a lot and I have been able to choose… If one day they stop appearing, then absolutely nothing happens. What is very sad for the actor or for any artist is that you try to get everything you have inside out and if you don’t get it out you get sick. That’s the problem, beyond working or not, you need to explode and if you don’t explode, my god. But thanks to platforms like Netflix, there is more work for colleagues, although there is a lot of unemployment in our sector.
-It seems that the idea that women over 40 years of age cannot find papers is also beginning to change, right?
-It is that I have never noticed that and every time they ask me that question I feel a little strange because I recognize that the most interesting characters that have been offered to me have been from the age of forty and I have never had that feeling . Obviously, women have changed and the perception of women too. The interior of a mature woman is very interesting and I have been making interesting characters for a long time. Now, I am convinced that the actress who says it like that, is saying it knowingly, but I think it is a question that must be stopped. The good thing about the actor is that we didn’t retire and now I play the mother, soon I’ll play the grandmother and then the great-grandmother, and nothing happens.
-What do you have left to achieve?
-Buff, loads of stuff! I don’t know if I can achieve it, because I don’t measure it that way, but I still have many things to do and enjoy. There are many projects that are yet to come that are very exciting with people who know a lot more than me and that’s the good thing because when that happens to you, you see that you have a whole road ahead of you.
-She is a woman dedicated to the theater. How has it been for her to face an audience with a mask these two years? Has she been able to already enjoy the faces in the theaters?
-No, because the last thing was in December, at a function in Barcelona, where we stayed for a month and there was still a mask. We had gotten used to it and it had its good side because there were no coughs, it’s incredible, no one coughed. I think I’m going to continue proposing that people wear masks to the theater (laughs).
-What is interpreting for you? Does it have to be made of a special paste?
-Interpreting is something that is done and it is very difficult to define. Being an actor is a strange way of living, in which you spend your life dressed as someone else, with someone else’s emotions, feeling like someone else, always with the measure of control at 50%, more or less, to be able to solve any accident because if you get in at all, then you still can’t solve it. So this adventure of always playing that you are someone else is something very uplifting but at the same time it has a risk. There are those who say that you sacrifice things, I have never had that feeling, but you do realize that sometimes you spend a lot of time on it and you have to compensate and dose it, it generates a lot of adrenaline. Not everyone can be an actor or dedicate themselves to this and it is not that you have to be special, simply the agreement that you have to reach with yourself to be an actor I do not think it is an agreement that anyone can reach. You have to be very clear about all that commitment that is very, very deep.
‘Mother’s Love’ will be available on Netflix on April 29.
#interesting #roles #offered #age