Coral Cross | Creator and screenwriter of ‘To be or not to be’
Interview
It has just premiered on Playz, the RTVE platform, this story that follows in the footsteps of a young man in full transition to which Ander Puig embroiders
Playz, RTVE’s youth platform, has just released ‘Ser o no ser’. The series, created and written by Coral Cruz (Santoña, 49 years old), screenwriter of films such as ‘Uncertain Glory’ and series such as ‘Hierro’, focuses on a young transgender man, in full transition, who is attending the Baccalaureate of Performing Arts , which Ander Puig embroiders. Structured in six episodes, the fiction avoids chronicling the physical changes and is committed to “showing the emotional side,” says Cruz.
– Did you already know the trans reality?
-I knew her because she had LGTBI friends, but two and a half years ago a friend told me that her son had just started transiting and that’s when I thought there was a powerful story to tell. I immediately thought of a series because it is where the young public is and it seemed to me that it was important to direct it to the young public, even though it has a transversal reading and may interest the adult public, especially fathers and mothers interested in knowing that reality.
– How was it documented?
–Well, the truth is that it has been the time that I have documented the most for a project. I spent months reading a lot, watching many documentaries, videos on YouTube… There are a huge number of people who explain their own experiences. Also, I have a close trans friend, Damian Díaz, who is one of the professional advisers we have had on the project. He explained to me not only his own experience, but also that of an educator; he has accompanied many young people in his transition.
–How did you find Ander Puig?
-It is a gift that has fallen to us. We saw seventy trans guys. From the beginning it was very clear to me that the series had to be starred by a trans actor or a young trans person, even if they had no experience in front of the cameras. What happens is that for me the biggest challenge of the project when putting it together as executive producers was getting an inexperienced actor, a priori, because we didn’t know of a boy who was already doing Audiovisual and who could take on this role, could take on a role with a fairly large complexity, with many registers, with moments of comedy, drama, and that I also had to be a good actor in the series. We are super happy to have found Ander. Apart from the fact that he has put his soul into this project, because there is a lot of reality in the series, he has a look that crosses the screen and is brutal. He is a diamond, no longer in the rough, because he is, but we began to polish it ourselves because with ‘To be or not to be’ he learned everything from scratch.
–And now it’s going to ‘Elite’.
–He is a very good actor and is, for me, well above the average of many of the youthful actors who are starring in silly series. No wonder they caught him.
–He will also give life to a trans boy.
–As he himself said in the magazine ‘Shangay’, it is difficult that, at the moment, he is seen as something more than a trans actor.
-True equality will come when they call you for other roles, right?
-Of course. I think it’s an opportunity that I couldn’t turn down because how can you turn down the sight of millions of people around the world? Having financial security, growing as an actor… But there is that risk of being pigeonholed. We have a very special relationship since we have done the series together. We keep in touch, we text each other almost every day and I think Ander also has an interest in audiovisuals, beyond being an actor. On the set, he looks at everything, asks what lens you’re using, and one of the most glorious moments was when they let him take one of the cameras. I think he will end up directing. For me it would be like a very cool process, because it is true that he will always have certain limits as a trans actor to interpret characters that are not trans. But I think we will not forget about him.
-A few years ago a role like this would have been played by a cisgender actor. Let’s get better, right?
–In fact, very recently it already happened with ‘La casa de papel’, which caused a great scandal because Belén Cuesta played a trans woman. I think this will be the last scandal there is. I also tell you that it is not easy to find, especially of certain ages, profiles of trans actors and especially when developing series. Because if, for example, you make a feature film, where you can look for a more natural interpretation, as is the case with ‘Las Niñas’, well, it’s easier, but a series requires a more professional work dynamic and is more complicated. There are, but there are not so many with this quality. You have to do a very conscientious casting like the one we’ve done.
Ander Puig.
–And this evolution for the better, is it due to the greater offer of platforms? To social movements?
–It is a combination of both, but I think that the trans movement in recent years has gained quite a lot of strength. And I don’t tell you for a year now with the whole issue of the debate on the trans law. It is true that there is a lot of information and a lot of misinformation at the same time. One of the objectives of the series was to approach it in a very realistic way, well documented and so that you could understand this phenomenon from a particular, dramatized case. Because I do believe that to understand the phenomena you have to first understand what the protagonists of these phenomena feel, which is what we are forgetting the most when we talk about the trans law and we don’t talk about people, we talk about laws and conflicts and debates. It is a series that absolutely naturalizes the phenomenon, without opening any debate. We simply explain a story of one of those many thousands of trans boys out there.
– ‘To be or not to be’ is also a teenage series, which recounts those fears and insecurities that all young people face, only on a larger scale, of course. Was it difficult not to fall into the drama?
-It was my main objective from the beginning and my obsession, not to fall into drama or victimhood. I think it’s a very bright series, very inspirational. I did not want to make a portrait, giving prominence to a trans boy for the first time on the screen, and for him to become a benchmark for cutting his wrists. I have also avoided a lot that it is a chronicle of the physical changes that they are making because I wanted to focus on the emotional change, because for that you already have the YouTube videos in which they record the changes every day. But yes, the intention was to do it from the point of view of a teenager who, as you say, are full of insecurities. And her point of view is tragicomic because the life of a teenager is a roller coaster and one day they want to die and the next day they are horny because the girl or boy they like has said hello.
The creator and screenwriter of ‘To be or not to be’, Coral Cruz.
What advice would you give someone who is going through something like this?
–Well, let them watch the series because I think the advice is trapped in it. Before we started shooting I told Ander that if there was anything he thought was unrealistic about the transition, he should tell me, because my intention was to be as truthful as possible. He told me that everything was fine so I stayed very calm. I think that fiction can help a trans boy or girl because they are going to see the emotional process. I also think that it will help some parents a lot to understand what is going through their son’s mind, that if he is a teenager they will not be able to reach him directly. Above all, it helps to empathize emotionally. The cinema or the audiovisual helps you to connect with some emotions and from there the world can change little by little. It’s not about lecturing, it’s not about giving speeches, but that they feel what this kid is feeling and through that connection, because they understand certain things better.
‘To be or not to be’ is available on Playz.
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