Assumpta Serna: "I was introduced to Harvey Weinstein and I knew I had to get out of there"

BarcelonaAssumpta Serna has been a star of Spanish cinema and a pioneer of international experience. She has been combining acting and teaching for years. She lives in Madrid but often visits Catalonia, with which she would have liked to have a closer and more fruitful relationship. She remembers Saura and Almodóvar, Hollywood, the filmmakers she has worked with and the decisions she has made. This spring she begins filming as an actress. The mouths of the obelisk, a film with director Pablo Moreno, and also the new series by director Manu Sanabria The collector . In addition, he publishes the books Monologues for protagonists and Take the lead.

I know that many people would like to know more about you.

— Well, I'm glad. I live in Madrid and work a lot, but with less public notoriety than before. I come to Barcelona to look after my mother. I continue acting and also teaching.

Classes changed your work a lot, didn't they?

— Yes, my husband and I have been working on this for many years. In 1999 I published the book The work of a film actor And since then, they started calling me to teach classes and I created a postgraduate course that lasted seven years. The 2008 crisis and then Covid made us change course to the very personalized training that we do now.

What does it consist of?

— We have a community called Film family We provide a lot of support to actors in managing their careers. Both at the level of acting workshops – we started one this month – and in the work on ethics within the sector. How to get involved in a world like this, not only from a technical point of view, as up to now, but also taking into account ethical codes. We have written two documents, one for actors and another for audiovisuals in general. We are working a lot with the Madrid Academy.

I know that you have a lot to do with coordinating intimacy on set. Is that related to this?

— This is certainly the most striking aspect: the abuse and coordination of intimacy. But in reality, the lack of ethics is something more structural. To do this job you must have certain values that are often lost because you have to go quickly and achieve certain objectives. And this can happen above the person. There must be protocols so that this never happens.

To achieve what?

— Improve your relationships. Avoid abuses of power in hierarchical structures. Know where you stand and learn to understand and listen to others. The great lack of society is knowing how to do what you are doing now with me: listening. I also like listening a lot! This is a great value that cinema has and we are neglecting it in order to obtain results. There are paradoxes. For example, it seemed that the arrival of digital would get rid of those huge and difficult to operate cameras, and that we could gain time for people. And no way! Now, instead of two months, filming must last three weeks!

Did you miss ethics a lot when you were starting out and during your times of greatest activity and recognition?

— Yes, on both sides. When you are young you have the need to assert yourself and you unintentionally establish that you are different from the rest. If you are successful and there is a lot of expectation around you, your personal ethics can become disoriented. One day, I was protesting very angrily and my agent said to me: "Asunta, do you remember when you were unemployed?" You have to understand that making a film is almost a privilege rather than a right. Personal ethics must be reviewed from time to time.

Has Me Too taken too long to arrive?

— Sure. But apart from people reporting the attacks, it is necessary to focus on teaching them to say no. Thinking that if you are with this or that person you will be able to get this or that job makes you commit a huge lack of ethics with yourself. No It must be very clear. And it must be taught.

You must have examples, right?

— In the late 80s in the United States, I was introduced to Harvey Weinstein in a nightclub. It was when Matador It was shown there, and it's a film with important sexual scenes. I was sitting like a pharaoh and surrounded by girls. It was a picture that gave off darkness and dirt. The intentions were very clear, progress in exchange for relationships. I saw very clearly that I had to run away from there.

Not everyone is so clear about it No.

— He No You should always, always, always be clear, and you should always see that you can choose to leave. Conditions should not be there. And if they are, you have to see clearly that something is not working and needs to be fixed. When I was 22, I was offered to participate in the film Magic dust. The director asked me to meet him at a hotel to discuss the role and I had to run away. Twisted situations are usually clear. And women see it even more clearly.

You've also encountered complicated women, haven't you?

— Yes, the director Maria Luisa Bemberg, with whom I did Me, the hottest of them all. She was a very special person who had lived in a very authoritarian environment at home and had absorbed it in the worst possible way. We had a very big power conflict. I wanted to, as much as I did not, dub my character, a Mexican girl with Spanish parents, into an Argentine. And it made no sense to do this, she just wanted to get her way, without caring about the film. Just to exercise power in the most bad faith possible.

He has always advocated thinking things through, meditating on choices, evolving from the excitement of youth to the serenity that comes with growing older.

— When I turned 40, I looked in the mirror and asked myself why I had chosen this profession. I understood that I had done it out of rebellion and I asked myself if I wanted to do more. That's when I wrote the book and started teaching.

Did you want to be an actress out of rebellion? Against what?

— It was 1978 or 1979, a time that was still very closed, with a cinema that I didn't like and a state of affairs that I didn't like either. I had to study law to calm my family's mood. On the one hand, it stopped me from starting to make films earlier; and, on the other, it also taught me interesting things.

The time of The orgy.

— Yes, exactly. We did. The orgy precisely as a call against conformism and in favor of always looking beyond. Rebellion also taught me to say no when, in Los Angeles, they showed me a list of Hollywood personalities so I could choose one. They wanted to tell the press that I was with that person and so on. benefit my career. Tom Cruise, Warren Beatty...

Soon he wanted to discover other cinematographies, other countries. Why?

— I wanted to know what the film industry was. What did they have that we didn't? Portugal, France, Italy... I did a few co-productions, I learned a lot, it was a great enrichment.

And at home?

— Going so far away has made me lose projection here, at home, in Catalonia. Circumstances and my own choices have made me miss out on many things, and I'm sorry. It's a little thorn in my side. I don't know how to fix it.

What would you highlight most about your time in Hollywood?

— The experience of the people, the culture, the way of life. Remember that when I arrived in Spain, Spanish cinema was very little known.

Long before Banderas, Penelope, Bardem...

— I went there for the first time in 1985. I was already living there in 1988.

The most notable film was Wild orchid, with Mickey Rourke?

— Of the most. But at the level of notoriety and budget it was Young and Witches, which had a budget of fifty million dollars. A film that is now a cult force for youth and rebellion.

What was the best thing about the American experience?

— Being in Los Angeles allowed me to access productions that were being filmed in Brazil, Thailand, Mexico... The favelas of Rio de Janeiro, daily life in Thailand, getting to know very different realities, very enriching experiences, very open-minded.

Carlos Saura, Pedro Almodóvar, Jordi Grau, Mario Camus, Miguel Picazo, Martínez Lázaro, Rovira Belita, Bigas Luna... The early eighties were very intense and productive. He worked with many important directors.

— A lot of intensity in projects, ideas, different ways of doing things. It is one of the great privileges of an actress, to know many personal worlds. It is what I appreciate most. Something relevant to mention is that I have never worked more than once with the same director. Only now, with Pablo Moreno.

Would you like to have known Carlos Saura better, for example?

— It would have been great. Saura and I did Sweet hours and I felt bad about not being able to work again. For eight years I represented Spain at the European Film Academy and I had no doubts about proposing him for a tribute in 2004.

And Almodóvar?

— Matador It's a very unique film in his filmography, very cult. It doesn't usually appear in retrospectives, he doesn't own the rights... It's special. I knew him before because my husband at the time, Carlos Tristancho, belonged to the group that gave him a lot of support at the beginning of his career. He was very funny, we always had a lot of respect for each other. "Thank you, Assumpta, for being so generous," he said to me one day.

I haven't looked at her for a long time, but I remember Matador as an impressive experience.

— Yes, a dense text, difficult to understand. It is a very interesting artistic exploration of love, death and sex. Very valid when viewed today.

In the field of international cinema... Sam Fuller, Mario Monicelli, Agnès Varda!

— How she knew how to listen to Agnès Varda! Unforgettable.

Who would you like to work with today?

— With Rodrigo Cortés, for example, one of the filmmakers I respect most today, one of the freest, one of those most outside of fashion. Exhaust I loved it, it's a shame it didn't have a bigger impact.

Do you like today's cinema?

— There is too much political correctness. Subsidies dictate that we make a kind of cinema that is liked, that does not bother. We are missing out on too many things. I understand that we all have to live, but we should not forget that the essential mission of art is to take us a little further.

Did The crack, with Joel Joan.

— We had a great time. I really like the work of Joel Joan and Hector Claramunt.

It will be one of the few exceptions to jobs in Catalonia in recent times, right?

— Yes, and I remember Joel telling me that it had been difficult for him to get TV3 to accept me for the project. It was one of the first times that I realised that perhaps I had been too absent and distant from home.

We cannot fail to mention Falcon Crest, TRUE?

— I would have liked to make better use of that experience. In those years, doing television was something like second division, it was not a priority for actors. Again, the matter of decisions, of the paths you decide to take even if it is against your own safety. In this profession, one must learn to live with insecurity as a travelling companion.

What are you most happy about?

— I say this quietly, but I'm talking about freedom. I've always decided what I wanted to do.