Career heist
As production continues on upcoming Spanish-language drama Uzal, star Itziar Ituño discusses her latest project and reflects on the impact La Casa de Papel (Money Heist) has had both on her career and the wider Spanish television industry.
When she first appeared in La Casa de Papel (Money Heist), actor Itziar Ituño had already been on screen in Spain for more than 15 years. Yet it was her role in the explosive heist drama that put her on the international stage.
She plays Raquel Murillo, an inspector in the National Police Corps who is put in charge of negotiations when robbers target the Royal Mint of Spain. Yet after she falls in love with heist mastermind The Professor, she joins the criminal gang and adopts the code name Lisbon.
The “low-budget” show debuted in 2017 on Antena 3, yet it became a global phenomenon when it was picked up by Netflix and subsequently ran for five ‘parts’ until 2021. Ituño then appeared in last year’s prequel series, Berlin.
She also reunited with Netflix in 2022 for Intimacy, in which she plays Malena, a politician who finds herself in the eye of a storm of controversy after a sex tape is leaked to the press. The series then follows the lives of four women who are forced to tread a fine line between their public and private lives.
Earlier this year, Ituño appeared in Detective Touré, a police comedy based on the books of the same name by Jon Arretxe that focuses on the title character, an immigrant from Guinea who settles in Bilbao and solves a series of crimes in extremely creative ways.
She is now filming Uzal, a series about ambition, betrayal and hope that is created and directed by Marcos Moreno, produced by Motor Films and Tharsis Films, and distributed internationally by MGE. The actor plays Naja, who has been conditioned by the obsession of her father, Irvin, who has sought to become rich overnight by searching for treasure and starting other improbable businesses.
This time, her father’s delusions will take her to a remote coastal town in the South Pacific, where he has become entangled with a group of artisanal fishermen who, driven by desperation and unemployment, embark on a daring search for a legendary treasure: the gold of the Spanish galleon Uzal, sunk centuries ago in MorroMujer Bay.
The inexperienced adventurers face two great adversaries, an unscrupulous trafficker and Andoni Ugarte’s powerful industrial fishing companies, and will have to overcome unimaginable obstacles, all for a future as uncertain as the gold they seek, in an adventure that promises to transform their lives forever.
As filming on Uzal moves from Chile to Spain, DQ spoke to Ituño during the Iberseries & Platino Industria event in Madrid to find out more about the series and the effect La Casa de Papel has had not only on her but on the wider Spanish television industry.
International viewers know you best from La Casa de Papel. How has the show changed your career?
Itziar Ituño: Basically, nothing has changed after the success of La Casa de Papel. I keep picking and selecting stories based on my intuition and on my feeling about how good, how different and how captivating the story can be by getting into that person’s skin. So in those terms, nothing has changed. But everything else has changed.
What kinds of characters are you interested in playing?
This series, Uzal, is one example of how I have been picking characters, so I’m not always playing the same profile as the cop or the lawyer. In this series, I’m a trafficker, on the bad side. She has a bad relationship with her dad and she’s not only seeking treasure – she’s seeking revenge. This is a totally different character. That’s why I was captivated by the script once I read it.
I have been very pleased and excited to be filming in Chile. I felt like being in any high-end production in any other part of the world. I have been with an amazing crew. I felt very welcomed in Chile [where 70% of the series has been produced]. The Galleon was found in Chile but it was a Spanish galleon.
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You undergo quite a physical transformation to play Naja, who has numerous tattoos. How do you get into character?
She’s absolutely different from the characters I’ve done so far. She’s a very free woman with a very big wound [from her relationship] with her father, who denies her own original name, which isn’t Naja. It’s Lorenza, but she doesn’t like it because that’s the name her father gave her. She gets a cobra tattoo and Naja is the scientific name for the cobra, and the name she gave herself. She’s elegant but she can attack you at any time and inject her venom like a cobra.
She’s affected deep down by the trauma with her father because she had a really bad relationship with him because he was always looking for easy money with illegal deals and businesses. She’s profoundly hurt, but that’s why she’s so fearless and free at the same time, and that’s why she identifies with the cobra. That’s her spiritual animal she can identify with. If she was a pirate, she would have the cobra flag on the ship.
You’ve previously worked closely with singular creators, such as Alex Piña. What has it been like working with Marcos Moreno on Uzal?
We have a lot of rehearsals and we have spoken a lot. He has a very good sense of black humour, because this is a tragic comedy. We share the same humour. Since I have not been involved in so many tragicomedies or comedies, this has been a challenge and he has been my guide through the process to adopt this character. I have had a very close relationship not only with Marcos as the creator and director but also with Juan Diego Garreton, one of the producers, and that close relationship with him has been crucial in creating my character and being able to develop this drama and an unusual character for me.
How do you reflect on playing Raquel and the success of La Casa de Papel?
Raquel is the character that opened the international doors for me and I’m going to be grateful for that my entire life. It’s true Raquel Murillo and Lisbon are the same person in different scenarios and at different levels of their lives. The character actually travels from one point to a totally different opposite point, so for me it was a tremendous challenge for me as an actress. The biggest gift playing Raquel Murillo has given to me is the fact that, from that moment, I have been able to pick and select stories. Maybe I wasn’t able to do that before Raquel Murillo and now I’m able to do that, and I’m grateful and happy because of that. It’s a luxury to be able to pick characters and stories I really like to play.
Do you have ambitions behind the camera, either as a writer, producer or director to create stories and roles you haven’t seen on screen?
Yes. I would like to write a story. To be able to direct actors is something I would also like to do for sure. And if I am able to write something really good, I would be more than happy. I don’t have the time to write now, but I would like to write and direct, hopefully soon. We need more women directing, writing good stories and making decisions in the industry.
How has the Spanish industry responded to the success of La Casa de Papel, in terms of storytelling on screen or budgets and ambitions off-screen?
La Casa de Papel started on television with a pretty low budget, with ratings that weren’t that high, actually. The difference was it was picked up by one of the major streaming companies without ads, and it was exposed internationally. Of course, it was a great series with great production standards, but that’s what made the difference – the fact it was picked up by one streaming company. La Casa de Papel being streamed was one of the examples that has demonstrated that if you have a good story, no matter where in the world you are producing, you are going to be able to have success in every part of the world.
The success of La Casa de Papel has also opened up the opportunity for coproductions, like this one between Chile and Spain for Uzal. That’s something that was not that common in the past and now it’s happening. That kind of success was one reason why we are so open right now to doing coproductions with other countries.
tagged in: Antena 3, Detective Touré, Iberseries & Platino Industria, Intimacy, Itziar Ituño, La Casa de Papel, MGE, Money Heist, Motor Films, Netflix, Tharsis Films, Uzal