“Behind every historical moment, there’s always someone making beds.” Thus sold Paco León and his wife, Anna R. Costa, the series Burns Madrid to Movistar +. This is a project that comes from behind. “We have been around for almost five years,” explained the actor and director in the presentation to the press of a project that will finally begin to become a reality when filming starts next January 15 and whose premiere on the television platform Telefónica It is scheduled for the end of 2018.
Its eight 30-minute chapters will be set in the Madrid of 1961 and will have in the figure of Ava Gardner its thread and a high secondary luxury. Because even though this story is going to pass General Perón, Charlton Heston, Aline Griffith or Gardner himself, in fact the protagonism will be in the domestic service of who was described as “the most beautiful animal in the world.” Inma Cuesta, Anna Castillo, Julián Villagrán and Paco León will give life to those servants who star in this realistic comedy for which their authors have been thoroughly documented with the intention of recreating that Francoist Spain that so contrasted with the extreme freedom of Someone like Ava Gardner.
“We wanted to do high comedy, but not only in terms of glamour, a real glamour, not corseted, but also high comedy in thematic ambition,” says León on which will be his first series as creator. “That comedy is not only to make laughter, but to serve to tell things of many orders: dictatorship, sexual illiteracy, different ways of seeing life, feminism …”, he adds.
In addition, Arden Madrid will be the first series of a payment platform in Spain shot in black and white. “pay-TV has blurred the boundaries between television and cinema, in formats, duration, thematic …” “But there was a limit that nobody had dared to cross yet,” explains the actor, who at Arden Madrid will also serve as director, scriptwriter and producer.
As Paco Léon says, the intent of his series is not to be a biopic of Ava Gardner, although his presence in Madrid, where he resided for almost 15 years (and where, in fact, became the neighbor of the top of General Perón, exiled in Madrid), is the thread lead of the plot. It will even recreate some real fact like the baptism of Antonio Flores, to which Gardner was invited, or the death of Ernest Hemingway. There will be many rumors and urban legends about the sprees that lived in Spain Gardner. It has not yet been announced who will give life to the actress, but will be an American interpreter to keep as much as possible the realism of this comedy, according to their creators.
