Claudia Costafreda (‘Cardo’): “We are learning as a generation to tell what happens to us”

Having achieved national and international success and recognition with “Cardo” (they won the Feroz for Best Drama Series and Variety chose it as one of the 3 best series of 2021), Claudia Costafreda and Ana Rujas continue the story of María in a second season, once again for ATRESplayer PREMIUM, presented at the San Sebastian Festival on 21 September. There is no preview date for the new episodes and we couldn’t see even an entire chapter, but they previewed the first images of this ‘Part 2’ and we participated in a panel discussion with its two creators.

On a formal level, the second season of “Cardo” intends to make a qualitative leap and, on a narrative level, continuing after the final round of the first season was a great challenge: “The key was also not wanting to say the same thing”Rujas says, “We had fun in the script again, and it was a very difficult thing, we broke our heads.”. According to Costafreda, once they decided they wanted to continue with the project, they tried “Broaden your horizons, tell more stories than Mary’s and make new faces”. To do this, the plot begins with a time jump of over three years, when María is released from prison and tries to reintegrate into a world that hasn’t stopped in her absence: “We talked about what it entails, reintegration, his relationship with the environment, the sense of guilt …”says Costafreda; “He was also addicted to institutional drugs, from those administered to him in the penitentiary center”, Rujas points out.

The creators explain that first they had to consider two options: whether their protagonist went to jail or not, and once they decided that the most interesting thing for her evolution is that she was doomed, the need for a time jump came, then a plot. and after the documentation: “We are inspired by people who have left a prison, in a specific person; And we’ve also talked to a lot of girls we’ve seen on Instagram about mental health. “

When they both visited eCartelera last November during our Golfa Session, they told us that one of the main discussions between them when creating the script was that Rujas wanted it all. “More punk!”while Costafreda was of the opinion that “Things don’t have to happen all the time.” Looking ahead to this second season, the word they used to describe it was “wild”enough to think about cutting some sequences of the first episode: “What I want to emphasize is that they trust a lot and it is a platform that allows us to do what we want with all the freedom in the world. The Jay [Ambrossi y Calvo] They are also the propellants for this to happen “, Rujas remembers, “We ourselves said ‘this scene gets thrown at us anyway’, but they wanted more.”

In the technical part, for the new episodes they had practically the whole team behind the scenes and, for example, Raúl Santos and Álex de Lucas repeat as composers of the soundtrack: “The identity of ‘Cardo’ is somehow not us”Costafreda reflects, “It is that behind there is a team that makes creative decisions and makes sure that ‘Cardo’ continues to be ‘Cardo’, one of them is music. We could not count on Álex and Raúl”. Far from being comfortable with him, Rujas considers him repeating almost everything “They challenged each other more. We all grew up with this project and this second season has been an opportunity for every person in their department to evolve.”

the voice of a generation

When the first season premiered, some critics called it “the portrait of a generation” something they understand, even if they didn’t do it with that intention: “We understand why it was said, but in this case, when people see it, it won’t be the voice of a generation, it will be something else, I don’t know what it will be, but the 30-year-old environments, the shared apartments, are no longer so present. We don’t care that much anymore. “, says Costafreda; to which Rujas adds something else: “I think it’s not just a generational series, I think more people have felt identified, just as a mother also feels identified with María”. The generation we refer to is the one known as ‘glass’, the one that never seems to stop complaining about everything: “I think it’s okay to complain if something is wrong”Costafreda says, “Our parents and grandparents have been taught to shut up everything, all the time. You have a problem and shut up. You are anxious and shut up. You are abused and shut up. It is not that we complain for no reason, it is that we are learning as a generation to tell what happens to us And this is good for moving forward. ”

Rumors of a generation or less, the truth is that both have already become reference points in a world where neither creators nor such honest stories and female protagonists abound: “The other day I was talking to a friend of Claudia, a producer who often goes to ESAC to give lessons, and she told me it’s very surprising because now many girls present us with dossiers with ‘Cardo’ as a reference and with ‘Cardo’ in the images and how they wanted to shoot their project with the images of ‘Cardo’ “Rujas says excited and proud.

And now that? That’s all? Could ‘Cardo’ continue without Maria? Although it was one of the issues put on the table, in the end the idea did not work and for now neither of them wants to talk about a possible third party: they are very tired, they have dedicated themselves to ‘Cardo’ for too long and they also want to do others Projects. We will soon see Rujas in ‘La Mesías’, that series that does NOT talk about the Flos Mariae (wink, wink) and Costafreda has directed some episodes of ‘Vestidas de azul’, the continuation of ‘Veneno’: “We have been with this for a long time, beyond the themes, we also need a mental parenthesis, because we have not stopped”. Costafreda complains.The second season of “Cardo” will return to ATRESplayer PREMIUM, But there is no confirmed release date.