In 'Land of Women', Eva Longoria leads a trio that flees in Spain

There is no better place to find yourself than the wine region of Spain. And there is no better place to film a television series. Ask Eva Longoria.

After more than a decade, the actress returns to the small screen in her first leading role with “Land of Women,” which premieres Wednesday on Apple TV+.

Longoria, who also serves as an executive producer on the show, had been considering a return to acting for quite some time. She had spent a lot of time in Spain and she found herself daydreaming about a project that would give her the opportunity to film there. When she called her friend Ramón Campos, co-creator of global hits like “Velvet,” “Las Chicas del Cable” and “Gran Hotel,” she had a comparable title in mind: “Under the Tuscan Sun.” ” – perhaps in Spain's own wine region.

Campos returned a few weeks later with Sandra Barneda's best-selling Spanish novel, “The Land of Women.” With the novel as the seed of the concept, Campos and co-creators Gema R. Neira and Paula Fernández developed the idea of ​​three generations of women who arrive in a small town where they are not as welcome as they had anticipated. .

When New York socialite Gala (Longoria) discovers that her husband is on the run from some unsavory characters to whom she owes millions of dollars, she knows there is only one place to hide: the Spanish town her mother left decades ago at a similar time. . of despair. In a panic attack, Gala takes her daughter Kate (newcomer Victoria Bazúa) from school and her mother, Julia (Carmen Maura), from her retirement home.

The three arrive in Catalonia, where a winery run by a woman will be the backdrop to their attempts to find a new lease on life, if only long-buried family secrets, ruinous small-town gossip, and two men armed looking for them. interfere first.

In “Land of Women,” Longoria coyly plays a twist on the role that made her famous, with a nod to Maura's best-known film: Gala is a desperate housewife on the verge of a nervous breakdown. Arriving in the town of La Muga in impractical heels and a broken-down car, she soon discovers that this will not be a comforting return home. It's a challenge that was not helped in any way by Gala's need to brush up on the language after so many years abroad, a challenge that the Mexican-American actress had to face herself.

“It was very fun and very difficult,” Longoria remembers. “Because the moment in a different language in comedy is very different. I was like, 'Oh my God.' Is this funny? I am funny?'”

“It was terrifying, especially acting opposite Carmen Maura,” Longoria adds, calling her the “Meryl Streep of Spain.” “She is simply the most respected actress. I'm a big fan and admirer of yours. “She is my favorite thing on the show.”

Eva Longoria calls Carmen Maura the “Meryl Streep of Spain,” whose work with Pedro Almodóvar made her a star in the country. “She's my favorite thing on the show,” the actor says of Maura.

(Apple)

Maura can't bring herself to be so effusive about her own work on the show. The Goya Award-winning actor, best known for being Pedro Almodóvar's first muse and the star of films such as “Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown” and “Volver,” has been on screen for almost half a century.

Although she is constantly looking for new challenges, Maura still finds it a bit boring to work on television series: “I'm lazy”,…as she says, speaking to The Times by phone from Spain. For her, episodic television, where you have to follow a character through this type of long-form narrative, can be quite a grueling process.

But what attracted her to “Land of Women” is not so different from what first attracted Longoria to the project: a great character and, perhaps more pragmatically, a great filming location. Maura has long felt at home in the countryside. “And this region of Catalonia is divine,” she says. “It has some really special sunsets. And those strong winds give it a kind of wildness that I love.”

Joining Maura and Longoria is newcomer Bazúa as Gala's trans daughter Kate, a moody teenager who has to leave her girlfriend and her art school behind due to her parents' unfortunate decisions. The Mexican model-turned-actress, who impressed both co-stars with her poise and talent, arrived on set not knowing who she had been cast with in her first acting job, although it turned out to be an advantage.

Victoria Bazúa, left, with Eva Longoria and Carmen Maura. The model-turned-actress says she didn't know her co-stars before landing the role.

(Apple)

“That's very Gen Z of me,” he admits. “But we are different generations. I didn't really know who they were. I didn't know who Eva was when I got the role. But that really helped us get along better.”

For Maura, for her part, the process of filming a series of this caliber was overwhelming. “Times have changed a lot,” says Maura. Although he is reluctant to talk about “Land of Women” before its premiere, he remembers the experience with a mixture of fondness and apprehension.

“I remember arriving on set and thinking that it would just be the director and the actors and that we could all rehearse together,” he says. “But then they all arrived surrounded by people, their own teams. And I went up to the director and said, 'Hey, so when everyone leaves, can we talk more about the character?' And he said, 'Carmen, they're not going anywhere.'”

“And then knowing that they would film it to broadcast it everywhere” – “up to the fifth pussy,” as she colorfully puts it, added a layer of worry. “But, you know, I have a sense of humor. It almost made me want to write it all down. Everything was very fun. Although I miss how we filmed things back then.”

He found the greatest joy in scenes that asked him to dive deeply into the kind of simple, risky cinema he enjoys. She remembers feeling most comfortable during a sequence in which she had to swim (fully clothed) into a body of water next to the road. The scene finds Julia, who is battling dementia, lost in wild, youthful memories of her bathing naked in those same waters with beautiful boys she wasn't supposed to be frolicking with.

For Maura, it was another moment in which her character, a fearless outcast in her hometown then and now, lived out a melancholic vision of a vibrant, uninhibited past. And she was the only one who enjoyed it while she was shooting. Surrounded by crew members in full scuba gear and her co-stars, they couldn't believe she felt comfortable in those frigid waters.

But this is what Maura does best: bringing a degree of boldness and authenticity to her work. “What has worried me my whole life is that whatever it was, it had to be true,” she insists. “Whatever path I take, I will have to find the truth in it. Because if I play something and it sounds fake, it really bothers me. For that you have to work hard.”

“Whatever path I took, I would have to find the truth in it,” says Carmen Maura, left, with Victoria Bazúa in a scene from “Tierra de mujeres.”

(Apple)

In your hands, Julia is as lively as she is playful. Often with a childish smile that drives Gala crazy, Julia discovers that she urgently needs to be taken care of as she loses her grip on reality. As a performance showcase, it's another reminder of the wry honesty Maura evokes through her performances. And, in turn, how well she and Longoria match.

After watching both actors work, Campos knew he had struck gold.

“They are very different,” he says. “But they both know each other quite well. I think of them as Ferraris. Or like Messi, the footballer. If you're in a scene with Carmen and Eva, you might start with some comedy, then watch them move into drama, it could all get quite moving, and then you'd be taken back to comedy, in the same sequence. . “Having two actresses from different generations who can do that was wonderful.”

It's what made Bazúa's casting even more pivotal. She would have to match Longoria and Maura, but bring a younger sensibility to the series as Kate.

“Land of Women,” Campos knew, had to serve the entire family. Viewers would see his melodrama with Julia and her thorny relationship with the town of La Muga. They would get his romantic comedy with Gala and the sizzling chemistry he soon develops with the only boy at the winery (played by the handsome Santiago Cabrera). And with Kate, the series would offer a coming-of-age story that would come to refract both her mother's and her grandmother's.

From the beginning, Campos knew that the role required a trans performer. Furthermore, he wanted a teenager who had already transitioned and who could pass if he found himself in the middle of a rural town in Catalonia. Fortunately, for the “Tierra de mujeres” team, Bazúa fit in perfectly. “It was the perfect, perfect role,” she recalls. “This was a trans girl. And she is Mexican American. She is a teenager with dark humor. She is sarcastic. I thought, 'That's literally me.' I need this job.'”

Victoria Bazúa is transgender, like her character Kate. “She was the perfect, perfect role,” she says.

(Apple)

Just don't think that Bazúa is simply playing herself on screen. “I mean, first of all, she's a lesbian. I’m not,” she says.

And unlike her character, who is shy and reserved, Bazúa says she doesn't really get nervous and is confident when speaking.

“She goes through this space where she learns to stand up for herself,” he says. “I don't feel bad if someone says something about me. Kate is going through that process of learning to be strong, something she learns from Gala.”

For Bazúa, learning to be strong came at a younger age compared to her character, and she said she was regularly bullied at school by both teachers and students. “Something I realized is that although people are not always going to talk about you, it's up to you to know that it doesn't matter what people say about you but what you think and knowing who you are as a person. .”

It is a bold message that runs through “Land of Women.” Liberated from the comfort of their lives in the United States, these three women are forced to stand up for themselves and find, over time, who they truly want to be.

“The pilot establishes that we're hiding,” Longoria says. “We are running out and we have to hide. And the irony is that they find us, but in a different way than you think. We meet. We find our voices. “We found our superpowers.”

That powerful message is smuggled into a sun-dappled romantic comedy and melodrama that aims to be a balm in the midst of our current television landscape.

“I watch TV right now and it's all dystopian futures and the world is going to end and governments are going to collapse and robots are going to take over,” Longoria says. “It stresses me out and makes me anxious. I want to see something to escape. I want to see romance. I want to see beautiful backgrounds. And that's what we're doing”.

“And then, you get wine porn.”