This Friday, April 8, the fifth season of ‘Elite’ arrives on Netflix. From Espinof we already share our opinion about its first three episodes and now it’s time to make a stop with Carlos Montero and Jaime Vacacurrent showrunners of the series -Montero is also one of its co-creators-, with whom we had the opportunity to chat about different aspects of it:
The new characters and the course of the season
What were you looking for with the signings of Valentina Zénere, André Lamoglia and Adam Nourou, what did you want their characters to bring to the series?
Carlos Montero: With Iván (Lamoglia) we wanted to bring the world of soccer and heterosexuality. It seemed like a challenge to us to bring something like that to a world like ours, which is much more fluid and bisexual. With Valentina we wanted to talk about feminism but from another perspective. She does not consider herself a feminist, or she does what she does in a very particular way, and also confront it with the universe of Las Encinas, and see how she was changing that character.
James Cow: In the case of Adam we wanted to deal a bit with the subject of the MENAS.
Carlos Montero: Yes, since we are always talking about the most millionaires in the world, we wanted to bring a character who was the complete opposite.
The series has always had a hedonistic touch, but this season I have noticed it even more, especially in the second episode. Is it by chance a way to reflect the frustration of youth with everything associated with the pandemic and the need to vent?
James Cow: In fact, a wink is made to the pandemic and how certain freedoms have been lost in the first chapter, with the rules that Benjamin has, this kind of new fascism. The arrival of covid is reflected in those rules that he brings with small groups, safety distance and others. Then chapter 2 is a blow on the table in the direction that you have said.
Carlos Montero: In the fourth season we considered whether or not to incorporate covid, and we didn’t feel like anything. We said that in our universe it does not fit, but, in some way, it is reflected, because we have lived it, like everyone else. We have been locked up in the pandemic and we needed that burst of joy and hedonism in a series that, in itself, is very joyful and hedonistic.
In return, it has also given me the feeling that the subject of nudity is more contained, how do you decide when they are necessary and when not? Do you decide it or does the director of the episode decide it?
Carlos Montero: We decide them, but we do it in a somewhat unconscious way. There isn’t something planned like “We haven’t had a nude in a long time, let’s put it on.”
James Cow: One of the pillars of the series is to make desire and love. The story itself asks that at that moment we want to tell the maximum of desire, because the character is reaching that peak of desire and it is necessary to tell that it is the desire prior to hitting a wall. History itself asks for it. I can say that we are not free nude, it is always justified, it is part of the story and the journey of the character at that moment.
The series has been giving the feeling of being a slow process of renewal of the cast for some time. Little by little all the original actors are leaving, how have you been handling this issue?
Carlos Montero: The fourth above all was to test whether the series was still alive without characters as emblematic as those who left, and it was difficult for us, because we were afraid and sad to lose them. We wanted to show that the series could work. We bet more on the universe than on the characters, and I think that with the fourth we showed that the series was very much alive, and I think that trend is consolidated in the fifth.
James Cow: Yes, exactly.
The DNA of ‘Elite’
In the fifth season the scheme that there is a crime as a common thread is also maintained, have you ever thought about stopping using such a resource? Because someone always dies there…
Carlos Montero: In reality no one would send their children to that school, but the good thing is that we are not in reality. Of course we have considered it, because it takes a moment that is not credible. We already know that it is not realistic, but we would be concerned that it ceased to be plausible. But I think that the really difficult thing in that code would be that there was no crime.
James Cow: Yes, I think that when you as a viewer have already spent certain seasons of a series, it is already comfortable and comfortable terrain, it is like meeting with a friend. You know what you’re up against when you meet someone. When you stay with ‘Elite’, you know what you’re up against and taking away familiar terrain is pretty risky. We have tried it, we have played it, even seeing it in script… but it is no longer the series.
And we are also in the genre, in a fantastic universe, talking about the richest of the richest, about some guys who go out from Monday to Monday, where they can pay whatever they want. Since we are playing by plausible and not real rules, I think it allows us.
Carlos Montero: Let’s say that crime already gives us a genre and puts you in a very cool place. Here we suspend the reality we know and you are in that universe.
And the idea of a change of scenery, that the story takes place in another school and not in Las Encinas?
James Cow: But, ‘Elite Albacete’, for example?
Carlos Montero: We have joked about it, with taking it to another place, but we really like Las Encinas.
James Cow: And we return to the subject, it is also the DNA of the series. When we are talking about the universe maintaining itself with the entrances and exits of characters, it is because it has rules and codes. And I believe that they must be respected and maintained. Las Encinas is one of them.
Carlos, a few weeks ago there was a lot of comment an interview that you gave commenting on the reasons why there is no fat person among the protagonists of the series, is that something that also affects the background characters without real importance in the story?
Carlos Montero: I think there is, but you get me.
James Cow: Yes there is, I tell you yes