From the theater to being the head of the inmates in En el barro, the new series set in the universe of El marginal
“This is a wonderful thing that's happening to me. Think about how I started with a couple of scenes, what's called a gig. And I stayed with it,” says Ana Garibaldi, one of the stars of En el barro , the new Netflix series derived from the universe of El marginal , which is available on the platform starting this Thursday the 14th. From that gig, something like a one-day participation in a television series—which she got thanks to her work in theater—to being the “flagship to enter from El marginal into the world of En el barro ,” as Sebastián Ortega , the creator of the series, described it in his interview with LA NACION , almost ten years have passed. A time that, for the actress, is literally measured in a lifetime, that of her daughter, who will soon turn nine and was born between the first and second seasons of the successful Underground series.
The journey of Garibaldi, a renowned theater performer whom producer Pablo Culell called to work on the program after seeing her work in Claudio Tolcachir's Tercer cuerpo (Third Body), could be told in its own series. In the story of Ana Garibaldi, it all begins with her theater projects with Daniel Veronese ( Los hijos se han dormido (The Children Have Fallen Asleep ); El desarrollo de la sociedad venidera (The Development of the Coming Civilization ); Los padres terribles (The Terrible Parents ), which led her to those first scenes filmed in the Caseros prison, which had been transformed into a television set. Later, images of her face would appear on the posters plastered around the city in the program's street advertisements. They could also portray her as Gladys, the ruthless wife and enforcer of Borges ( Claudio Rissi ) in the original series, now an inmate on her way to La Quebrada prison who, suddenly and unexpectedly, becomes a heroine and protector of her fellow inmates.
-One of the things that stands out in the first episodes of In the Mud is the deployment of action scenes, in which you are at the center. You're an action star.
-At 55, I became that (laughs).
-How did you prepare for all those sequences, especially the ones that take place on the lake in the first episode?
-I didn't prepare. I'm not a sporty person, but luckily I love swimming; I really enjoyed that part.
-In general, actors often say that filming aquatic sequences is horrible.
"It's horrible. I used to mess with my colleagues all the time with that. I would tease them to get them to go deeper into the water, even though it wasn't necessary. I loved doing that. It was tiring, yes. But I was more worried about the fight sequences. Acting out the emotional part wasn't that scary for me, but when we filmed physical fights, it was a different story. You have to rehearse and follow a choreography so you don't hurt the other person and so you don't get hurt. I mean, I'm not someone who's trained that way."
-And then having to have such fights and make it look good on camera must have been complicated.
Yes, but if you follow the choreography according to the effects team, which is wonderful, everything turns out well, and it's true. Sometimes they film you with cell phones so you can see how it turns out. Because with your lack of experience in that area, you don't fully realize it. And after five months or so of filming , fatigue accumulates, you lose concentration, and that whole group of experts keeps bringing you back: "Ana, remember you have a mattress behind you. Ana, don't throw yourself down now that the mattress is gone." They're very professional. I knew nothing was going to happen to me, and in fact, nothing did. That's what worried me most in the fights, because I'm 55 years old, I have a daughter. In one scene, the Locomotive (Oliveras) had to hit me, and I was calm because she was the one who had it crystal clear.
-These moments are also very important for the viewer to begin to see her as a different Gladys than the one they knew as Borges' wife and partner in El marginal .
-Of course, she handled drugs, she was used to being around shady people in complicated situations, but here she's in a different place. Here she goes to prison and has to survive. Her vulnerability is evident. The truth is, I've been with the character for more than 10 years, and it's good to see other sides of her appear; she tries not to show her abilities, to protect herself because she doesn't know who she'll meet in prison. And there are aspects of her that are no longer appropriate, like her flirtatiousness, for example. This season, I don't wear any makeup. The producers asked me if I was up for appearing on screen with a clean face, and I told them the more dark circles they showed, the better. Besides, it wasn't difficult for them to find them (laughs). It was a challenge that I liked; it seemed to make more sense than appearing again with the more armed Gladys. Besides, I could go straight home from filming, which was wonderful. They didn't have to convince me.
-This time you recorded in a studio, but for El Marginal you often used the Caseros prison as a set. What was it like working there?
It was very intense. At first, a real police officer greeted you and told you to walk down a hallway until you reached the production location. And when you arrived, you felt like you'd been saved from something. It's a dark place that also has a history linked to the dictatorship. But it's also true that at some point, it becomes a set. And now, with the sets designed by the art team led by the brilliant Julia Freid , some of that feeling, that energy, returns, although it later passes and becomes your workplace. We would lie down on our beds to rest and drink mate.
-Those beds in La Quebrada prison don't look very comfortable.
-They aren't, but at the end of the day, when you're very tired, any bed is good (laughs).
-Did you ever imagine this growth for your character in all these years?
-And no. When you go as a guest, especially on a project that's been filming for a while, you go in hoping to be welcomed, like someone going to a birthday party hoping there'll be something delicious. If you get a co-star who doesn't make you feel good, it's a bummer. In this case, the opposite happened to me from the start: I had a co-star, Claudio Rissi, who made me feel welcome, as did Nico Furtado and the technical team. I teamed up with Silvana Sosto , who plays my friend; we went everywhere together like two chickens, and now we still talk on the phone even when we're not recording. As an experience, it was fantastic, but at the time I thought, "Okay, here it is." However, in seasons four and five of El Marginal, I had more and more scenes, and Pablo (Culell) told me that something else was coming for the character. I asked him, "Are they going to kill me?" and he assured me he wasn't. But I was convinced: "Well, they'll kill me, that's it. Gladys dies, the other one, Borges, is in bad shape, a widower in jail. And Culell smiled and continued to insist that they weren't going to kill me. They were already planning on this side.
-Did you ask him anything else? Weren't you curious?
-No, I didn't ask anything. I had finished recording, and for me, a wonderful experience had come to an end. And then this appeared.
-And like in fiction, you're now the one who knows the prison universe, and the rest of the cast is just starting to get into it.
"Gladys killed people, sold drugs, knows how to grab a couple of bars of soap, stuff them in a towel, and smash heads in. The others come from places of crime, but different ones. She's a henchman."
-Like Ana on the set of In the Mud .
-No, I wasn't much of a henchman. No, the girls in the cast were annoying me in our chat room, and they called me "the boss." But having started as a gig and now being here, I put myself in the shoes of someone who comes for the day. You have to make them feel good. Because really, for me, the girls who are there in prison as extras are making an effort, they're helping with the continuity, doing a fantastic job. You have to respect and make those people feel good, because you know what it's like to be on that side, because you were there.
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