Isabel Allende was both topical and prophetic with her view of a world dominated by patriarchy and patriarchal thinking, a world that now feels familiar, according to the showrunners behind Prime Video’s adaptation of her most popular novel.
Fernanda Urrejola, one of a trio behind The House of the Spirits TV show, which world premieres at the Berlinale this week, said a recent conversation with Allende had got her thinking that “it is really important to understand how patriarchy kills everything.”
“That is what is happening right now,” said Urrejola, in response to a question over how the 1982 novel resonates today. “We’re facing all the wounds that patriarchy brought to our society and needing to look at that and reinvent ourselves in a more feminine perspective. That is why it is so interesting to watch [this show] right now.”
She added that the team behind The House of the Spirits, which includes Allende, Eva Longoria, Anora producer FilmNation and The Eternal Memory studio Fabula, is “telling the story now because we need magical realism at these times.”
Urrejola was speaking a few weeks after Donald Trump’s U.S. forces captured Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and brought him to America in a totally unexpected and bombastic move that has blown geopolitical conflict open. She addressed these political issues head on at a Berlinale that has been in the spotlight for eschewing such issues.
Allende has always said she wrote the novel, her first, partly as a broadside against patriarchal thinking. She said many years ago that being female in a patriarchal family, she was not expected to be a “liberated” person.
Francisca Alegría, who also show-ran the new TV show with Urrejola and Andrés Wood, told us the world needs more Latin American projects from female writers and perspectives. “There are crucial canon books from Latin America but I feel that in re-reading them the perspective is a bit old school,” she added. “I’m not interested in going back to older narratives. I hope we do something next that connects a bit more with these feminine aspects, to show new possibilities.”
The House of the Spirits is a family saga that charts the Trueba family through multiple generations, spanning violent social change and culminating in a crisis that hurls a tyrannical patriarch and his beloved granddaughter towards opposite sides of the fence. FilmNation holds the rights to the TV series, which has been in the ether for nearly a decade, first with Hulu and now Amazon. It is the first time movie sales company FilmNation has sold a TV series at a market.
The book is one of Latin America’s biggest bestsellers of all time and catapulted Allende to literary superstardom in the 1980s. She is an EP on the Amazon version and the showrunners told us how daunted they were when first meeting one of their literary heroes. Turned out they needn’t have been.
“She was like, ‘Girls, do whatever you have to’,” said Alegría. “She wasn’t precious about anything at all, with a very healthy distance in supporting us.”
The trio of showrunners say Allende was happy to omit characters all together and gave them carte blanche to do what they had to with the source material, which wasn’t easy to adapt into an eight-episode TV series that could easily veer off in multiple directions.
Hollywood version
The team may have been extra nervous given that the previous high-profile adaptation of The House of the Spirits was a 1993 movie in English starring Hollywood actors like Meryl Streep, Glenn Close and Jeremy Irons.
The film fared fairly poorly and was criticzed for casting mostly American actors in Latin American roles but the team behind the new TV show were less criticial, and they say Allende was pleased with it too.
“For her it was an honor to have Hollywood make her novel,” added Urrejola. “She loved the movie at the time and was really comfortable with it. That’s why I feel she was more relaxed [about our version].”
Wood said the 1993 movie may have “lacked identity” but was a “huge milestone” for the continent, which was “incredible.” Alegría notes that while the film had a great cast, “it didn’t feel like my culture at all.”
Urrejola therefore added of the new TV version: “For this one it was really important to make it more Latin American and bring that specificity to the story.”
Casting Nicole Wallace
Image: Amazon
Casting was one of the biggest challenges “in a good way,” said Alegría. The team needed to find different actors at various ages to play the same characters through the generations, which she said needed to feel “very cohesive.” “We wanted to cast from all over Latin America and Spain. We couldn’t cast one at a time and needed to be thinking of looks. We needed a baby Blanca, and a Blanca of the 50s, and 60s and 70s.”
In the end the team settled on talent including Alfonso Herrera (Sense 8), Dolores Fonzi (Blondi) and Nicole Wallace (Culpa Mía).
The latter is an intriguing bit of casting. Wallace has fronted the hugely successful YA Culpables franchise and could therefore bring a hefty YA audience to The House of the Spirits.
Alegría said “the fact we can connect with younger audiences is key for us” but stressed that Wallace was chosen to play Clara del Valle because of her talent. “She brought this ethereal energy and softness to the character that is so needed and she understood the feelings and internal journey of Clara,” added Urrejola.
Speaking at a Prime Video Showcase last week, Wallace, who was born in Spain, called the adaptation “very respectful.”
Casting was also a specific challenge for Urrejola, who not only show-runs The House of the Spirits but also plays one of the Blanca Truebas.
“It was really challenging,” she acknowledges of striking this balance. “I struggled with it at the beginning and then it was a very interesting ride.”
The House of The Spirits launches on Prime Video worldwide on April 29 and has its world premiere this week in the Berlinale TV sidebar alongside the likes of Jack Thorne’s Lord of the Flies and HBO Max Spain’s Ravalear.
