Cecilia Roth (Buenos Aires, 1956) already personally knew Moria Casán. On one occasion, while both were busy with theatrical seasons in Mar del Plata, the actress visited her home. She observed her moving around her home and concluded that in that space, away from the flashes and media attention, she was “relaxed, calm.” All of that was far from the image she has worked hard to cultivate for decades as Argentina’s great diva of entertainment, a figure synonymous with glamour and a sharp tongue that doesn’t back down even in the most intricate moments.
Roth used that intimate memory as part of a process she describes as “very internal and almost intuitive perceptions.” A challenging work that she has begun to unravel over the past few weeks, on the occasion of the Netflix premiere of Moria, the eight-episode biographical series about “La One.”
While the fiction has been among the most-watched streaming titles for more than two weeks, the actress speaks to Culto. On the phone, she declares herself “very happy. We gave it our all, really. For me, it wasn’t easy to find Moria and find her spirit, her vibe, her soul.”
The production posed a challenge she had never accepted in her more than five decades of successful career: to portray a real character. And not just real, she clarifies to this outlet, but “existent, iconic, like Moria. It was like putting on a very tight shirt, it wasn’t easy. I made the decision quickly, but then I said: what have I gotten myself into?”
Creatively led by Javier Van de Couter, the series features Sofía Gala Castiglione (Casán’s daughter with the late Mario Castiglione), Griselda Siciliani, and Cecilia Roth sharing the task of bringing the protagonist to life at different stages. In a play that gives boldness and frankness to the proposal, Moria herself – who just celebrated her 80th birthday – acts as narrator and appears playing herself. She is the one who at the beginning utters a sharp phrase: “I am the Obelisk with breasts.”
-Moria Casán is a producer and was very involved in the series. Did you maintain permanent contact with her while you were building the character? Or at least consider that possibility?
Yes, that possibility existed, but it never occurred to me. I didn’t want to put her under the obligation to have to work for me.
-Because you concluded it was a challenge you had to solve more solitarily?
Accompanied, but more solitarily, and searching for her, as you do with a character you invent, that doesn’t exist. Despite having a text, a narrative, and a story you are going to tell throughout a script, it’s a character you build with clay, based on everything that is written and based on everything the director wants from that character. Moria’s had to be directed toward a very clear place. It’s that Moria that is almost unknown. The first scene we see is her in bed, completely surrendered, crying, showing herself, and you had to get to that scene afterward. So that was the work. There are other things, but it’s hard to tell everything because it’s so internal.
-Together with Sofía Gala Castiglione and Griselda Siciliani, did you adopt any kind of teamwork system?
Not at all. We didn’t see each other work, none of the three of us, and I don’t watch myself on the monitor either, so I didn’t see myself work.
-And have you been able to watch the entire series? What do you think of the result?
Yes, of course. After the series was finished, when we already had the eight episodes, that’s when I saw myself. I think it was such a difficult job for the three of us and for everyone because it was such a united team. This shoot was very particular. Very beautiful, very difficult, with enormous concentration, we had to be in one and not leave it. We didn’t see ourselves work, and to me, that seemed great. I’m fascinated by the work of the two, both Sofi’s and Gri’s, they are very difficult jobs. The three of us were immersed in our Morias, not wanting to mix with the previous ones, respecting the other’s work a lot. And not watching it seems to me a form of respect. Moria didn’t come to the shoot either. When we filmed the party with her and all that, yes, but generally, she didn’t come. Everything would have been like making the story even more intense because we knew it was very difficult for each of us. If suddenly we crossed paths, we hugged and said: How difficult, damn it!
-You were invited to Moria’s morning show months before the series premiere. How was that experience?
At that moment, we were hugging with Moria, the relationship was different, the bond was different. Once the series was finished, it was a huge happiness for all of us because we had the feeling that something was happening. Because during the shoot, Moria’s energy was present. And once finished, I felt like Moria for a long time.
According to the structure imposed by Moria, Cecilia Roth takes over from her colleague Griselda Siciliani and puts herself in the skin of Moria Casán in the last two episodes of the Netflix series. That stretch coincides with several of her most turbulent experiences.
“These are dark moments in her life, difficult, in which she is not so outward. We had to find that Moria of whom we have no record. There is a record of everything else, but we don’t have a record of Moria in jail, of Moria talking alone with Sofía (Gala Castiglione),” she explains.
The actress from All About My Mother (1999) refers to the nine days the model spent in prison in Paraguay in December 2015. Casán faced a case linked to the alleged theft of some jewels – which a Paraguayan jeweler had supposedly lent her to attend an event in Luque in 2012 – and the court granted her preventive detention. Resigned, upon entering the women’s prison El Buen Pastor, she was greeted with cheers by the inmates, as the production recreates.
“What Moria says is that she had a very good time. In jail, she was a saint, they loved her, gave her offerings, gave her gifts. She did a lot for the girls in jail and continues to communicate with them,” points out the actress, who highlights that Casán has a “very wonderful quality: to think that what happens is convenient; that is, if this happens to you, it is to learn.”
Roth also has her convictions as an artist: she firmly believes that there are certain characters that leave a lesson. In Moria Casán’s case, she admires her ability “to love herself, to prioritize herself.” “I find it hard to prioritize myself,” she admits. But that began to change after making this series, she warns. In fact, she illustrates that point through a metaphor related to the world of aeronautics.
“When you get on a plane, there is a moment when they tell you: if there are pressure problems, the mask will drop, put it on yourself first and then put it on your child or whoever is next to you. It’s that clear. If you don’t love yourself, you don’t know what love is. Because loving yourself is admitting many things about yourself: what works, what doesn’t; what’s toxic, what’s not; what makes you well, what doesn’t; what nourishes you, what doesn’t.”
The lessons she took from Moria also come from an unexpected experience that caused concern among the fiction team and her family and close ones. Exhausted after a long day of filming, she chose to go to bed without eating. Later, when she woke up around 3 or 4 in the morning, she did so with “a voracious hunger,” she recalls. She managed to heat some food, but while waiting for the dish to be ready, she leaned and fell asleep at the same table where the microwave she was using was, and her head hit a metal ornament.
The result? “I have nine stitches on my nose between my eyebrows, but they are not visible at all because they did it very well, they took great care of me,” she indicates.
-Were you worried at the moment?
I am very cold in those situations, extremely cold. I woke up immediately with the blow, saw blood on my hands, didn’t know where it was coming from, went to a mirror and saw everything, washed, put disinfectant, pressed the wound hard so no more blood would come out, sat down to wait a little later to call production, fell asleep at 90 degrees and called them. They were wonderful, in 15 minutes they were at home with a doctor. It was bad, but I was lucky: I could have lost an eye. These things are also lessons. You don’t have to suffer an accident to learn something, please, no, but when it unfortunately happens…
-Following the success of Moria, there has been speculation about the possibility of a second season. Is that an option you would consider viable?
I have no idea. No one has told me anything.
-But if one starts to imagine that possibility, the most logical thing would be that you would return as the lead of the cast.
I love the movie you’re making. But no, the truth is I have no idea about anything.
-If in the future someone proposed making a biographical series about your life, would you be interested?
No, not at all! Not at all. Because I don’t have that exposure, I never had it. My private life is my private life and I have no exposure. I mean, one thing is my work, these interviews we do, in which of course who I am appears, but I wouldn’t do it, not even crazy.
-Do you think maybe there are other characters more suitable for this type of project?
I don’t know, I have no idea, but regarding me, I would never do it. Neither for me nor for my people. No, I wouldn’t do it. And if there are other more suitable characters… Producers in that sense have it clearer.
The actress from Martín (Hache) (1997) recounts an exchange she had recently with Moria Casán. “Thank you for inhabiting me,” the host of La mañana con Moria told her. “I said: thank you for inhabiting me. Because I really felt her inhabiting me.”
That translates into her life incorporating a key concept from the Argentine businesswoman as well. “Moria talks a lot about the quantum. She says: this is a quantum series. And there is something quantum in all this, both in Moria and in the three of us (actresses who play her). There is a feeling that time is oneself. One decides how to use that time one has, what the attitude toward time is,” she maintains.
Roth develops a theory: Casán is actually 18 years old, not 80, although she immediately corrects herself: “No, she is much wiser! For me, Moria is 40 years old and has an incredible ability to absorb everything that appears before her eyes and delay what she doesn’t want. That is very wonderful, very wonderful.”
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