After turning Spain’s tax agency into the unlikely engine of a noir-tinged comedy, “Celeste” creator Diego San José and director Elena Trapé are taking aim at something far more sacred in Spain: soccer.
The six-part second season of the Movistar Plus original brings Carmen Machi (“La Mesías”) back as Sara Santano, the tax inspector who spent Season 1 trying to prove that a globe-trotting Latin music star owed €20 million ($22.4 million) in Spain. This time round, the series rewinds to an earlier point in Sara’s career and revisits Figueroa, the Argentine soccer star whose earlier tax case marked the only professional failure of Sara’s otherwise distinguished career.
The social equation flips with him. Sara embodies one of Spain’s least-loved public figures; Figueroa is a soccer idol whose failings can be forgiven as long as he delivers on the pitch.
Imagina Sales (The Mediapro Studio Distribution) is handling international sales on Season 2 and will bring the series to Mipcom ahead of its Oct. 26 world premiere at Barcelona’s Serielizados Fest.
Season 1 won Spain’s Ondas and Feroz awards for best comedy, while Series Mania’s International Panorama awarded it best series and best actress for Machi last year. It also launched on Arte in France and Flow in Argentina.
Produced by Movistar Plus and 100 Balas, and The Mediapro Studio company, the new season is again directed by Trapé, with San José writing alongside Oriol Puig and Fernando Delgado-Hierro.
San José and Trapé spoke to Variety ahead of Mipcom about the new season.
Why make Season 2 a prequel and return to the Figueroa case?
San José: It really has nothing to do with the person she is pursuing. The decision to go back in time had to do with Sara Santano herself. The Sara we leave at the end of the first season is a woman whose wounds have healed. For a writer, that’s not the most interesting version of her. We wanted a character with wounds and cracks.
So we went back to Figueroa as an excuse to go back to Sara. The case is really a pretext. The advantage of Figueroa isn’t Figueroa. It’s that her husband is alive. That allows us to tell a completely different personal story.
If the first season is about solitude, the second is about the end of love — what happens when two people sleep separately, still care for one another, but are no longer in love.
When you were making Season 1, had you already planted the Figueroa case with a second season in mind?
San José: No. Everything to do with making a second season came after the first was already finished. So at the writing stage we had to approach it almost as an exercise in architecture, or juggling. The first challenge was to make a good season even for somebody who hasn’t seen the first one, so the story works simply as a story.
Then we set ourselves another challenge: making sure everything fits and resonates. If somebody watches both seasons and takes out a magnifying glass looking for something that doesn’t fit, they shouldn’t find it. We also wanted Season 2 to help explain things from the first that were already there.
Sara is exemplary, but she also breaks her own rules. What interests you about pushing her across those lines?
San José: Stories become interesting when characters do things they don’t normally do. Sara is an exemplary inspector, but we put her in circumstances where she breaks her own rules.
She is as obsessive and methodical as an FBI agent looking for a serial killer in Manhattan. We’ve taken the classic codes of film noir and moved them somewhere gray and everyday like the tax office. It’s about giving a tax office the adrenaline and muscle of the Pentagon. That collision between the ordinary and something as explosive as Dirty Harry is part of the DNA of the series.
Even when the characters make questionable choices, the series seems more interested in understanding than judging them. Was that important to you?
San José: Above all, we’ve tried to understand them. I don’t think any of the characters in either season is bad.
Even the alleged tax evaders have understandable interests. The ways they defend them may be wrong, but we’ve tried not to make anyone stupid.
All the characters in “Celeste,” on both sides of the investigation, are emotionally broken. I don’t think you can hate somebody who isn’t happy when they go to bed. If things aren’t going well for you, I think an embrace comes more naturally than an elbow.
Elena, how do you convey that emotional vulnerability without tipping into melodrama?
Trapé: If by sentimental you mean melodramatic, the tone and the way the characters’ feelings emerge are so subtle, delicate and restrained that it’s very difficult for that to happen. That is already very clearly established in Diego’s writing.
It’s also fundamental that Diego is with me on set every day. Any doubt, any ambiguity, any moment when you ask, “Do we push this further or are we already there?” becomes part of our creative dialogue.
“Celeste” Season 2 Javier Perez Garcia
The series has a particular affinity for losers. What draws you to them?
San José: We all have a losing side, and not everybody has a winning side. What equalizes all of us is that we all know what it is to lose. Defeat is what makes us connect.
Both seasons have a special sympathy for losers. We made a heroine out of someone who is clearly looked down on in real life. Tax inspectors are badly regarded in our society.
The fact that a 62-year-old woman who is a tax inspector can at the same time be Dirty Harry is already a bet on turning the loser into somebody who gets a spotlight in fiction that she doesn’t get in real life. The series is made to weave a nice suit for losers who don’t usually get one.
The singer Celeste is no longer central to the story. Why keep the title?
San José: We never attached much importance to the title containing the name of the most important character. “Celeste” for us has become almost more of a color than a figure from music.
People even sometimes refer to Carmen Machi as Celeste: “Have you seen that series about the inspector, ‘Celeste’?”
The first season connected with more people than even we expected, so we wanted to keep the same brand.
Elena, after the response to Season 1, what did you want to achieve with the second season?
Trapé: There’s a solidity to this season that I really like. As the characters gain more volume and nuance, and the plot develops, you enter a universe that keeps expanding. It becomes something more mature.
One challenge of the first season was establishing its very particular tone. This time we, the crew and Carmen already knew it. That gave us much more room to play.
Watching it now, I feel we’ve grown. It feels like a very solid season.
You’ve now made “Celeste” and “Yakarta” together, with Javier Cámara earning an International Emmy nomination last month for the latter. Could there be a “Yakarta 2”?
San José: My plan, as a viewer, is for Elena to make something without me, because I’d like to see it. The downside of working with Elena for three or four years is that I don’t get to watch things by Elena.
We’ve made two series together, three seasons in total, and I’m extremely happy with them. But now it’s Elena’s turn to do her own thing.
If Elena wants to make “Yakarta 2,” it will happen. That depends on Elena.
Trapé: What I hope neither of us rules out is working together again. Whether it will be “Yakarta 2” or something else, I don’t know.
San José: I think if Javier Cámara wins the International Emmy, it’s going to be difficult to sit down to dinner without somebody saying, “Why don’t you make a ‘Yakarta 2’?” So let’s make Javier responsible for that.
This interview has been edited and condensed