Isabel Allende: “The written page is like my blood”

Isabel Allende: “The written page is like my blood”

The series was presented to the press by Lifetime, with the writer on zoom: “I was living in exile in Venezuela, my grandfather was very sick and my way of saying goodbye was to write him a letter. But after the second or third paragraph I realized that it was not a letter like all the others and that possibly my grandfather was never going to read it. My imagination was fired and all the stories I had inside, the anecdotes of him, the family legends, my memories of the past, my lost country. All that came out like a torrent without me having to think about it much. And after a year working only at night, because I had a 12-hour day job, I had 560 pages on the kitchen counter and that was the first book, ‘The House of the Spirits’”.

Starring Daniela Ramírez, the series is based on the intimate story of the writer, who was persecuted after the military coup in Chile in 1973 for her political thinking and for being the niece of President Salvador Allende. The miniseries goes through the moments that marked Allende’s life from the end of the ’60s to the beginning of the ’90s when, at the height of his career, he received the devastating news that his 28-year-old daughter Paula, who suffered from a serious illness, was on the verge of death.

Allende recalled that moment: “I was in Spain presenting ‘The Infinite Plan’ with Antonio Banderas by my side and a glass of champagne in hand. And my husband crossed the room, and he told me that Paula was in the hospital and I was immediately certain that it was a porphyria crisis, that it was a genetic condition that she had. I left the party, from Barcelona to Madrid, on the first plane out and I got to the hospital to see Paula that night. And the success ended, the public, the champagne, everything ended in those moments and I entered another stage of life that lasted a long year until Paula died. And then after that, I wasn’t the same person anymore. I think I changed profoundly after that experience and I was never the same again. My youth ended there. Another stage began, which is not bad, but it is different”.

The miniseries “Isabel” is produced by Megamedia Chile, with executive production by Isabel Miquel, direction by Rodrigo Bazaes, and script by Jonathan Cuchacovich. In this regard, Allende indicated: “I had only asked for one thing if they did this series, and it was that they have a lot of respect for the other people who appear there. My life is exposed in several memoirs that I have written and this miniseries is based on Paula. But other people who appear in the series, like my first husband, the father of my children, like Paula’s husband, my son, and others, have their private lives and they don’t have to be exposed because of me. They came to my office, reviewed hundreds of photos, videos, interviews, movies, and copied the dresses from each era. Even handmade jewelry that are unique pieces, they copied them exactly, “said the writer.

Regarding writing, Allende concluded: “Almost everything I do, what I think, what I dream of, ends up on the page. Write. Perhaps because I trained myself to write to my mother every day, which basically was like keeping almost a diary of life because at the end of the day I would tell my mother what she was doing and what she was thinking about for the next novel. . They were all on those letters. So, that training of putting everything in writing has defined my life. Later I was a journalist and now a writer. So writing has been like blood to me, so personal and so necessary and so hard to define. Because what is writing? For me basically now it’s like telling something, telling a story, telling a life, telling something that matters to me, but I can’t tell it verbally, I can’t record it, I can’t dictate it. It has to be in writing. I have to put my hands on the computer keys and that’s where everything starts to come out. That’s the writing.”

Source: Ambito

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