Marina de Tavira / "Roma"

look for these moments every year. I guess where uh you can kind of see the seismic potential of I guess, you know, this time of year or this recognition and what it can mean for a career. And I think we're gonna be seeing a lot more of Marina in the future. And I'm happy to finally catch up with him.

So here's my chat with Marina di Tavera. Rainy weekend. Yeah, it's usually better than this, as you know, well, ye, but it's not that bad because you know, it could be a lot worst, could be in New York, could be in Chicago. Man of Lake, Michigan. It was like frozen completely. So I'm not. I'm not a cold weather person at all. In fact, the warmer for me, the better. Yeah, and I'm gonna bring up questions. I'm not checking text messages. I well, you never know, you never know these days.

All right, Okay, everyone, I'm here with Marina di Tavera, the Oscar nominated star of Roma. Thank you for coming on the show first and foremost. You say that, and I just don't. I mean, huh, I can't believe it yet. Tell me about that morning I was. I burst into applause spontaneously because it was like the second and they called, and I was like, oh my god, what was your morning? Like,

I mean, were you awake watching this unfold? Yes? I was awake, totally aware that the nominations were coming out. I was waking my son up for him to go to school. But and I was expecting that Roma made some nominations in some categories, but I wouldn't. I never expected to be on the list, like in a personal nomination. So when I heard it, I just I screamed. I ran to my son's room and I was yelling like I got nominated, I got nomine And he was like what what what do what the film? Do you mean

the film? And I was not, I don't know yet, but me so, yeah, I think it's the first time I've cried out of joy. That's a great way to wake up your something. Yeah, I got him out. Um, you know, I wanted to go back and just kind of get to know you a little bit. Like your passion for acting? Where did they come from? Was at an early age? I read this thing. Tell me if this is true, you were six and you snuck out onto a glass ceiling or something during rehearsals for Macbeth.

Is this true? Well, yeah, my my my dad, My dad had this um a group of the actors that used to come home for rehearsky. He wanted to be an actor. Then he couldn't. He ended up being a lawyer, and then and then his life went in another way. But he always kept doing theater at home. We had even we didn't even have a space. We called theater the theater, and he would rehearse there. So I would always like spy on them. And and this was a

Macbeth version of Yanesco, the the French dramatist. And and and I was like spying and then the glass broke and everybody noticed I was there, like he crashed onto the scene. Yeah, so what was the draw? Why were you so interested? Why why were you spying on this? Because it was theater for me was a world I wanted to belong to. I come from a family that has a tradition, so I was able to go to see some place that were not even for children and then get to go backstage and see the actresses, and

they were my relatives. So I would always think, I want to belong to that world. There's something that they have that moves me really deeply, and and I just wanted my life to be about that and that that I knew it like from like in my early years. What do you think it was? Was it there's a sense of community in theater? I don't know if it's that. I mean, like, what what? What is it that was

specifically grabbing you? Was just the kind of they the way they seem to to recreate a completely different world, like they immerged in another reality and and and watching that as a as as an audience was like, um, they really made my me like I had experienced things I didn't imagine. So I I said I want to be there. I want to be one of them. I want to be one of the ones that create this

completely different world. So make Believe as a kid like where you I don't know one of the cheesy questions that you ask actors about their childhood, right like where you playing make Believe a lot? Where you were you into that kind of just did you like putting on shows for family members and stuff where you much outward spirit? I mean, was this just all a part of who you were? I mean, that was my favorite game to

to like. It was called plays with my cousins, and we used to do like you have fifteen minutes to do a play and you have fifth and then we watch yours and then you watch ours. It wasn't even about a contest. It was just about the doing a play. And and I mean I was I didn't watch TV a lot. I didn't have permission to watch to be only one hour a day, so I would yeah, I

mean maybe at the yeah it was. It felt strict at the moment, But now I really am it ful because that like opened up imagination and you know, something that you're not allowed to be a part of just makes you want to do it all the more. I guess, yeah, absolutely. Um, you know with this film with Roma, you know you didn't know it was an Alfonso Korn movie to begin with. As I understand it, what what was the early process

of getting involved with Roma, like before knowing as director? Well, you know, for actress, auditions and castings are part of our daily life. I think it's when we suffer the most. Well, for me, it is that way. You have to like always being facing real rejection or not or you know, the nervousness of not knowing. But that's what we do. So I was called up for for an addition and they say, believe me, this is something special. We just can't tell you much, but it's worth it. So I

just went on and do it. And they they told me it was going to be going to be something between the nineties seventies and that it was about a divorce. So I said to myself, Oh, I know about that. I know about that. I think I can't portray it. So I just kept on doing it. They kept calling me back, and then at the end of the third one, I think they said that it was Alfonso who was going to direct this film. I knew he was coming back to Mexico because we had heard about that, you know,

you hear about those things. And but I was like, oh, so that's the film I've been auditioning for. So it was really crazy. Made the decision easy at that point, I imagine, I mean, we're you weren't looking at a script though right now, we're just kind of doing interaction stuff with the ALSA and stuff like this. I mean, well not with her. I mean I met her out there at the end of the process. Also by myself.

The first one was only talking about who I was, like my biography, where was I born, what what neighborhood I was raised in, and my parents story. And then they just said, now we're going to make an imp l It's about a woman that's waiting for her husband. She knows that something's been going on. And then and then I thought, at the moment, you know, the very first reaction like impulse would be like be really mad and jelling and you know. And then I said, but

that's not it. That's not the way it would be in that time, or even that's not the way it is. I mean, so I went into it. They did it the complete opposite way. I just like said, waited there, and when I had like to talk to to the

guy was just so really calmed. And and then when alf also talked to me about the character, it really made sense because she said that the woman in that moment and and and Sophia specifically will never like be um asking something for her husband, like in a violent way or in a because they couldn't because because she was like in a very vulnerable, uh moment in her life, like he was the one that was ringing the money home,

and so she had to really play it down. Uh. And hopefully you know movie has been out for a while. If you haven't seen Rome, it's on Netflix. Go see it right now. It's the best movie of the year. Um. We've talked about this before, but let's let's break it down for folks. You did not get to look at

a script. It was very much discover your reality day by day, your professional actress, surrounded by a lot of non actors, a lot of first time actors, and uh, you know, you're the pro of the bunch, and presumably your kind of instincts would be rubbed against a little bit by this process. So just tell me how the process of not having a script and learning things data. How how that affected you as a professional actor. Well,

not having the script didn't really affect me. You know, in acting school you're used to play with whatever they tell you to do. Sometimes they just give you directions like and you go ahead and play it and improvise the scenes. So that wasn't really a problem. I think it was understanding what the what I fonto want it

we should? It was like difficult for me to understand at the beginning because he would give us the lines, but then he would say, but you don't have to really say exactly the same words, and there's some small room for improvising. But that's that means with dealing with what you don't expect and what once it happens you have there You have room to do whatever it comes, but not that much. I mean you can't just play another scene. I mean, you know, invent something something weird.

So getting adjusting to that that was difficult to understand that that was what we did the first week. It was like trying to really understand what he meant like because it's not improvising, but it's not all but all. It also isn't like the way we we usually do that. We we stick to the words that we have and we rehearse. There were no rehearsals at all, and there was no previous work. We shot this in chronological order, and the only previous work I did with al phones.

So it was a very long talk about what he remembered about his mother, and he didn't say anything about what was going to happen to her in the during

the film. He just stopped at the very moment where we would do the first thing, he said everything that she had lived just before, and then we started with no rehearsals, with no like getting to know the other actors, because he truly believed and I think he was right that that would actually emerge by the way we were working, and because he think I think he thought that he had like really really concentrated in choosing the right person for each character and that they could really emboid it

and they that they had it within them. We had it? Yeah, Well, um, was it? Were you nervous knowing that you were playing his mother? Isn't you know? In this movie? Essentially? And that that kind of gives you the sense that there's an even more watchful eye on you than just a director I mean, you're playing a man's mother, so well, you know, it wasn't. I was really nervous, really really nervous.

I remember the first day I walked and the first day I worked there, my heart was being so so fast that the people on sound were really worried because they couldn't hear my words, they were only listening to my heart. So but it wasn't because of I was because I was playing his mother. It was because I was working with him, and I really he I mean, I sometimes you when you admire someone so much, you feel like, really, I want to be up to the standards.

I really don't want to fail here, you know, fail him because he trusted me, but the fact that it was his mother that really didn't because I felt I could really relate to it, and I trusted that he knew why he chose me, and I knew what he chose me because Sophia has a lot to do with my own mother and has a lot to do with my life. So it was it was about him and about really trying to understand what he wanted. Because I I understood it wasn't something like common like just common acting.

It was something else you touched on this, but I was just wondering how much like you put yourself into the role, but put your own personal I guess life or whatever under the role. I mean, was that is that something you do anyway as an actress? That because we talked about make believe you know something, a bit of escapism and that as well. But as an actress, do you enjoy putting yourself into the part that you're playing? And now I I think I can't work in another way.

I always I'm always pulling from my own experience, and of course the character's experience is not it's never yours, and and sometimes they go through things you've never gone through, but you can relate to something in your life I have. I always have to pull from my own experience. But sometimes it's sometimes you have more, more, more, more things to work with. And in this case with Sophia, I

had a lot, a lot, a lot. I mean, I I could have been one of those kids, you know my story, my it could have been one of the it could have been little Sofia. Did you ever talked to phones about that or did you keep that here? And you know I kept it. He's heard about that now that we've been traveling together. And because we never made it like a irrational analysis of the film er

of the characters. It was really about like surrendering to them in a you know, very emotional and deep and way, not not like thinking or talking or oh I remember this. It was just being a being there and feeling it. So I would I would mostly only listen to him. I would I would like never speak a lot. He would would, he would come to me. I would listen, and then he would come back again, and I would

listen and I wouldn't. I was like trying to keep silent because I think I thought that if I talked too much, I was being doing something else. It about receiving and trying to respond with acting and not with thinking or words. And it's very immersive too when you're in these like meticulously recreated locations. Uh. I assume that does something for your performance as well, right, because you you feel like you're in his house, you feel like it's real totally. And he really took care of that.

I mean, he he respected our our acting process beautifully. It was very important for him that this was a house, that it would feel like a real house. That because even and since we were working with uh first time actors. It was like if they felt that they were on a set or something that would like, yeah, put them away from from the story and from the character's life.

So it was a real, real house. Every every corner you looked at, it was filled with things, and so it really he really took care of that detail, like we could feel it was real life all the time constantly. I mean, in my my, my, my clothes were in the clothes were in the closet of Sofia's room. There's what the people from from. They would take them out from there. They were hanging there all the time. I think it deserves that award very much for a production

design because it's so meticulous. I mean, it built this big street scene as well. And you know he's talked about telling the production designer, I might go into any one of these shows, so I needed to be filled out with everything. What's kind of mean. I know that, And it happened a lot that, like they when they were done, we're like, really, are you done? Yeah, but I mean there's you didn't see that way and that

way and that way. Now there you go. He's an artist. Yeah, you've traveled all over with this film, I mean the movie first it debuted at Venice and then went to tell you right where I saw where I saw it and I met you and Jelisa there. Um, I've been curious. I've asked you this before. But just meeting different people, seeing people different people react to the movie in different

ways and sometimes very interestingly similar ways. What has just the road trip, there's a there's a celebration, Yeah somewhere, let's join me bring him in. No, but I don't know if anyone heard that, but yeah, just seeing people react to it around the world, essentially in different ways. What's that been like for you? That was at the beginning of a surprise the first time, and it was intelliright actually, because in Venice, I didn't have a time,

actually time to talk to anybody. I just saw like the the the applause, and everybody like stood up and applauded for like fifteen minutes I don't remember, but we didn't actually talk to anyone because we flew directly to Telly, right, So it was there where I could see the first time they were like screening the film and then I saw all these people coming out before the Q and A just going back really quick to the bathroom when they were crying, and then I was like, oh my god,

and they would say, oh god, mms, and I was did the film did this? And then there's where I started to see what it was happening and that people were really really relating to it, that it maybe at the beginning I thought that it may be something local or really like from Mexico, and then I realized that no, that that that that when you go really personal and compromise with that, somehow that hits everybody and it's childhood. It's childhood scars, and it's the people that raised us.

And also uh incredible like questioning our our fear of difference and you know, racial difference and social difference. And I feel like the way he's filmed the movie and what we just talked about earlier, it really helps to and still empathy with the characters that are, you know, going through things you might have no understanding or experience with. But the way that he filmed the movie, I don't know, it just it translates that empathy to you in some sense.

And I mean I've said it before. I was like full body crying during a certain scene in a hospital late in the film, which is I think the scene that gets a lot of people. But there's just a matter of factness to the filmmaking that just allows you to come into it instead of being presentational. Do you know what I mean? I totally do. It's Uh, that's something I really he I think he really accomplished that.

It's like there's no comment on anything, not even the fact that there's no score, you know, and like the camera is always like this distant eye of something really that that's happening, like in a really deep way, but there's not like that. That was important for acting. Also that he worked a lot with that, like never comment on your emotion as an actor, because sometimes as actors we we want to put in the surface what's going on in emotions because that's acting and you want the

audience to see it. And in this case with Sophia, it was going the other way all the time, the other way, like if the emotion would come to the surface, he would stop and we would start again, and he would say, no, it has to be there in a really strong way, but never never show it or never even worse, try to show it. Yeah, And the way he's filming as well, Um, what was the most it was the most fun you had making the movie? Like, what was there scene that it was more enjoyable? Well,

definitely the scene words of crushes the car. That was that. I mean he said, now you can't do it, go ahead and just enjoy it and do it. And I wanted you really and I and I never had he would tell me that that very same day. I was like, they call me, let's go. They call me on set, and I didn't know what I was gonna do. So there's a car and then he comes and said, now are gonna crush it? You. We went out with your friends, you with your friend you had, you were drinking. You're

really sad, you're really mad. You haven't heard about your husband, he hadn't sent any money, and you were just like drinking with your friends and letting it all out. And you're like driving and listening to this Mexican song about women pain, you know, and and the way they are like so heard by men, and then you at the beginning it's an accident. And then once you realize it's an accident, you just enjoy it and go and do it. And we did it like I don't know seven times,

but I remember that. For me, the most difficult part in that scene was I was afraid of running the camera because he would say, just going, going, going, and when we say stop, you stopped, and I would always stop before, you know, like an impulse and that trust me, trust me. He would say, I'm gonna tell you when just trust me, and I was okay, okay, let's okay, I will because you know, the camera was really really near. And then you have that great line to Jalizza there

as well, women are alone. Yeah, that's a sad line, but the way it's delivered is it's like, yeah, you just said he said that, like you're a little bit drunk, and there's you're enjoying your bitterness, yes, exactly, exactly. And then getting back to just people responding to it around

the world, specifically back home in Mexico. You live in Mexico, so back home in Mexico City, you know, for instance, I know that one of the guys I worked with here his husband's Mexican, and he was saying, it's such a huge deal for an indigenous woman, Jaliza to have the nomination like that is such a huge thing down there. But you tell me, what is the reaction specifically since the Oscar nomination has been like to this, Well, they

are really happy. They really feel it like something that's for everybody in Mexico, like like being really grateful that the movie has been being acknowledge in that way, in that huge way, Like they feel that this is for everybody in Mexico. And also they feel that it may be like an answer to to facing like our our both countries with much more like less fear less fear of difference, less fear of being, like it gets back to the empathy. Yeah, exactly, yeah, um yeah, I mean

it's uh, it's fantastic. This movie co led the nominations uh ten and again to see you both show up in the acting ranks was so awesome because you guys have been Have you ever worked this hard to life? I mean no, no, no, no, but you know it's been great. I know. I mean Netflix has on an outstanding work to put this film in film in the eyes of the world, and they've taken care of us,

like it's been long. We've worked a lot, but we've always been like really very well taken care of and and we feel we're doing something that we never forget and that it's for our country, but for for the world and for just like seize the moment because it's something quite something. Yeah, now you're just back from Sundance. By the way, I want to mention this. You have a movie up there. Yeah, what was that called? That's

it's called this is not Berlin. It's like it's a in the movie about the nineteen eighties in Mexico, because there was like this music and art movement going on that really was very important, like for the what came before in arts and in music, in rock and roll in Mexico. So there had to be a fun trip. But if you get an Oscar nomination or you just like smiling ear to ear as you're walking around in

the snow, O, I know it was. Yeah, it was quite something because you know, I could see that people knew when they were like coming to me in a very different way. And I'm just really, really, really grateful that the Academy um took a time to look at Sophia, because it's not a character that pops out immediately. Sometimes I think it even needs a second viewing of the film because it's she's not like in the surface, so so I'm really grateful that they did, you know, because

she's silent because she hides things. So, um, I never thought it would happen. That's the best way to experience it. I mean, like if you have no idea that it's coming, and then you get to just shake your son and sure he wakes up and come monu, God, what's next for you after? After this Sundance movie, you get some things lined up. I'm just curious what's coming up? Well, I know you had to play you were going to be Yeah, I need to go back and do that.

I've been traveling since a little, since the end of August, so we're gonna go through till the end and then I'm going back just to do that play because it's it's about I have a production company I have, I bought the rights of the play. I even translate it, so I'm going to go and do it and then I don't know. Uh, I mean, it's been incredible. I now have agents here, so if I could work here that would make me crazy. Is there anything like, you know,

something like this opened doors? I would think, is there, like, what do you want to do as an actress from here forward, Like, are there stones left unturned specifically that you really want to get involved with. I don't know just what kind of moviees you want to make here? Oh well, it's difficult to say, because I'm always open to see what comes, and I think that every project

always has something It opens the world for you. That's what I love about my my my profession that each player, each movie, it opens a completely new world and you discover it there. So I'm not like, I'm not always saying like I want to only do this kind of characters or these kind of projects or work only in this No, because every experience is new and it makes me grow and it it it pulls my range. I don't know if that you say that in English my

acting range. So I'm open, awesome, and that's the best way to be. And I want to be clear, it's not like you're like you just started acting and you've you've been working hard for a number of years and it's it's awesome to see you get this recognition and I'm very excited to see what kind of doors have open for you here. I mean, I'm always my colleague, Janelle,

We're always like she's gonna be a big star. Oh it was great, and she included me in that incredible list of actress to watch and forever will be grateful. That was the first news that was big, Like I was like what, you know what it just happened and from then till now and I'm just so grateful, so great. It's all because of us. We take the credit here. I know, I know. Uh movie is called Roma. As I said, it's on Netflix now. You should check it

out there. It's still in some theaters around the world. Check it out there. Just see it however you can, because again I think it's the best movie of the year. And Marina at the very I'm so glad that you were nominated and recognized for your work. It's fantastic performance. Thank you, and I really enjoyed this conversation as well. Thanks for coming on the show. Thank you.