“Rosalina”: Isabela Merced tells us about her experience as Juliet in a new Star+ comedy

The love story of “Romeo and Juliet” is so dramatic that it has left little space in the collective memory for its antagonistic characters. One of them, Rosalina, hardly mentioned in the work of William Shakespearehas been the starting point for Michael Weber and Scott Neustadter, the screenwriters responsible for the successful “500 days with her” and “The Fault in Our Stars”, to write a new romantic comedy for young people.

In “Rosaline,” Kaitlyn Dever plays Rosalina Capulet, a woman ahead of her time who rebels against the impositions of her gender and social class, but makes concessions when it comes to Romeo (Kyle Allen), the boyfriend she has to keep hidden because he is part of the Montagues, a family at odds with his own. When an argument leads to what she believes is a little ‘break’, Julieta (Isabela Merced), Rosalina’s cousin, enters the scene.

My past with Shakespeare

Like many of the readers of this note, Kaitlyn Dever, the protagonist of this film, had not previously been struck by Rosalina’s presence in the story, moreover, she had little memory of her in the original text, but it was precisely that which allowed him to approach the character with a very open mind.

“I’ve had so much fun in this role, but I’ve also learned to admire her for her determination, her bravery and her drive. This film for us has been like a game because the writing of the script is so brilliant that it was very easy to do it, ”explained the 25-year-old artist during the press conference for the film that was held virtually and in which she was present. “Skip Intro” of “El Comercio”.

In the meeting with international media, the Emmy nominee for “Dopesick” recalled that her past with Shakespeare, unlike what happened in this film, was somewhat intimidating.

“I took a Shakespeare course at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts and it was one of the most terrifying experiences for me because I didn’t know much about his work and everyone who was in the course did. But I learned a lot,” he stated. Although Dever’s connection turned out to be more positive than some of his co-stars.

Kyle Allen, who plays “Romeo” in “Rosaline,” comes from a dance background and has long believed that some of Shakespeare’s works were ballets. “For a long time he didn’t know that ‘Romeo and Juliet’ was a play, he thought it was ballet. But I wanted to be Mercury in a play that was made in a room in San Francisco, ”he said smiling before the attentive gaze of Spencer Stevenson, actor in charge of the role of Count Paris.

“I was flunked out of school in a Shakespeare course, so it’s funny to be here today,” he confessed, while Minnie Driver, the actress who plays the wet nurse in this comedy, topped her story with an anecdote.

“I was invited to an audition for the National Theater of Great Britain and I had to do the balcony scene for ‘Romeo and Juliet’ and when I finished the director in charge, Richard Eyre, told me it was a great demonstration of how not to do that scene. scene, that all my failures were the most common failures in playing it. It was the most embarrassing moment of my life, but now I know the balcony scene by heart,” he recounted.

Changes in a known story

But “Rosaline” is a film that takes various licenses from the original text.

As the story unfolds, the film directed by Karen Maine will present us with classic scenes (such as Romeo on the balcony and Juliet faking her death), as well as well-known characters, although very different from the original version: a a nurse (Minnie Driver) who demands that his medical studies be recognized, a gay Count Paris (Spencer Stevenson) who is very uninterested in being married to Juliet and a Romeo more in love with the idea of ​​love than with any of the Capulets.

These changes in the classic text allowed the cast of the film to face with great freedom the new comic and satirical rhythm of the story, at the same time that they were reunited with an author who, with his works, has opened various debates over time about some of the themes that, from a current context, the film seeks to expose. The main one of them? Women breaking with the schemes of their time.

The Peruvian of the cast

For the Peruvian-American Isabela Merced, assuming the role of Julieta in the film was, first, a surprise and, later, a revelation. “I didn’t really see myself as the Juliet type. I’m used to playing characters that are very stubborn, independent, typically, you know, not very Juliet characters,” the 21-year-old artist said. But the layers that she presents her character in the plot and the way she is contrasted with Rosalina, hit the right spot for what she was looking for. “I think Rosalina and Julieta do a great job of representing different faces of femininity in this film,” said the young woman with a Peruvian mother.

In addition, Merced highlighted all the possibilities that were opened by taking Shakespeare’s characters out of their usual context and even putting them in antagonistic roles. “Since neither Romeo nor Juliet is the main course, we can see them in different scenes and scenarios. You can see Romeo flirting with other women and Juliet finding herself and that’s quite interesting”, says the actress.

Finally, part of the charm of “Rosalina” and its success as a comedy lies in the insolence with which it confronts a classic. After all, what better way to prevail over time than by adapting.