Alone with Guillermo Francella for the premiere of “Hail”: “He talks about the culture of cancellation, what happens to someone who by an unfortunate phrase goes from being a hero to a demon”

Miguel Flores is a meteorologist admired by his followers. It is a reliable source of consultation and is loved by all. After years of work he managed to have his own television weather program with a mega production. But his life will change dramatically when one night fails and he doesn't notice that a big storm is coming with hail falling. That big storm will become the worst nightmare Flores could have had in his life and he will end up leaving Buenos Aires to take refuge with his daughter in his native Cordoba.

This is the proposal of Hail, the new film directed by Marcos Carnevale with a script by Nicolás Giacobone and Fernando Balmayor that arrives this Wednesday, March 30, on Netflix. Miguel Flores is played by Guillermo Francella (The Robbery of the Century, The Secret of His Eyes) who spoke with Infobae before the premiere on the platform.

Hail is not only a classic comedy, but it deals with many topics, from that routine situation of the middle class played by the taxi driver that Peto Menahem does, who does not even have enough money to change the tap in the kitchen, to the madness of rating and the minute by minute of television, and what fame and the abandonment of family relations. Also talk about how to resolve a duel and how to rise up in the face of adversity when you just want the earth to swallow you. And it is also a film that encourages the use of special effects and solves it with great credibility.

“We felt that the film touched on many themes, one of them the ephemeral aspect of fame, of egos, and that following success there may be a certain family abandonment attitude,” Francella says, referring to her character and her relationship with Carla (Romina Fernández), her daughter in fiction.

Hail puts a lot of emphasis on how from one moment to the next your life can fall apart. “He talks about the culture of cancellation, what happens to someone who, through an unfortunate phrase or a poorly made diagnosis, goes from being a hero to a demon,” says Francella, who also highlights the work that has been done since the edition of special effects.

“The production process lasted 10 months and they were in every detail of the hail, the rain, the wind, it was wonderful. It was the first time that catastrophe films were made in Argentina. But seeing everything that happens on Corrientes Avenue, in our congress, in our Obelisk, was very mobilizing and we had to live up to it”, says the actor with some pride. “It's been a source of pride for everyone to see what happened to the special effects team,” he added.

How did you feel giving life to Miguel Flores?

-As an actor, I liked to explore that dramatic arc that the character has: because it has comedy, because it is half out of reality. He even talks to a fish. He is a character who is totally gone and when he falls to the depths he connects with everything, with his roots. The film is very interesting.

After this key moment when Flores flees Buenos Aires to hide in Córdoba, the spectator feels that another story begins where the lights of splendor and fame go out.

Did you ever have a moment where fame weighed on you?

-Personally it happened to me: to go from being a normal guy like any other to starting to enjoy a very massive popularity. But I always say: I have a lot of my life being an anonymous guy and less part of my life being a very popular guy. Thank God I always had my feet on the ground and I never lost that family axis. On the other hand, Flores experienced a very traumatic event with his family, we are not going to spoil it, so as a result he decides to get into everything that has to do with meteorology, maps. He's a scholar.

But despite the love Flores enjoys, his followers cannot tolerate that he made a mistake the way he did. From being a hero and having thousands of followers on social media, he goes to the bottom of the sea in the blink of an eye.

“The advent of networks and the cruelty that exist in them, that people insult from anonymity so easily... and then what happens to Flores is so forceful that it is interesting to treat him from cover to cover because it touches on many high points of what happens to us, the moment we live and how unfriendly and hard all that is”, he reflects Guillermo who is joined in the cast by Viviana Saccone, Romina Fernández, Pompey Audivert, Norman Brisky, Eugenia Guerty, Martin Seefeld and Peto Menahem.

The character of Martin Seefeld as manager of the television channel is key in the fall of Flores...

-The media has had this cruelty since the minute by minute came. Sometimes you are in a report and suddenly you see, yourself, signs that say: “It doesn't matter what is happening”. And I read: “It doesn't matter, take it out, get it out.” And when it's fiction, minute by minute doesn't work because it's already written, it's done. How do you correct if a segment of that fiction didn't walk? You have to wait at least 10 chapters that are already recorded and it's late, the night is coming.

- In spite of all this, would you like to return to TV?

-Yeah, I like TV. What happens is that open television is so strange that there is not even on. People are with their heads somewhere else, not because they are busy with other things, but because they have so many possibilities of seeing things much more neat and neat. But I always liked TV and everyone knows it. The last thing I did was The Man of Your Life with Campanella, which was 2011 and 2012, and I haven't done TV for ten years now.

Leaving the film a little, your sons Nicolas and Johana decided to dedicate themselves to acting as well. How did you take it?

-We talked a lot with the boys when they started this because I know this profession. It's beautiful, but it also has a lot of drawbacks. You can go for years without continuity and on a mental level you are not strengthened. But, I never put an impediment and thank God they both have very happy moments. Sometimes the breaks come or the moments come when they don't have that dream continuity, but they are going through a very nice moment both of them. They are called up, I really like how they express themselves from the interpretive aspect, I like them, they are plausible in acting.

- And they usually ask you for advice?

-We are sources of consultation among all. I show them a book, I show them someone's audition, I like to listen to them. If they summon me from a program that they watch and I don't, I ask them, and so do they. At one time they liked to rehearse with me. I gave myself the pleasure of working with both of them.

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