It’s called The Newsreader and it was nominated for 16 awards from the Australian Academy of Cinema and Television Arts (AACTA). This series was selected by Variety Magazine as one of the five best international series of 2021.
starring actress Anna Torv, remembered by Mindhunter, The Newsreader is a drama set in a television newsroom in the 1980s.
In a conversation with EL COLOMBIANO, Torv tells how it was quite sentimental for her to see the newscasts of the time again since she grew up in that decade in which it was almost religious to watch the news on television every night. “But I also delved into the most prominent shows to see how they did it and we had a reporter and presenter who trained me and the other actors on how to speak, for example.”
The actress also highlights the work of many of these journalists to earn respect, to make their work legitimate at that time, “putting up the microphone, asking questions no matter how uncomfortable they might be, all of that seemed quite difficult to me,” she says.
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The drama follows the unconventional relationship between a passionate newscaster, played by Torv, and an ambitious young TV reporter, played by actor Sam Reid as they cover extraordinary events of the time. like the explosion of the Challenger space shuttle, the commotion generated by Halley’s comet, the AIDS crisis or the Chernobyl nuclear accident.
Torv plays host Helen Norville, who struggles to gain credibility in an extremely competitive, male-dominated media outlet. There are times when her character, faced with so many struggles, arrives devastated on the news set and at the count of “three, two, one, on the air” she is a completely different person, serene and ready to present the news. What is it like for her to play a woman who wears a mask and reveals only the best of herself?
For the actress it is clear that all human beings have masks, since getting involved in such a particular environment was complex but very gratifying, “in the presentation and behind the lights, camera, action, it is when the contrast with the background is so noticeable. chaos outside” and that was what they wanted to show in the series.
Those scenes, from the moments before going on air and seconds later be “Live”were filmed in a single take and some quite long, almost imitating much of what was done on television in the 80s, “I think this also lends itself so that viewers have the feeling that they are not watching a piece of that time, but at the same time that they are seeing something that was happening at the time, it felt somewhat frantic and that helped too”.
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Her role is very strong, a woman who breaks down stigmas and taboos, who is magnetic and charming in front of the screen, but behind the screen she has earned a reputation for being problematic “for fighting for what she wants”. In that sense, there are quite a few discussions that show the reality of many women in the news industry, “and many people will say that she is dramatic, she is a disaster, she is this and that… But a little more is happening, they were the 80s, no one was going to help, no one was going to protect or to save and that is part of that reality”.
Finally his thick voice was also transformed for the series, Torv received training on the subject, but also in the handling of the teleprompter, which in the series is one of that time, “and I wanted to learn how to use it And so we did and it was actually quite fun, very impressive.”
The Newsreader, with six episodes in total, is seen every Monday at 8:30 pm on Universal Premiere, which is part of Universal+, NBCUniversal’s new package of premium channels in Latin America.
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