Next Friday, July 29, comes “Isabel: The Intimate Story of Writer Isabel Allende” by Lifetime. Starring Daniela Ramírez in the skin of the writer. The mini-series tells a story about forgiveness and overcoming, pain and success, which narrates the life of the most widely read Spanish-speaking author in the world, and which is based on the memoir ‘Paula’ (1994), which the author wrote after the death of her daughter.
Based on the intimate story of Isabel, the woman, mother, wife and human rights activist, who was persecuted after the military coup in Chile in 1973 for her political thinking and for being the niece of the ousted President Salvador Allende.La story will tell us how the writer must leave the country, her husband and their two young children to go into exile in Venezuela. Thus living the pain of exile, the remoteness of his family and unemployment. His refuge from so much pain was writing, giving life to a novel that would take a turn forever in his career: “The House of the Spirits”. Book that made her a renowned author and a feminist voice, with her own name and tone. While several of Isabel Allende’s novels have been brought to the screen, this time it was different because it is her own life that was turned into a miniseries. Allende said: “I had asked for only one thing if they did this series, and that was that they have a lot of respect for the other people who appear there. My life is exposed in several memoirs I’ve written and this miniseries is based on ‘Paula,’ a memoir I wrote after my daughter died,” he began by saying at a virtual event hosted by Lifetime.
He added: “Then I can’t claim anything. But other people who appear in the series like my first husband, father of my children, like Paula’s husband, like my own son, and so many other people, have their private lives and don’t have to be exposed because of me. So I asked them to be very respectful to them and they were. I really liked the work that Megamedia Chile did, it was a very careful production. They came to my office, reviewed hundreds of photographs, videos, interviews, movies and copied the dresses of each era. Even handmade jewelry that are unique pieces, they copied them exactly. The hairstyles, the houses. Every period that appears in the miniseries is so well done. So I was very impressed,” the writer commented on the series. In addition to Daniela Ramírez, they are part of the cast of the miniseries Néstor Cantillana in the skin of Miguel Frías, Isabel’s first husband and father of her two children; Rodolfo Pulgar, as Agustín Llona, the writer’s grandfather; and Rosario Zamora as Francisca Llona, Isabel’s mother.” Daniela did such a formidable job that when I, when the miniseries began, I said I didn’t look anything like this beautiful and young girl. And then, as I watched the series, I felt so identified with her that I no longer saw her as someone else, but it seemed like she was me,” confesses Isabel Allende.
