ESCAPE WITH THE GIRLS OF ‘SKY ROJO’
In this series, the creators of ‘Money Heist’ bring to audiences a crazy fast-paced ride that’s also a jarring look at the realities of human trafficking and prostitution
For almost four hours we did not think of the pandemic. We didn’t think about COVID and its variants, the vaccines and their side effects, the debate over ivermectin.
For almost four hours all we did was watch what happened to Coral, Wendy and Gina after they ran away from Romeo, their pimp and the owner of Las Novias, the brothel where they work. The girls’ goal? To stay alive for more than five minutes. And it’s hard, with Romeo sending his men, Moisés and Christian, after them.
That’s the story of “Sky Rojo” and it sucked us in. This Latin pulp Netflix Spanish original is brought to you by the people who created “Money Heist”—Álex Pina and Esther Martínez Lobato.
“In ‘Sky Rojo,’ we wanted to take the 20- or 22-minute episode format to a drama series. We have always worked on shows with frenetic action, and the shorter run time was what we needed to accomplish what we set out to portray: a chase, a race for survival,” Pina and Lobato, who are also the show’s executive producers, said.
Action-packed
The series is action-packed from start to finish and is so fast-paced you wouldn’t have time to think of anything else. It’s the perfect COVID escape which is interesting since the series was filmed in the midst of the pandemic.
“It was difficult, of course. Everything gets more complicated and slower with security protocols, but at the same time, we were all very aware,” Veronica Sanchez told Super in an e-mail interview.
Sanchez plays Coral, a woman who chose to join Club Las Novias of her own volition because she needed a place to hide. “Coral is always a lot of fun to play because, even when the scene is pure action, she is in a different state than the rest. Her addictions make her have one foot in and the other out of each situation, or make the right decisions and then spoil them by making the most unfortunate decision. It forces me to dance constantly on an interpretive level and that is a gift,” said Sanchez.
Like a game
Lali Esposito plays Wendy, a strong-willed woman who knowingly enters the world of prostitution in hopes of securing a better future for her and her partner. Esposito said, “Besides the script that I got for Wendy, it was my job as an actress to give more, to bring it to life and give more life to her life history and to be able to play with her present role. And then it’s like a game . . . I worked every day with the creators and the directors to be able to give Wendy some depth. I put in her a lot of my Argentine style in the girl from the hood way that I know very well. The character was built on a day-to-day basis at the set.”
Shooting during the pandemic was a challenge, Esposito said. “It was very hard! We respected all the security protocols. The filming had to be extended and it got hard at times but we pulled it off with a lot of energy. And the result is unbelievable!”
Completing the triumvirate is Gina, played by Yany Prado, the sweetest and most naive of the women. She was tricked into sex work by Moisés who made her believe she was being recruited to work as a waitress. It was her desire to leave behind the life in the club that becomes their catalyst to escape.
Pina said, “We needed a trio of girls who would be explosive, but also fresh faces. We also wanted them to come from different countries. We looked for very different people who would mesh well together and who had plenty of power and charisma, and that’s what we found. They’re absolute powerhouses with an incredible energy and comedic ability.”
Flashbacks
As we join them on their crazy adventure, we get to know the characters more with flashbacks to their worlds before prositution and their lives at the club.
Migue Amoedo, director of photography and executive producer, said that “Sky Rojo” is the complete opposite of “Money Heist. “Money Heist was about people locking themselves inside, Sky Rojo is the story of an escape. We wanted to create a moment of total freedom with the characters and the aesthetics. While the palette in Money Heist was very concrete and quite limited, we set out to be colorful in Sky Rojo, working with a lot of mixtures and combinations of colors and textures.”
To create “Sky Rojo,” Pina and Lobato did plenty of research, doing interviews with sex workers and victims of sexual exploitation all over Spain. “Some stories were so heartbreaking that we couldn’t find a way to include them in the series,” they said.
Pina added, “I think that entertainment is a powerful vehicle for telling this story. We’ve all heard people speak out against prostitution, but when you hear the other side . . . When you hear the pimp speaking positively about his business with total impunity, that’s when the audience really gets a shock.”
On a superficial level, “Sky Rojo” is a crazy adrenaline-filled ride, but it’s also a jarring look at the realities of human trafficking and prostitution. “Sky Rojo draws inspiration from a deep well of stories and reflections that we have collected,” said Pina and Lobato.
Lobato said, “The fact that it’s a work of fiction doesn’t mean that it can’t be a vessel for sensations that are absolutely real. Viewers can come to understand many things through the emotion and connection to fictional characters. I hope that this show serves to convey a message of reflection and that we can rethink our attitudes on the issue.”
Balancing act
The show was a balancing act for director and executive producer Jesús Colmenar. “We wanted to make a show with the sensibility and tone of pulp, crass and confident, with references to B movies from the ’60s, with their brashness and action, with cars, guns, girls, the desert . . . and at the same time, we didn’t want to lose sight of the characters’ emotional truths, which allow a deeper look into the show’s conflicts of prostitution and human trafficking.”
They were able to meld those elements, resulting in a show that’s very Quentin Tarantino in its intensity and speed but also slices deep with its truths.
Sanchez said, “Sky Rojo is a poisoned candy. I think that everyone will like to accompany these girls in this fight for freedom and flee from their captors, you can get excited and have fun wanting to see them win, but your smile freezes when you realize that, despite action, glitter and aesthetics, music or incredible shots, what the series tells is a real drama, a social scourge . . . what counts is that there is human trafficking in the 21st century and that we have not yet known fix it. That is what this series teaches and shows.”
“Sky Rojo” will leave you wanting to know what happens next and the good news is, you don’t have to wait too long. Season 2 will be out on July 23.
What did “Sky Rojo” teach its actors about survival? Esposito said, “There is nothing more thrilling than the will to live. To move forward. I connected deeply with Coral, Gina and Wendy and I connected even more to that feeling of being thankful to life . . . to having an extra minute to live.”