Veronica Falcón – Queen of the South

Q) Can you share how you found out about this project and what inspired you to take this role?

Veronica Falcon:   Well, I read the novel many years ago when I moved to the States and I didn’t know they were doing Queen of the South. I just arrived. It was a very, very lucky break for me because I had been in Los Angeles for less than a year when I found out by my managers that they were casting the role of Camila. And then I started the regular audition process and I was lucky enough to get to play her. And I’ve heard of course before that — I mean I knew about the telenovela in Mexico and I knew that there were always talks about doing a movie because it is a great story, you know. And as I always say, good stories are told many times. So this is the American version and I was lucky enough to get the role.

Q) What you like about your character and where do you find the inspiration to be so strong and powerful just with a look in a scene? It’s amazing.

Veronica Falcon:   Well, it’s many things. Of course, the character. Camila is one of the best and most interesting characters I ever had the opportunity to play. Because of course she’s a criminal. There’s no question about it, she’s an anti-hero. And the reason why I say she’s also an anti-hero is because she has qualities that I admire. It’s not all bad with Camila. I mean she is strong, she is hard working, she is independent and she has certain loyalties and she tries at the best of her ability to be a good mother. And those are things I admire in anybody, much more in a woman.  On top of that, as a villain, she is the antagonist to a wonderful character, which is the character that Alice Braga plays, the read role. And the interesting thing about that is that it’s not only an enemy, you know, it’s also kind of a mentor. And that makes the character incredibly complex to play. So for any actor that’s a very interesting to do. Where do I draw my inspiration? I mean I come from a line of strong women in Mexico. There’s this idea that a lot of Mexican women sometimes, they may not be so liberated or so strong because there’s this idea of the macho culture, which of course it exists not only in Mexico but everywhere.  But the truth of the matter is that I was lucky enough to be brought up by really strong women. And then through my life, I was — I constructed relationships with really wonderful women, like actresses that I admired older than me, or my age, or younger but that they were always strong and hardworking, and they always inspired me. And men that loved strong women inspire me as well. So I admire that and I had to be strong because I build up myself. My family has nothing to do with show business. I had to start from zero and when I left home to start working and studying, I did it at the age of 19, which nowadays is absolutely normal and everybody does it. But back in the day when I did it, I’m a 50-year-old actor, in a middle class, in Mexico City, you don’t do that. I did and my family said fine, if you want to leave that’s okay but you’re going to be on your own. And I was and it took me a long time to go through school and everything. So I learned to be strong and I know how to survive, and I have another career as a choreographer. So I learned to be a woman in a male dominated area because mostly there’s a lot of male choreographers. There’s less female choreographers, at least in Mexico.  So anyway, that was part of it and the allure of playing a villain is always wonderful, you know, but I’m only as good as the role was written and I’m only as good as the people that were with me. And I was very, very lucky to get the — to work with the cast I’m working with.

Q) Could you talk a little bit about what particularly challenges you about this role?

Veronica Falcon:   Yes, well, the role is challenging because as I said, it’s a villain and if the villain doesn’t have a light side to her, you know, any antagonist that doesn’t have a lighter side or a brighter side to balance it, it’s very dangerous to end up in a very dimensional character. And that was one of the main challenges of Camila. I mean, Camila, is a very powerful, ruthless woman. She is a criminal. She does a lot of illegal things, but on the other hand, she’s a wife. She’s a mother. She has loyalties. She protects her people and she has a certain honor code. And the challenge to play a character with all that complexity in another language which is not my original language — I’m Mexican so my first language is Spanish. So I’m performing in English and even though I was trained in English most of my career, I have not — this is my first big role in totally English speaking television series. So that was a challenge but a very welcome one.

Q) When the cast started working together, was there instant chemistry or did you guys have to take some time to bond together?

Veronica Falcon:   Actually, there was even chemistry before we started working together. The only two members of the cast that I knew beforehand was Alice because my first — one of my first auditions was reading with her and she was absolutely generous and absolutely professional, and she was a wonderful actor to work with. And, when you’re in an audition process, everybody gets nervous. It doesn’t matter how many years you’ve done this. It’s always nerve wracking to a certain level. You learn to control it, but it is. So having to read with the start of the show without knowing her, it’s even more nerve wracking because you don’t know who you’re going to find out. Luckily, for me, I found out Alice, which is not only a wonderful actress, but is also an incredible human being and a very generous one. So I met Alice like that. And in the case of the other actor I was mentioned, Gerardo Taracena, which is the other Mexican actor in the regular cast, and he plays Ceasar. He’s one of the best actors in Mexico and we — I had the fortune to being friend of his for many, many years. We worked in many projects in Mexico and he’s a friend of my whole family. The moment I arrived to Queen of the South, I already have one very old friend and one person I knew that became a friend through the process, which was Alice. And then I met Justina was the first actress I met once I was in the (Dallas) we met while they were doing our (image) design. And right away, we hit it off and the same with everybody else. One of the last actors I met was Joaquim that plays my husband and I have to tell you, at the beginning I was a little overwhelmed because he is very powerful. He is a great actor and I’ve never met him before. And, you know, he was the only one that I didn’t met and I was just (staring). And then we started working together right away, we hit it off. So I was extremely lucky because even to this day, we — after the show, we still get together and see each other when we can. I mean Gerardo is back in Mexico, but like last week, we saw — everybody, we had a barbeque here at my house. So I not only met a group of actors that I respect, but a group of friends. And that was instant bonding. You’re talking about Latinos here. We bond really fast, you know. We’re a friendly people, very friendly.

Q) Can you talk a little bit about what was the hardest thing — you talked a little bit about how the character, playing this character is hard. Was there any other aspect of this role that you found hard, like what’s the training program that you do? Or what was the hardest scene that you shot?

Veronica Falcon:  I’ve been working as an actor for over 30 years, as I said, this was my first American role. The process of construction of every character is absolutely different, at least for me, depending on the role and the medium I’m working with. It’s very different in theater, the process you have on stage than the one you have on film and on television.  In the particular case of Camila, the process for me started in the audition process because it was a very exhausting audition process. It was very precise. So I had to do around ten auditions and do many, many scenes. So I started understanding the character even then, even though I didn’t have the directors or the full script. I start to fall in love with the character, and to understand it, and to construct something because I had to, you know. I had to construct in order to audition. So, one of the first thing, I don’t do it the same way all the time. I had one advantage with Camila. I’ve played different roles that had to do with these narco stories in the past. So a lot of the research about the world that the characters live in, I have done before. I’ve read the novel twice and aside from that, in the study you do for different characters, I studied already a lot of the world. And I lived in Mexico for many years, so unfortunately, it was very first hand whatever happens with the drug situation in our countries.  So, that part of the research or the history of the reality of the show, of the character, I already had. Then the second part of the character had to do with, you know, with the language. It was not only the speaking English, but of the containment of the character. Because I right away understood — one of the things I never do or at least I try not to do is to judge a character. That’s not my job. My job, I believe, is to try to understand a character, try to understand where it comes from, what does the character need to do in order for me to tell a story as the character. So in order for me to do that, I have to be very objective about the character.  So, I usually do a list of objectives that are positive or negative towards the character. And then I try to balance it because as I said, everybody has light and darkness, especially in the cases of the villains, it’s important to do that. So I got inspired by many, many actors. Every actor I believe we get inspired by other actors before us that have done better work or amazing work, and they set a very high standard.  And I don’t believe in copying anyone, but I believe in getting inspired. And of course, I got inspired from the most amazing actors like Brando and all the classic mob stories and the classic gangsters. Because at the end of the day, what I always say is that these narco stories are very similar to the Mexicans and the Colombians to what the mob stories were to the Sicilians, to the Italians. It’s the same kind of, well, these crime families, they have a certain honor code within them. They have certain loyalties. They can be ruthless and at the same time, they have this kind of family honor code that is quite interesting and they operate like that. So of course, I was inspired by all that.  And then the script, I always went back — the thing with Camila is that in the original novel and in the Mexican version, Camila is a character that is mentioned that appears but is really not a very important character in the story. With the creators of Queen of the South, Camila is a character that became a different character from the original one. So we have to construct it from that. So, I had to go back always to what the writers would tell me, to what the script was calling for, and then from there just try to make it my own. And I used, of course, the advantage of being Mexican, and knowing my country, and knowing my language and my traditions, and the authenticity of it all.

Q)  And do you have any concerns that this may glorify violence, the drug trade, or that your character may become a hero?

Veronica Falcon:   Well, I hope it doesn’t become a hero because I don’t believe we glorify violence or the drug trade. I mean we show every part of it. We show, of course, the luxury and the power, and all this part of things. But at the same time, we will show and we are always showing the consequence. And of everything these characters do.  I think the audience is smart enough to understand that even though the character may have some traits that are interesting or that are valuable, like being powerful and independent, and hardworking, and all these things, she’s also made a lot of choices that are destroying life, starting with her own. And they will see that.  So I think the show is pretty clear on that. I mean if you see the opening scene, it starts by a consequence. So I hope the audience is smart enough to understand that and I think they are. And unfortunately, we do live in a violent world. We do live in a world where drugs are destroying a lot of families, and I think we show that. So I hope we’re not — I believe we’re not glorifying the drug trade at all. I hope it doesn’t seem glamorous because the prices are really high.

*CONFERENCE CALL*