The door to the house is barely opened. Martin Vatenbergone is greeted by a framed photo of Cris Miro. With a tiara on her head and full of feathers, she is posing for one of the plays in which she starred. The creator of the series about her life says that having her there, so close and in such a central place, helps him stay on track for the premiere of the June 23 next. A few meters away, at the living room table, the author and director of Cris Miró, Ella, open your heart to AM and tells details of the process that led him to dramatize the life of the first trans star of the Buenos Aires theater.
Cris Miró was a pioneer. In a time when stigmas and persecutions against the LGBT community They were common currency, she stepped on the stage and made a place of her own. From the under queer scene she became the first trans vedette in a magazine in the Maipo, and from there to join other casts of magazines and comedies that made her a celebrity. Her professional career was very short, from her theatrical debut in nineteen ninety five until premature death in 1999but that did not stop him from becoming an icon, to the point that now, 25 years after his death and in a time that also presents challenges for the LGBT communitywill have its own biopic. “She deserved a series with everything: with glitter, with fantasy, with glamour,” says Vatenberg.
In just a few days, it will be released Cris Miró (She) on TV and platforms for Argentina and abroad. In eight half-hour chapters, the series will tell the story of the public figure, the artist we saw in Mirtha’s table and in Susana’s living roomand also of the person, of the young woman raised in Belgrano who studied odontology and she transitioned at the same time she became famous.
There is something universal in the story of the person becoming who they want to be, something that can connect in many countries and in many cultures, and there is something also eminently Argentine in that journey. The lines of Cris Miró’s public life and private life intersect with the backdrop of the nineties and the world of Buenos Aires entertainment, that bohemian universe that is in permanent transformation. That universe, precisely, is the one in which Vatenberg was raised. His grandmother is the producer Cipe Fridmanwho was a representative of Enrique Pinti and of Antonio Gasalla. And what many of us could see on TV and read in magazines, like after dinner in Edelweiss in endless nights or anecdotes by Juanito Belmonte, for him they were the landscape of his childhood.
One of those nights with his grandmother, when he was eight years old, Martín was dazzled by the figure of a tall, very tall woman who seemed to him like she was from another dimension. “We were at a premiere at the Maipo and I remember seeing Cris. She was talking to people there in the hall, wearing a very simple black dress, long to the floor, and it seemed extremely impressive to me, with an eternal upward look. She was an ethereal, magnetic figure, who left me dazed at that moment when I was growing, with all the feathers emerging there,” she says while drinking a tea of ginger and honey. He has to take care of his voice for the presentation event that will be held tomorrow night at the Hilton.
Vatenberg’s childhood fascination with this figure who was initially presented as enigmatic and intriguing, his knowledge of local entertainment, and his own interest in queer stories led Vatenberg to this project. During the pandemic, many years after that chance meeting in Maipo, she read Female. Live and die in a country of males (Milena Caserola), the biography of Cris Miró written by journalist Carlos Sanzol.
“Until that moment, my knowledge of Cris was limited to public appearances that one can access online. By reading this book, I was able to learn much more about the person and many aspects of his life that I did not know. I started to think that there was something interesting in the fact that his career has been so fleeting and today it continues to generate conversation. In those months, I was reading a lot and trying to find my first big project as a creator. I wanted to tell a story that would pierce my heart and soul. And I find Cris’s story inspiring.”
As an example that people continue to talk about Cris Miró, that she is an enigma that continues to fascinate people who have never met her, Martín tells an anecdote: “A few days ago, I was talking to Montse, who is 14 and is the youngest daughter of Cris’ brother, and he told me that in the course they had to elect three leaders. They were divided into groups and each one had to propose their own. Montse proposed Cris Miró, without the others knowing that she was her aunt, and she came third in the general vote. That gave me the idea that Cris has the power to transcend generations and I hope that the series helps that continue”.
From tables to books and from books to screens
The pandemic reading of Sanzol’s book awakened in Vatenberg the desire to adapt that story for the language he knows best to speak, the audiovisual. She met with the journalist to negotiate the transfer of rights for the adaptation and little by little he began to immerse himself in that world that he sought to portray. When reading the book, she added her own research process: He spoke with Cris’s family and friends, he immersed himself in archives of newspapers, magazines and television, he found producers (Helen Roca and Karina Castellano from Nativa and Ezequiel Olzanski from EO Media), who bet on the project and helped it reach the platforms. To co-write the chapters, he called on his friend and colleague Lucas Bianchini, with whom a few years ago he had set up a drag show in which they impersonated two figures from the entertainment world, Dora and Monica. And he directed three of the eight chapters Javier van der Couter.
Find the actress who would put herself in Cris Miró’s skin It was perhaps the most important challenge to face the project. After a series of closed castings in which the right one did not appear, the auditions opened and she appeared, via Zoom and on the other side of the Atlantic. Some gay Argentine friends had found out about her call and convinced her to Serrano Mine to send a video. She is a model and actress from Granada who was living in Paris. She has a notable physical resemblance to Cris Miró and went through quite intensive acting training to Argentinize her accent.. Vatenberg defines it as “magical” and as a key piece of the project.
Another central element of the series has to do with the queer talent put at the service of the story, both in front of and behind the camera. “My co-writer Lucas Bianchini was splendid, Carlos Sanzol was close and during the writing process I felt the need to hear the voice of a trans person, and I chose Barbie Di Rocco to get to know her view of what we were doing” . In addition to the ally Katja Alemann, who plays Cris’s mother, “the series is nourished by a lot of emerging talent from the community, such as Miuka who is a queen of the Buenos Aires nightlife, actors from independent theater…from Argentina to the world ”.
“It’s not that I’m interested in the stories of the collective per se, I like stories that can be inspiring for many people. But well, the feathers, the shine and the glamor really appeal to me,” Vatenberg closes before the attentive gaze of the photo of Cris Miró from the painting that is hanging near the door. In a few days, when the premiere has passed, Cris’s image will move to another corner of the house. She will always be present.
Cris Miró (She), created and directed by Martín Vatenberg, written by Vatenberg together with Lucas Bianchini and produced by Nativa SERVICIOS and EO Medios, will premiere on June 23 at 10 p.m. on TNT. Every Sunday, the channel will launch a new episode for a total of eight. And from June 24, the series can be seen in full on Flow in Argentina and on the Max application in Latin America, the United States and Europe.
