In The long river of souls There is a mystery to solve. It is that of a serial murderer that aims at Kensington’s prostitutes, a neighborhood of Philadelphia that excessively suffers the impact of the opioid crisis. But the central history of this black novel by Liz Moore converted into television miniseries is another very different. It is that of two sisters separated by addiction and a cemetery of family secrets. The story relies on the interpretations of its two protagonists, Amanda Seyfried and Ashleigh Cumming.
In fact, his heroine, Mickey Fitzpatrick (Seyfried’s character), is not even a good police. Despite his lack of vocation, it is crucial to investigate crimes. Learn from childhood to the residents of a neighborhood fallen in disgrace in which she herself grew. “His superpoder is his compassionate gaze towards the community in which he works, towards that group of people forgotten around the world and that, in a way, he trusts it,” he tells this newspaper Nikki Toscano, the executive producer of this fiction, at the end of March, during his presentation at the Series Mania Festival, held in Lille. What hooked the screenwriter of this project was the idea of narrating a “love story between sisters that occupies the central place while police investigation orbit around her,” he says.
The fiction of eight chapters is already full available in Movistar Plus+. Mickey is a police officer who patrols the streets. In addition to a single mother of a 10 -year -old boy, he investigates on his own the disappearance of his sister Kacey (Ashleigh Cumming), an addict in an unknown whereabouts just at the time a series of murders occur to prostitutes in the area. Obsessed by finding the culprit and Kacey before it is too late, Mickey understands that his personal history could be linked to the case.
Liz Moore, the author of the prestigious original novel, has never identified with the role of writer obsessed with controlling the audiovisual adaptations that are made of her works. But, in this case, he wanted to be part of the creative process, because he lives in Philadelphia and has done a lot of community work in Kensington, he says. “I have many friends there and I feel a debt to his people. I did not feel comfortable by the project and how the neighborhood reflected on television was,” he says.
Much of the series was recorded in New York, so the team of The long river of souls hired street artists to create murals of a style similar to those that can be seen in that part of Philadelphia. He also transferred several Kensington neighbors to the filming set, to serve as advisors to both the actors and the rest of the series creatives. Impoverished by the deindustrialization of the city, the neighborhood is a micromundo with its own rules within the great American city. “It is a place where, in the midst of misfortune, positive things have also emerged as its resilience capacity,” says Moore.
Neither hero nor victim
A part of the story is counted through flashbacksthat recover the childhood and youth of the two sisters. Mother orphans and with an addicted father who disappeared from their lives being girls, both raised with their maternal grandfather.
The duo of writers responsible for this television adaptation felt that it was essential to find the right actress to play Kacey, the protagonist’s sister who is in turn victim of the opioid epidemic. What ended up convincing the creators of the series that Ashley Cummings was the perfect counterpoint of Amanda Seyfried, who in addition to the protagonist is also a producer of the project, is the vulnerability they showed together, explains Toscano. “Ashley captured the authenticity of someone who suffers a substance consumption disorder; it is versatile enough to embody very different moments of the fight with that addiction,” says the showrunner of The long river of souls.
Seyfried, a movie star (Oh mama!, The miserable ones) that has stood out in recent years in miniseries as The Dropout (Disney+), I knew that the tone of this story and this character was an unprecedented step in his career. The fact of having lived in his family a similar situation to fight substance abuse helped him build the character, the actress reveals in the French city during his visit to the Mania Series Festival. “It is a very visceral situation, growing with that feeling that everything is unpredictable. It has been a hard experience, but has been worth it.”
One of the objectives of the trio of creators was to subvert in The long river of souls the preconceived ideas around the police genre. “In most series, novels and films of this style there is usually a narrative around the figure of the police, which appears as El Salvador that helps the victim. At no time we were interested in perpetuating that stereotype. Throughout the chapters, the role of victim and hero will rotate between the two sisters,” Liz Moore progresses.
“That Mickey’s character is that of someone with so many defects and weaknesses gives many possibilities to the story. The story is told from her perspective. And, at a given time of the series, she, who seems to be a reliable narrator, turns out not to be at all. The viewer will arrive in the series to know who the murderer is, but she will stay for the family drama she raises,” Tuscan.
