The dynamic duo of ‘Red Queen’s’ unconventional love story
The dynamic duo of ‘Red Queen’s’ unconventional love story. Juan Gómez-Jurado’s novel spent 153 weeks on the best-seller list. Now Prime Video is turning it into a series, a tremendously ambitious project directed by Koldo Serra.
By Megan Sauer
We bring together its two protagonists, Antonia Scott and Jon Gutiérrez, two opposite poles that crime turns into inseparable allies.
One morning Vicky Luengo (Palma de Mallorca, 1990) began to see a lot of messages on Twitter where they told her that she was Antonia Scott, while they tagged Juan Gómez-Jurado. She was wondering, ‘Who the hell is Antonia Scott?’ “I read a lot, but ‘Red Queen’ had not fallen into my hands, ” he confessed.
Things got so serious on the social network that he decided to write directly to the author, whom he did not know at all: ‘Hello, your fans tell me that I’m the protagonist of your novel, so I’m going to read it.
But she didn’t. It took a couple of years until, during a theater tour, she got hooked on the book during hotel nights. When she finished, knocked out by the plot, she contacted the author again: ‘I’ve finally read the book and yes, I really think I should be Antonia Scott.’ The response she received was immediate: ‘Can I have your number?’
This is how the series that adapts one of the most resounding international literary phenomena of recent years began for her. Red Queen was published in 2018 and today it has sold more than two and a half million copies in Spain and has been translated into more than 40 languages.
In the following two years, ‘Loba Negra‘ and ‘Rey Blanco‘ were published (all published by Ediciones B), which made Juan Gómez-Jurado the most read author in our country in 2018, 2020, and 2022.
For Hovik Keuchkerian (Beirut, 1972) the adventure had begun much earlier and like a good thriller. ‘Red Queen‘ (the novel) came to him in an envelope with a note. ‘Meet Jon, I hope you like the character.’ Gómez-Jurado himself had sent it to him. “He already had plans to adapt it for audiovisual media.”
And I immediately saw myself in the role. Who doesn’t want to play Sancho Panza, a protector?” says the actor. So the team led by the author of the trilogy, who acts as executive producer, the showrunner and screenwriter, Amaya Muruzabal, and the director Koldo Serra already had their leading couple.
Antonia Scott (in case there is anyone who hasn’t read the trilogy) is the most intelligent person in the world, with an IQ of 242 (the normal range is between 85 and 115). Because of these very high abilities, she has been selected by the Red Queen program, an experimental research unit that operates in secret to solve the most complicated crimes in Europe.
“Crafting this character presents a significant challenge since the behavior and traits of the most intelligent person on the planet are unknown. How do you create something you’ve never encountered?
Where do you work from? I’m very curious, so I investigated everything which had to do with highly gifted people and the reactions they have at a sensory level. How they see light, the way they hear sounds or how the touch of some things bothers them, for example labels on clothing,” explains the actress.
Next to her is always Jon Gutiérrez, a police officer about to be expelled from the force, temperamental, sybarite, gay and with an unorthodox sense of humor. He is someone who values caring for others, finding fulfillment in helping people, and upholding integrity.
And there is not one without another. If Antonia Scott and Jon Gutiérrez didn’t work, there would be no series,” says the actor who gives him life . Vicky Luengo and Hovik Keuchkerian had already met in the series ‘Antiturbios‘ (2020), where a mutual admiration was born that continues to this day.
“I remember the first scene we shot together. It was an interrogation and I instantly realized that with this actress I had a bull in front of me.”
That talent has been made evident this season on stage in ‘Prima Facie‘, which has earned her the Fotogramas de Plata for Best Theater Actress . Furthermore, last year she opted for the Goya for ‘Suro‘ (2022).
In this second job that they both do together, they demonstrate a complicity that is key to the plot.
“I truly appreciate that it’s a love story where nothing ever happens. We are used to series with relationships where there is erotic tension, but in Reina Roja we have an incredible love story, without that,” says Luengo.
The series is directed by Koldo Serra (La casa de papel, El Ministerio del Tiempo, 70 binlandens, Guernika), except for two chapters, 4 and 6, which are directed by Julián de Tavira (Hernán).
It has Amaya Muruzabal as showrunner and screenwriter, along with Salvador Perpiñá. Juan Gómez-Jurado himself serves as executive producer.
“It’s like Manchester United suddenly knocking on your door, and you have no choice but to say, ‘We’re going to play in this league.’ I was absolutely convinced that it was going to work, but we couldn’t afford the luxury of failure,” explains Keuchkerian.
He has practiced breastfeeding. He did it this year in ‘Un amor‘ (2023) with a role that earned him the award for Best Performance at the San Sebastián Festival and the Goya nomination.
‘Red Queen’ has them as the absolute protagonists, but the plot is woven based on an extensive group of characters present throughout its seven chapters.
The cast includes Alex Brendemühl as Mentor, who recruits Jon Gutiérrez and Scott to solve a murder; Emma Suárez as businesswoman Laura Trueba, mother of the victim; Celia Freijeiro is Carla Ortiz, the daughter of the richest man in Spain, who is kidnapped; Vicenta N’Dongo appears in the role of the coroner, Eduardo Noriega as Jaume Soler, and Fernando Guallar and Nacho Fresneda in other fundamental roles in this first installment of the trilogy.
The series will be released simultaneously in 240 territories and one of the main concerns of the creative team was to escape the expectations of the more than 11 million readers of the trilogy around the world.
Amaya Muruzabal is clear: “That million readers have always given us the greatest respect. In the series we had the intention of not betraying any of them. In fact, we have had the intention of offering more to the Gómez fans.” Jury, and to gain new fans along the way.”
For the director, Koldo Serra, the main difficulty was another: bringing Scott’s complex mental processes to the screen. Those images of Antonia’s head at full capacity were a technical challenge for both the actress and the team. To reach the perfect solution she has worked for more than a year in post-production.
“I’ve filmed on a green chroma where I was flying and moving my arms as if eliminating objects around me, but I didn’t see anything.”
“It is a woman who in her mind fights with monkeys and when I saw them on the screen I thought they were incredible. It gave me a big boost,” says the actress. Hovik Keuchkerian was also more than satisfied when he saw the final result, one afternoon at Koldo Serra’s house. “I like it when she’s crazy, I like the nonsense he says, I like it when she gets tender, when she gets meditative, I love the series.”
A huge number of locations outside the city have been used, which works almost like another character in the series. “It had to be a thriller with light and color, closer to Hitchcock than to the thrillers that come from northern Europe, since we wanted to talk about the ‘two Madrids’ that coexist in the novel: The one on the surface, colorful, luminous, vital, almost always under the characteristic blue sky.
And the other, the Madrid that is underground where evil lives, where our antagonists have their kingdom, and where the use of shadows and the most ornate environments have their reason for being,” explains the director.
There were 24 weeks of filming, between August 2022 and January 2023. It was hard for Keuchkerian because he had just gained considerable weight for the filming of ‘El Hoyo 2‘ and the second season of ‘The Head. “My knees were ruined. In fact, in the first chapters you can see that I’m limping,” he says.
For his partner, however, it was the other way around. “I didn’t start out broken, but I ended up like this,” she confesses.
Her character is the most intelligent person in the world, but she carries trauma and a painful past. The way he created this character, isolated and depressed, was through a hunched body posture that caused him great back pain.
“The concept aimed to portray her resembling a blossoming flower as her connection with Jon Gutiérrez deepens. At the beginning of the series, viewers are going to see two characters that you would never imagine together, because they don’t fit together and, furthermore, you think that they wouldn’t like each other,” says the protagonist.
The truth is that together they function as a kind of Sherlock Holmes and Watson or, as Keuchkerian likes to say, Quixote and Sancho that complete each other. “Jon seeks to regain his trust and faith in humanity, devoid of any religious implications, and she is the one who restores it to him.
If they made the second season – and here he gives the fans long teeth – we would see that “He takes absolutely seriously what unites him with this woman because it has given him back the fundamental concepts he needs to live.
