Holy is an action-intrigue thriller with a lot of psychological and reflective drama, and also with some hints of horror. Or as the actress Greta Fernández defines it, it is “a real puzzle” by the screenwriter Carlos López that has just been released on Netflix.
“It’s a complicated series, but that’s why it’s interesting. Now we are used to having everything explained to us almost from the beginning and not with this series, here you have to be patient because many things happen, it has many pieces and in the end chapter by chapter everything will be resolved, it’s like a puzzle a little », details the actress, one of the protagonists of the series, in an interview.
Fiction tells the story of Holythe most wanted drug trafficker in the world whose face has never been revealed, and whom two opposing policemen, the Spaniard Millán (Raúl Arévalo) and the Brazilian Ernesto Cardona (Bruno Gagliasso), try to hunt down from Madrid and Salvador de Bahía.
The only real and tangible link with the criminal is his lover, Bárbara (Victoria Guerra), a mysterious Portuguese woman who in recent years has immersed herself in her partner’s world of spirituality and violence.
Despite the fact that the protagonist is a drug trafficker, the production goes “much more” beyond, “it is not the simple series of drug traffickers that we are used to seeing,” the actors say.
«It is different from everything we usually see, it is even different from police series. Our protagonist is not the drug, nor the villain, nor the policemen; our protagonist is suspense”, clarifies Gagliasso.
While Guerra highlights that the series has “very strong” characters, there is no hero. “The plot is more about the people themselves, not just about traffic. All the characters have a dark side, they are real », he adds.
Religion is one of the strong points, specifically Candomblé (one of the best-known Afro-Brazilian religions) is the one that is shown. Holy It has had a religious adviser specialized in filming who has also advised the team in the previous writing process and in post-production. In addition, the Brazilian actor belongs to this religion, which gave more credibility to the story.
«I did not want to make a wrong interpretation, for me and for millions of people it is something that must be treated with respect (…). In the end, I think the series reflects very well, and that people will feel identified and will learn », she declares. In this sense, he affirms that the preparation of her character was “difficult and tense” since her character was in “motion all the time”.
Holy, whose filming took place between Madrid and Salvador de Bahía, is a one hundred percent Spanish production run by Netflix and Nostromo Pictures, but both the director Vicente Amorim and a large part of the cast are Brazilian. Likewise, the protagonists recognize that the mix of being shot between Spain and Brazil gives “visual richness to the images”, which makes the chapters “look good”.