In the writing of The Newsreader (its second season premieres on Monday the 6th on Universal+) there was no place for the success of Crocodile Dundee and Behind the News, although the trail of both films is present in the notable fiction created by Michael Lucas. In these new six episodes, the couple in front of the camera and the rest of those involved are in charge of feeding the chaotic backstage of News At Six – Melbourne’s most successful news program – in the late ’80s. “The challenge was to broaden the view, we have this entire world of television and the fight between the networks. In addition to what happens to our protagonists, we have the great events of that time – the heroin crisis, the struggles of the aboriginal peoples, to name a few – and we seek to find that scope,” says the showrunner of this intense drama. made in Australia.
The big news for Helen Norville (Anna Torv from The Last of Us and Mindhunter) and Dale Jennings (Sam Reid) is that they became news fodder by going public with their romance. And from their channel they are going to make the most of the issue by presenting them as “the golden couple of the news.” “We know that behind the scenes things are a little more complicated,” explains its creator. In addition to misogyny and objectification as standard, the host must deal with the fragility of her mental health. The star boy, for his part, struggles with his own ambition and his attraction to both sexes. “The interesting thing is that their relationship does not have a single possible definition. They love each other, but everything is a whirlwind. It is not clear if it is something romantic, platonic or for convenience, as if they were brothers. We like to delve deeper into these contradictions and see where they take us,” says Lucas, interviewed by Página/12.
As in its predecessors The Hour and The Newsroom, each episode of the fiction is intertwined with some recognizable historical event beyond Oceania. But it is not a simple decorative element: what is intriguing is the way in which reports about AIDS, the Challenger explosion or Chernobyl impact the lives and professions of its creatures. This is how The Newsreader also resonates with issues without an expiration date such as professional competence, the debate on journalistic ethics and the standard of infotainment. Another achievement lies in its visual cut of the era where beige, shoulder pads and beta players ruled. “There are events that have a global impulse, such as the stock market crisis in ’87 or the separation of Lady Di from Prince Charles. There are others that are probably less well known, but we always try to make them resonate with Helen and Dale. These are events that put them in dialogue with their situation, like the heroin epidemic, which has an emotional reaction in our characters,” explains Lucas.
-It has been said that The Newsreader is not a fiction about the ’80s but that it seems to be made in that decade. What role does this period play?
-The ’80s are fascinating because they have a pretty clear resonance of where we are today in terms of the media and society in general. Many of his topics are still relevant today. Some of the facts we cover have changed quite a bit, but others are essentially the same.
-Helen and Dale are perfect on the air, but they coexist with a much more troubled identity. To whom does the title best apply?
-It is very true, they are more than “talking heads” who read the news. At the end of the first season, Anna Torv’s character struggled a lot with having to listen to the teleprompter. She struggles with the series title. I think that’s exactly what’s happening to Dale now. The Newsreader is a constrictive term and that’s where some of the drama comes from.
-What can we expect from the third season, set in 1989?
-The end of the decade was incredible in terms of news. You have the Tiananmen Square massacre, the boycott of South Africa by Apartheid and the fall of the Berlin Wall. They are blockbuster events. We always think of the story of Helen and Dale in three acts, and that’s where we’re headed.
2023-11-06 03:15:48
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