Glenn Close didn’t speak a word of Spanish when Los Javis asked her to join La Bola Negra. She said yes anyway.
“Yes, because I’m Glenn Close, and I will learn whatever it takes to make this special,” the eight-time Oscar nominee told directors Javier Calvo and Javier Ambrossi, as Ambrossi recalled at a Los Angeles press conference held at Netflix on Monday. The Spanish filmmaking duo was joined on stage by stars Guitarricadelafuente, Miguel Bernardeau, Carlos González, and Milo Quifes.
It all started with a fan letter that landed in the middle of the night.
“She doesn’t speak a word of Spanish, not a single word,” Ambrossi said. “So we were sleeping and we got an email at 3 a.m. from ‘G.C.’ It was an empty email with a PDF attached, and someone was writing about how much she loved our previous TV show, La Mesías, and she was Glenn Close. So we were very excited and surprised. It was such an honor to read that letter, that beautiful letter. So we start talking with her about projects and we became friends.”
When they were writing La Bola Negra, they wanted someone for a part “full of facts and historic moments,” Ambrossi explained, “and we need someone to bring that warmth. And so Glenn appeared in our mind.” They sent her the script, and she said yes. Then came the catch.
“I told her, ‘It’s in Spanish.’ And she was like, ‘I will do it in Spanish.’ ‘But do you speak Spanish?’ ‘Not a word.’ ‘But are you willing to learn?’ ‘Yes, because I’m Glenn Close, and I will learn whatever it takes to make this special.’”
Ambrossi said it wasn’t easy. “It was a challenge and it was very hard and she was scared, because you have to be very brave to do that and change your language,” he said. “But she loved the message of the movie. What she did was brave and vulnerable, and I will be eternally grateful.”
Calvo added that the Spanish lessons happened in an unlikely place. “She is such an amazing performer that you really believe that she’s a historian, that she knows Spanish better than the Spanish people. It’s incredible,” he said. “We sent the teacher to the Hunger Games set in Germany. Imagine her dressed [in character for] Hunger Games, learning Spanish while waiting to shoot The Hunger Games. Amazing.”
Close plays Isabelle, a Lorca historian, in the 2017 storyline. La Bola Negra jumps between three eras. In 1932, Carlos (Quifes) is shut out of a Granada social club over rumors about his sexuality. In 1937, Sebastián (Guitarricadelafuente, in his acting debut) falls for Rafael (Bernardeau), a prisoner on the other side of the Spanish Civil War. And in 2017, Alberto (González) digs up a family secret that ties all three stories together. Penélope Cruz, Lola Dueñas, and Julio Torres also star.
The film is off to a strong start in theaters. It opened with $277,500 from just four theaters in Los Angeles and New York. That’s a $69,375 per-screen average, the highest ever for a Spanish-language film and second only to Parasite among non-English-language films. The film won Best Director at Cannes and the People’s Choice Award at TIFF, and it’s Spain’s official submission for Best International Feature at the Oscars.
La Bola Negra expands to more cities on Oct. 23 and hits Netflix on Dec. 2.
