{"id":486226,"date":"2026-02-17T18:05:09","date_gmt":"2026-02-17T18:05:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/486226\/"},"modified":"2026-02-17T18:05:09","modified_gmt":"2026-02-17T18:05:09","slug":"the-house-of-the-spirits-team-talk-working-with-isabel-allende","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/486226\/","title":{"rendered":"‘The House Of The Spirits’ Team Talk Working With Isabel Allende"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tIsabel Allende<\/a> was both topical and prophetic with her view of a world dominated by patriarchy and patriarchal thinking, a world that now feels familiar, according to the showrunners behind Prime Video<\/a>\u2019s adaptation of her most popular novel. <\/p>\n

\n\tFernanda Urrejola<\/a>, one of a trio behind The House of the Spirits<\/a> TV show, which world premieres at the Berlinale<\/a> this week, said a recent conversation with Allende had got her thinking that \u201cit is really important to understand how patriarchy kills everything.\u201d <\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cThat is what is happening right now,\u201d said Urrejola, in response to a question over how the 1982 novel resonates today. \u201cWe\u2019re facing all the wounds that patriarchy brought to our society and needing to look at that and reinvent ourselves in a more feminine perspective. That is why it is so interesting to watch [this show] right now.\u201d <\/p>\n

\n\tShe added that the team behind The House of the Spirits, which includes Allende, Eva Longoria, Anora producer FilmNation<\/a> and The Eternal Memory studio Fabula<\/a>, is \u201ctelling the story now because we need magical realism at these times.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tUrrejola was speaking a few weeks after Donald Trump<\/a>\u2019s U.S. forces captured Venezuelan President Nicol\u00e1s Maduro and brought him to America in a totally unexpected and bombastic move that has blown geopolitical conflict open. She addressed these political issues head on at a Berlinale<\/a> that has been in the spotlight for eschewing such issues. <\/p>\n

\n\tAllende has always said she wrote the novel, her first, partly as a broadside against patriarchal thinking. She said many years ago that being female in a patriarchal family, she was not expected to be a \u201cliberated\u201d person.<\/p>\n

\n\tFrancisca Alegr\u00eda<\/a>, who also show-ran the new TV show with Urrejola and Andr\u00e9s Wood, told us the world needs more Latin American projects from female writers and perspectives. \u201cThere are crucial canon books from Latin America but I feel that in re-reading them the perspective is a bit old school,\u201d she added. \u201cI\u2019m not interested in going back to older narratives. I hope we do something next that connects a bit more with these feminine aspects, to show new possibilities.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThe House of the Spirits is a family saga that charts the Trueba family through multiple generations, spanning violent social change and culminating in a crisis that hurls a tyrannical patriarch and his beloved granddaughter towards opposite sides of the fence. The show has been in the ether for nearly a decade, first with Hulu <\/a>and now Amazon<\/a>. It is the first time movie sales company FilmNation has premiered a TV series at an international festival.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe book is one of Latin America\u2019s biggest bestsellers of all time and catapulted Allende to literary superstardom in the 1980s. She is an EP on the Amazon version and the showrunners told us how daunted they were when first meeting one of their literary heroes. Turned out they needn\u2019t have been. <\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cShe was like, \u2018Girls, do whatever you have to\u2019,\u201d said Alegr\u00eda. \u201cShe wasn\u2019t precious about anything at all, with a very healthy distance in supporting us.\u201d <\/p>\n

\n\tThe trio of showrunners say Allende was happy to omit characters all together and gave them carte blanche to do what they had to with the source material, which wasn\u2019t easy to adapt into an eight-episode TV series that could easily veer off in multiple directions.<\/p>\n

\n\tHollywood version<\/p>\n

\n\tThe team may have been extra nervous given that the previous high-profile adaptation of The House of the Spirits was a 1993 movie in English starring Hollywood actors like Meryl Streep, Glenn Close and Jeremy Irons. <\/p>\n

\n\tThe film fared fairly poorly and was criticzed for casting mostly American actors in Latin American roles but the team behind the new TV show were less criticial, and they say Allende was pleased with it too.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cFor her it was an honor to have Hollywood make her novel,\u201d added Urrejola. \u201cShe loved the movie at the time and was really comfortable with it. That\u2019s why I feel she was more relaxed [about our version].\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tWood said the 1993 movie may have \u201clacked identity\u201d but was a \u201chuge milestone\u201d for the continent, which was \u201cincredible.\u201d Alegr\u00eda notes that while the film had a great cast, \u201cit didn\u2019t feel like my culture at all.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tUrrejola therefore added of the new TV version: \u201cFor this one it was really important to make it more Latin American and bring that specificity to the story.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tCasting Nicole Wallace<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"\"<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tImage: Amazon<\/p>\n

\n\tCasting was one of the biggest challenges \u201cin a good way,\u201d said Alegr\u00eda. The team wanted to find different actors at various ages to play the same characters through the generations, which she said needed to feel \u201cvery cohesive.\u201d \u201cWe wanted to cast from all over Latin America and Spain. We couldn\u2019t cast one at a time and needed to be thinking of looks. We needed a baby Blanca, and a Blanca of the 50s, and 60s and 70s.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tIn the end the team settled on talent including Alfonso Herrera\u00a0(Sense 8),\u00a0Dolores Fonzi\u00a0(Blondi) and Nicole Wallace\u00a0(Culpa M\u00eda).<\/p>\n

\n\tThe latter is an intriguing bit of casting. Wallace has fronted the hugely successful YA Culpables franchise for Amazon and could therefore bring a hefty teen audience to The House of the Spirits. <\/p>\n

\n\tAlegr\u00eda said \u201cthe fact we can connect with younger audiences is key for us\u201d but stressed that Wallace was chosen to play Clara del Valle because of her talent. \u201cShe brought this ethereal energy and softness to the character that is so needed and she understood the feelings and internal journey of Clara,\u201d added Urrejola. <\/p>\n

\n\tSpeaking at a Prime Video Showcase last week, Wallace, who was born in Spain, called the adaptation \u201cvery respectful.\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n

\n\tCasting was also a specific challenge for Urrejola, who not only show-runs The House of the Spirits but also plays one of the Blanca Truebas.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cIt was really challenging,\u201d she acknowledges of striking this balance. \u201cI struggled with it at the beginning and then it was a very interesting ride.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThe House of The Spirits launches on Prime Video worldwide on April 29 and has its world premiere this week in the Berlinale TV sidebar alongside the likes of Jack Thorne\u2019s Lord of the Flies and HBO Max Spain\u2019s\u00a0Ravalear.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Isabel Allende was both topical and prophetic with her view of a world dominated by patriarchy and patriarchal…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":486227,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[2574,64,63,79354,225319,2490,237401,134,246005,246006,246007,246008,246009,103842,15230,246010,427],"class_list":{"0":"post-486226","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-tv","8":"tag-amazon","9":"tag-au","10":"tag-australia","11":"tag-berlin","12":"tag-berlinale","13":"tag-donald-trump","14":"tag-efm","15":"tag-entertainment","16":"tag-fabula","17":"tag-fernanda-urrejola","18":"tag-filmnation","19":"tag-francisca-alegru00eda","20":"tag-isabel-allende","21":"tag-nicolas-maduro","22":"tag-prime-video","23":"tag-the-house-of-the-spirits","24":"tag-tv"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/486226","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=486226"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/486226\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/486227"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=486226"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=486226"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=486226"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}