Sky Rojo

Sky Rojo, the blockbuster recently renewed for a 2nd season on Netflix (coming July 23, 2021) by Álex Pina and Esther Martínez Lobato , creators of La casa de papel , tells the story of three prostitutes who escape from their pimp. The ones who cannot escape are Pina and Lobato, who turn each slap, each humiliation and each threat into a spectacle. "I'm going to cut off your arms and legs and leave only the holes," they say at one point.

Verónica Sánchez Plays Coral

Coral works at The Club Las Novias and sees her work as a means to escape from her dark past.

Sánchez has dabbled in film and television throughout her decorated career and previously led multiple series. She last appeared in the Spanish drama The Pier which ran for two seasons. The actress also starred in the shows 14 de abril. La República and El Caso. Crónica de sucesos.

Pina has insisted that her intention was not to make a documentary on trafficking in women. Not that clarification was needed. The first sentence of the series is the voice of Coral ( Verónica Sánchez ): “I am the favorite whore of a pimp, before I was a housewife and, before that, a biologist”. Sky Rojo is a fantasy of violence with Quentin Tarantino as the maximum reference (Martínez Lobato has confessed that he loves Tarantino and that is why he always puts a katana in his series).

Asier Etxeandia Plays Romeo

Romeo is the big boss at the club where Coral (Sánchez), Wendy (Espósito), and Gina (Prado) dance.

In 2020, Etxeandia appeared in the movie Nadie muere en Ambrosía and the television series La línea invisible. One of the biggest roles so far in his career was playing Raúl de la Riva in Velvet and Velvet Colección. He also appeared in the 2019 drama Pain and Glory which co-starred Antonio Banderas and Penélope Cruz.

“We did not win in the steel industry. We do not win in mining. But we win in whores ”, Romeo presumes when he explains that Spain is the first country in Europe in the consumption of prostitution. For that badass roll, Sky RojoIt is the most punk series that has been shot in many years. An anti-system job, not suitable for offended, but ideal for people who use words like "offended." For a spectator who satisfies some fantasy with that explicit and implicit violence against women (and only against them: the camera delights much more in blows when an actress receives them), or with the sexualization of the female body, or with humiliating sexual acts (again, unbalanced: there are hardly any masculine ones). These viewers exist today, for the same reason that after the second wave of feminism in the 1970s an unprecedented genre emerged, the slasher., who, under the subterfuge of empowering a final girl, slaughtered all the others half-naked. "People go to the club to fulfill their fantasies," explains a client. In a way, Sky Rojo is that club.

Enric Auquer Plays Christian

Christian works for Romeo as one of his henchmen.

Auquer has appeared in three Spanish television shows back-to-back called La línea invisible, Com si fos ahir, and Vida perfecta. He also had a main role in the action drama Eye for an Eye in 2019.

Esther Martínez Lobato has confessed that the news about trafficking in women saddens her and that she hopes that Sky Rojo will give visibility to this social scourge. The series does not have, nor does it need, the social texture suggested by its creators. In the third sequence, a female protagonist is beaten up and a pen pierces her chest. All this that takes place to the rhythm of a verbena ( Camarón's Legend of Time plays ) and the enthusiasm with which the camera rages its actresses cannot fail to be noticed. When the pimp's henchman, Moisés ( Miguel Ángel Silvestre ), interrogates the prostitutes in line and takes each of their breasts out, there is no possible justification except: "I do it because I can."

Lali Espósito Plays Wendy

Wendy also works at the sex club. She hopes it will help her make money so she can create a better life for herself.

Espósito’s resume is packed with roles on long-lasting television shows like My Lovely Hope, Only You, Candy Love, When You Smile, and Casi ángeles. She recently played the main character in the 2018 Argentine crime-thriller The Accused.

Shocking dialogues abound. "Do you want me to suck your eggs, darling?" Asks Verónica Sánchez in the second scene. "Would you be able to give me a blowjob right now and make it a masterpiece?", The pimp asks his subject in his job interview. Artificial lights also abound: neon, fluorescent tubes. Even sunlight is plastic. The production (the montage, the art direction and the staging) is, yes, extraordinary. And his sense of narrative economy is so fearless (in a flashbackof 50 seconds, Gina has time to tell how she went from living in Cuba to being kidnapped in the brothel and ending with a micropenis joke) that her 25-minute episodes fall, one after another, without the viewer being able to do anything to remedy it. Nor will you.

Yany Prado Plays Gina

Rounding out the trio is Gina, who isn’t as leery of her problematic situation compared to the other women. Gina is forced to work at the club.

Throughout her career, Prado has played leading characters or had guest arcs on multiple television shows in Cuba. Two of her most recognizable dramatic TV roles are Irma in La Reina Soy Yo and Génesis in The Two Lives of Estela Carrillo.

During her probationary period at the brothel, Romeo instructs Coral that she will represent sophistication: "You are what ordinary men aspire to after seeing a French movie." After a couple of chapters, one wonders what kind of French films Álex Pina and Esther Martínez Lobato have seen. But it also feels like that's the kind of description that was used in the script room to write the characters. Coral, Gina, and Wendy are able to escape their pimp, but Pina and Lobato keep telling them how to dress, what to do, and what to say. The chill it causes is not a moral issue, but a matter of good taste. For all this, Sky Rojo is the binge-worthy champion on 2021 (so far).

Miguel Ángel Silvestre Plays Moisés

Moises is Christian’s (Auquer) brother who recruits women for Romeo and brings them to the club.

Silvestre reunites with his fellow Velvet co-star Etxeandia in Sky Rojo. He also returns to Netflix after previously playing characters in crime drama Narcos and sci-fi mystery Sense8.

And as he did in Sense8 Miguel steals most of the scenes he's in. His presence is so imposing that even with his shirt on he still steals the oxygen from the rooms he's in.

You can see a lot more of Miguel Ángel Silvestre on social media and in the magazines (below).