#alecmediawednesday

[holisticalecsecareanu]

Bonus Alec Secareanu Media Wednesday!

We're switching it up this week, gente, and doing Alec Media Wednesday because there's NEW CONTENT!

AND new photos and he's SO BEAUTIFUL in them! I do love him in black and white photography!

Here's an interview with like5.ro, an online lifestyle and entertainment magazine where he discusses all things #spymaster.

He also talks about the differences between working in Romania versus a project in the UK and he's come SO FAR with his diplomacy, I'm SO PROUD of him!

Here is the link, which is in Romanian:

And because I could NOT get this particular site to translate at all, no matter how much I right-clicked, I've translated the whole thing under the cut:

Interview in English

xclusivAlec Secăreanu: "On the sets outside, the atmosphere is much warmer than here."

Alec Secăreanu: "On the sets outside, the atmosphere is much warmer than here."

You can watch Alec Secăreanu in the miniseries "The Veil" available exclusively on Disney+

Like5 Team

July 29, 2024

For Alec Secăreanu, the milestone of his career is "God's Own Country" (2017), the film in which he has Josh O'Connor ("The Crown", "The Challengers") as his co-star. The meeting with the director Francis Lee took place 2 years after the performance signed by Alexandra Pirici and Manuel Pelmus, included in the program of the Venice Biennale in 2014, an experience that gave Secăreanu rigor, discipline and a creative mindset to position himself as professional actor. Alec Secăreanu also worked as a casting director and had gained the comfort of approaching directors as a colleague. Roles followed in a series of international productions such as "The Saint" (2017), "Baptiste" (2019), "Strike Back" (2020), as well as the iconic character Victor Godeanu, the spy in the original HBO miniseries "Spy/Master ” (2023).

In the latest production "The Veil", a miniseries created by Steven Knight, available exclusively on Disney+, Alec Secăreanu plays the role of a Bulgarian spy, Emir. "The Veil" is a kind of American spy series adapted for a European context, about which the Romanian actor declares: "it is anchored in the current problems in Europe, it is a very good showcase with a relevant story in an area with peoples at war dealing with refugees, with terrorists infiltrating Europe and it is interesting to see what is behind the secret organizations and how they collaborate in the European space to dismantle a terrorist plan".

An exclusive interview with Alec Secăreanu signed by Cătălin Anchidin for Like5 about the experience on the sets of international productions and the miniseries "The Veil", available exclusively on Disney+.

CONSIDERING YOUR RECENT PRODUCTIONS, FROM “SPY/MASTER” TO “THE VEIL”, DID YOU SPECIALIZE IN SPY ROLES?

I am very glad that I have reached a point where I can be part of genre projects... Because I grew up with action, thriller, mystery stories. Basically, this is one of the reasons why I wanted to become an actor. I've been a fan of genre films since I was a child, and since then I've wanted to be part of the stories I saw in the movies, and this desire has remained somewhere deep inside me. Now I feel lucky to be a part of genre projects, mostly because I get to see how much work actually goes behind them.

DO YOU HAVE A MODEL, A REFERENCE WHEN YOU BUILD YOUR CHARACTER OR WHEN YOU READ THE SCRIPT?

When I first read a script in which I am going to act, I have a very strange feeling about my character, because unlike all the others, which I visualize very clearly in my mind, mine is very difficult for me to see . At first reading, the intentions and motivations of the other characters are much clearer to me than those of my character, and mine initially seems unknown to me, like a blank canvas. I feel like I'm at a painting exhibition, and of all the works on display, the only empty frame is mine. This is the zero point, which honestly creates fear for me at the beginning, but with rehearsals, discussions with the director, colleagues, things are building. I think it's important to have common benchmarks and references with the director and fellow actors to make the convention clearer for everyone. Then documenting and working individually helps me to have my own compass, not to anchor myself too strongly in patterns and not to stop investigating.

HOW MUCH DO YOU DEFEND YOUR CHARACTER? AND HERE I'M INCLUDING THE RELATIONSHIP WITH THE DIRECTOR.

I defend him, of course, because I consider him my own and I have to be on his side to some extent to understand his motivation and purpose, but I try not to forget that I have to serve the story and the relationship with the director helps me to better understand the context in which my character runs his route. It's a relationship that has to be based on trust and I try to calibrate myself with the director in the vision of my character. In film sometimes directors are more willing to take creative risks than in series. I have worked in projects where the directors were also the authors of the script, and sometimes a creative laboratory-like environment can develop, where experiments, new attempts, even changes are allowed.

In the relationship with the director I try to make sure that I have asked myself the right questions about the character and his role in the scene. Some answers regarding motivation are just between me and the director, the important thing is to make sure that the option is clear and serves the story as he wants to tell it. I can only defend my character relative to the other characters, but at the point where my options no longer serve the scene or are no longer relevant to the economy of the story, then I have to make sure I calibrate. This is where the director comes to the rescue, so I think we are more like working partners and defending the character together.

HOW DID ALL THE VEIL STORY HAPPEN?

When I first read the script, noticing that my character is Albanian and there are sequences where he speaks in his native language, I thought that it would be quite difficult for me to learn the language. They tried to calm me down by telling me that they were thinking of changing his nationality. Initially I took it as good news, myself hoping that they would make him Romanian, but they decided quite quickly that he could be Bulgarian. Apart from the Danube water levels, I was not at all familiar with the Bulgarian language, but I was surprised to see how many common words we have in our vocabulary. We started filming in February, in the middle of the desert, somewhere in Nevsehir, Turkey. I've never felt cold like that in my life. At temperatures of -15/-20 degrees, on some days we couldn't film, actually, because of the cold, because even the filming equipment has its limits. After a month spent in difficult shooting conditions, I was impressed by how well the film crew came together. Being all staying in the middle of the desert at the same hotel, a few kilometers from the nearest town I think helped maintain the friendly atmosphere. It's overwhelming when you see such a large film crew even for sequences of two people in a car sometimes. And in the second part of filming, the weeks spent in Paris made the desert frost of Turkey seem so far away. I really enjoyed meeting Elizabeth Moss, she is also one of the producers, the discussions we had helped me integrate into the project immediately. I really appreciate his work and I'm so glad we worked together.

YOU HAVE A QUITE IMPORTANT INTERNATIONAL PORTFOLIO AND YOU HAVE EXPERIENCE. TELL ME 5 MAJOR DIFFERENCES OF HOW YOU WORK IN ROMANIA VS. OUTSIDE.

I think the major difference is that in outside productions all the rules are much clearer for everyone, from the beginning, the working conditions are fair and regardless of the project there is a base of rules accepted by all. They have a system that respects everyone. That's probably why it's a much warmer atmosphere than here, anyway. Even in productions with a lower budget, you don't feel any problems, that is, no one comes to put them in your arms, with nerves, with stress, something that I have experienced many times in Romania. Outside there are no major differences from one production to another, maybe you see them in the size of the caravan, but the people are just as polite.

It's true that in the last projects I shot in Romania, the atmosphere was much warmer than what I was used to before, but I don't know if it's just my impression, because the production relates differently to me as an actor , or even actively working to improve the work environment. The more I talk to fellow Romanian actors, I'm afraid that the positive experience I had on set here might be an isolated one, and unfortunately I think things can't improve until the actors want to be treated fairly with us too. I felt safer on sets abroad. That's because they have a well-established system and a union that protects the actors and manages them when, for example, they have a scene that involves sexual physicality or a fight scene. The preparation procedures are very clear and help the actors to better understand what they are going to do, because moments of vulnerability should be handled delicately.

Thanks for reading, everyone!