Exclusive Interview
Prime Video
What To Know
- There’s a steamy fight scene between Marfil and Sebastián in Drawn Together.
- Ester Expósito learned real fighting techniques from Hugo Diego Garcia.
- The actors contributed creatively to the script through improvisation.
Anyone familiar with Mercedes Ron‘s adaptations knows that the author is famous for creating some seriously tense scenes — in the romantic sense and otherwise. Drawn Together is no different. The forced proximity trope is in full force when wealthy heiress Marfil Cortés (Ester Expósito) has to live with her new bodyguard, Sebastián Moore (Hugo Diego Garcia).
After being released by her unidentified kidnappers, a stubborn Marfil asks Sebastián to teach her how to fight, and their training puts them in even closer quarters. Sebastián is determined not to cross any lines. When he tries to put an end to their sessions, Marfil gives him one last challenge. If she can land a hit on him, she gets three hours of his personal time for a date.
“That was intense. We spent one or two weeks just focusing on fight scenes in the studio, right? There was a lot of time in this room,” Garcia said in a joint interview with his costar. “Specifically, it was very technical because we had a whole choreography.”
He continued, “We had two cameras also, I believe, and they gave us space there to improvise and have freedom, make jokes, and that was funny. I have good memories of that.”
Real life imitated the movie in that Expósito and Garcia developed their characters’ chemistry through fight training. “We had a lot of time to rehearse, so that was great. It really helped, and also we felt like we were similar to our characters,” Garcia recalled.
Like Sebastián instructs Marfil, Garcia taught Expósito fighting skills. “He was good because he’s professional,” Expósito said.
“Just good? Just average?” Garcia jokingly chimed in.
“He was a boxing trainer, and he’s done it his whole life, so it was very interesting that I was learning because I had never done that before. So I was learning in real time,” continued Expósito, who Garcia says was a natural student.
Garcia and Expósito’s improvisational approach to the scene carried over throughout the rest of the movie. The actors said that they also bonded over coming up with ideas for the script. “We added things. We deleted things,” Garcia said. “We’re almost directors in a sense, right? And writers.”
Expósito added, “Yeah, we worked a lot on the dialogue and the text,” laughing and joking that they should’ve directed the film.
The sparring scene also got the stamp of approval from Ron. It was her favorite scene from the book that came to life. “Yes, I love so much when Sebastian is teaching Marfil how to self-defend herself,” she said. “I think it’s really well done. It’s funny, and the tension between them… It’s amazing.”
Drawn Together, Streaming Now, Prime Video