If this dystopian 2020 has taught us anything, it is better not to make plans. Because you can live in Los Angeles and plan your wedding in Valencia. And you may want to gather more than a hundred people from around the world for the banquet, including the recently landed mother-in-law from Australia. Until the pandemic forces Spain to decree the state of alarm on your wedding day, March 15 . It turns out that life had other plans and in them was not the party, but the confinement with your partner. And your mother-in-law. Wouldn't I give this tragicomedy for a script?

This is the starting point of the television series 'Canceled', starring María Albiñana . The funny thing - or terrible, depending on how you look at it - is that the Valencian actress has only had to play her own role. The role of his life: that of Maria canceling her wedding to Luke Eve, an Australian film director who came up with it, to cope with the confinement, start to record with the mobile a series about the (funny) misfortune. Yes, the drama of the wedding cancellation is as real as the shooting between the four walls of a Valencia apartment ... and with the mother-in-law playing herself.

«My family asked me how we could think of starting to record a series in full confinement. But it is that we are both creative; if we were bakers, we would have made bread ”, Maria now laughs. Furthermore, «it is a fictional series but with situations that we really live; and the personal touch is what will make us connect with people ».

How not to empathize with who has to stand at the airport to receive the mother-in-law in this way: "Do not hug us, we are not going to celebrate the wedding and we have to stay locked in a flat the three of us." "Everything came very big to us," confesses Maria. "We had a very bad time because there were many factors that we did not control: Luke's brother was trapped in the airport without being able to fly due to the coronavirus, I had not chosen to live with my mother-in-law Karen ... Suddenly, life dismantled us I lose a job and Luke can't release a movie .

So after the shock, Luke thought about transforming the experiences into a series. "I would give for many episodes," he released Maria one day. Why not? The couple wrote in a week the script for ten episodes they presented to Screen Australia, the Australian Government's funding agency. It took a few hours to get the green light on the project, so a week later they were filming the first episodes of a series that has already started airing on Facebook, and which seeks to make the leap to Australian television.

"Filming is being a challenge, because it would be normal to involve at least 50 people, and here are three of us," explains María. Including Karen, the mother-in-law, "who had never acted or touched a camera in her life . "

The shoot 'confined' without leaving home- obviously is not being easy. You have to choose the plan, think about the lighting, prepare the makeup and the wardrobe (with the few clothes you have at home, yes), rehearse ... "We filmed in chronological order and only stopped to live a normal life," says María. Normal life is eating, sleeping, and telematically meeting at dawn with the editing team scattered around the world. "We must reconcile the time zones of the people who help us from the United States, Argentina and Australia."

In this "crazy" project, there were two ways, as the Valencian actress admits: "Bringing it to comedy and the histrionic or telling from truthfulness the tidal wave of lived emotions , from crying to confusion to laughing." They chose the second. "It was that we even had a mother-in-law forced to live with us, making history more special if possible." Why invent anything?

By the way, what about the wedding? «We thought about delaying the date and celebrating it in October, but what if there was a regrowth? We'd be the only ones to cancel a wedding twice! ”Maria jokes. So the new date will be just for a year later: March 15, 2021. Of course, by then Maria and Luke will celebrate the wedding ... and they have been married for a year. "Our anniversary does not move: March 20, 2020." Because life has its plans, but we choose how to live them.

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