For Natalia Beristáin, showrunner of Midnight Family, one of Apple TV+’s newest hits, showcasing the reality of Mexico City was one of the most important parts of the show. Beristáin, who is Mexican, talked to Fangirlish about making Mexico a character of the show, making characters three-dimensional, and the absurd fact that there are only 100 government-operated ambulances in Mexico City, for a population of 10 million people.
“It was one of the things that we had in mind from the beginning, since we started to develop the idea of making this premise into a series,” Beristáin said about the setting and about the treatment of the city. “We really wanted Mexico City to be another character.” But not just that, she shared, the idea was that “it was a city of Mexico narrated by chilangos, by those of us who live and inhabit this city.”
Beristáin’s reasoning was obvious. “I think that what happens a lot with Mexico and with countries in Latin America, that the world is used to seeing us as we have been portrayed, above all, by American or European eyes, right? And, well, it is a foreign view, to not put another adjective.”
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How to break out of that was the challenge, according to Beristáin. “How do we narrate ourselves from here? How do we put a city so chaotic, so beautiful, so ugly, so dirty, so fun in a series? And the ambulance route allowed us to explore that geography.”
It wasn’t about just that, it was about showcasing the people of Mexico that aren’t just the same kind of stories we always see. “Drug trafficking exists, violence exists, all of that is there, we are not going to turn a blind eye. But there is also more than that. We are much more than that.”
And so are the characters, who Beristáin wanted to explore in their complexity as well as their heroism. “They’re not just man-made or archetypal characters. They have depth and they have flaws. And they make mistakes. And they’re also monetizing the life and death of other people. It’s very complex. Because they’re also characters that we’re not used to seeing on television.”
The idea, for Beristáin, was to explore the characters through the stories, and not the other way around. “This was something very thought out and discussed in the writing room without a doubt, but it is enhanced by falling back on this incredible cast,” the Midnight Family showrunner told us, adding, “We believe that is where the universality of a show that talks about something as specific as the public health system in Mexico City lies.”
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“This is what the characters experience: trying to pay the rent, I learned this trade but I want to dedicate myself to something else, discovering yourself as a woman in the midst of the chaos of your work but wanting to aspire to more, this son who is not fully cared for by the family, not for lack of affection but for lack of time because you have to pay the rent, all those things that any of us can face, for us it was the way that this show that has this very specific macro context of public health could build bridges to other attitudes, and for me that will always be more important.”
Just as it was important for Beristáin to have a woman at the center of this story. “It was one of the first decisions we made when it came to transferring the premise of the documentary to a series. In the documentary there is no female character, the sister appears in a scene almost from behind and that gave us reason to say, ‘hey, of course we are interested in having a woman at the center in a global narrative of the 21st century’, because we have always been there, it is not that we suddenly appeared now, but the narrative that we have been accustomed to does not put women at the center and for me as a woman, as a director, as a mother it was important that although it is an ensemble at the center, the backbone is Marigaby and all the things that she goes through.”
All episodes of Midnight Family are now available to stream on Apple TV+.
