An interview with the Venezuelan creator of the hit Netflix show, who based his show’s outrageous premise on real-life accounts
Last week, The Accident, Netflix’s number one non-English language show, or number two (in any language) in the United States was not Japanese or Korean or German. My fellow Venezuelan writer, Leonardo Padron, created the limited series made in Mexico, in Spanish. According to Variety, in its first week it commanded the ratings and destroyed its rivals with absolute ease, which is a surprise, since there was no promotion for this series. It only had a trailer in July and the rest became a word-of-mouth phenomenon, even if some of that word of mouth was ironic and mocking. Three weeks later the series performed even stronger.
The mockery came from the almost impossible-to-imagine premise: at a children’s party, a strong current of air lifts an inflated bouncer. Four children inside cannot escape, and it rises so high that it ends the lives of those three kids. This turns out to not be as wacky and crazy as you might think; it’s actually based in real account. But there’s no one better to comment on it than the creator of the series himself, who agreed to do an exclusive interview with BFG. I didn’t expected what followed, because it turns out that the plot is anything, but crazy.
For real?
“I am prone to looking for stories where the characters are in extreme situations, I thought that the ideal would be to appeal to those events. that changes your life in a second”, says Padron, a veteran with 35 years writing for television and almost 30 projects completed, mostly soap operas. “I wanted to plant, from the pilot, the great event that would detonate everything else. The contradictions of human nature, how does a family break up or come together after an event as extreme as the death of a child?”
He continues, “I wanted to turn up the volume by not focusing on one family but the death of three children, three families. There are common accidents, a car loses control, etc. We have seen that a lot. I wanted to look for an accident that occurred where in theory everything was under control, like a children’s party, and researching I found this idea of inflatable bouncers and when I saw the number of times this happens in the world, I thought: it is not implausible and second, has a level of spectacularity and contradiction: the color of these things versus the pain they can cause.”
Meaning: These things that sound so crazy, actually happen very frequently. When I researched and found dozens and dozens of videos, the images were horrible. And it is something that, certainly, I wonder, how come it doesn’t appear in the traditional media?
So the series begins with a tragic event that, while it may initially seem completely unreal, turns out to occur in real life. But here comes the big problem that makes The Accident the successful show that it is (although there are a lot of trolls on social media saying anything crazy about the series): when something like this happens, well, we assume it to be an accident, since only God can send a strong current of air that can lift one of these inflatables and create a catastrophe, unless you believe in conspiracies.
But in the Netflix series, hell, literal and Dantesque, breaks loose when initially one of the affected parents demands an investigation to find someone guilty of what happened. And without giving away too many spoilers, obviously there are rich and poor and the poor never have the upper hand.
But it turns out that the members of each of these families keep very dangerous secrets. There are murderers, gangsters, drugs everywhere, infidelity, corruption…and I know I’m missing other things, all really sinister. So these are the last three families in the world that should open their mouths and ask for an investigation of something, even the death of their children. However, they do it, the police deploy and a real process of implosion begins among themselves, like rats devouring one another; it’s a carnival of resentment, guilt, hatred, and thirst for revenge. To hell with the police, they will go after one another to find the cause of their pain.
There are ten episodes of dog-eat-dog: children, parents, everything convulses after the death of the children triggers and brings to the surface the dark truths of each character. Rich, poor, here in the end everyone is guilty of something, anything.
So if we put into the mix: the death of three children and the thirst for revenge of parents who have real demons hidden in their closets, the result is a show that can border on the morbid but is ultimately great television with a universe of characters who, although they do not generate any empathy, create an aura of intrigue that leads the audience to want to know the truth: Who is to blame?
“Success is not predictable”, says Padron, whose previous Netflix series, Pálpito (The Market Heart), 2022, was another global hit, “You have to maximize your experience. If I have learned anything, it is that the language of emotions makes it universal. Everything can be counted. From the most surreal and crazy plots to the most sordid, it all depends on how you tell it and the tone in which you craft the story. An example is ‘Dahmer’, a truly sinister guy, a sordid story but told in a way that generates fascination with entering the character’s psychological labyrinth.”
Although at times there is a hint of overacting in some of the characters and a lack of strength in one or another, the total result is a dish served to enjoy the pain of others. Now, the complex thing is that, in my personal case, after recently experiencing a loss in my family due to natural causes, there is this component of…if there were some form of justice, of amending everything, would I dare to use it?
The Accident is so full of plot twists that, those people you see in the pilot are not remotely what anyone can imagine, and that is the secret to the success of a story, regardless of whether it’s in your native language you want. be. And that’s where a series like The Accident succeeds. Although it is not the best series of all time, it’s the one that everyone is watching and talking about.
“There are several people who have told me on social networks that they have witnessed events like the one I tell about in The Accident, including a case where a girl died,” Padron says. “Perhaps what moved me most was a Venezuelan woman who wrote to me on social media, whose daughter recently died and how The Accident helped her in her process.” And that just proves that the show is no accident after all.