American Masters

- I became interested not just in a straight factual biography, but in a novel.

A novel is the truth according to character.

It's the truths according to a variety of characters.

You have the little points that are the facts you can't change, but how did you get from here to there?

And that's the experience of the character.

(gentle music) I wanted to do Minerva 'cause she was the plucky one full of courage and ideology, the heroine.

And I thought, Patria is going to be difficult for me 'cause she was so religious and I didn't have an ounce of that heavy duty Catholicism.

She's not gonna come to me.

And she came the easiest.

Minerva was so fierce, it was hard to get inside her.

And Patria was wide open.

And Mara Teresa, we talk about domesticity.

I needed one of the characters to be the one that told you what they have for breakfast, what boy had come around.

The little things that give texture and realism to a novel.

(upbeat music)