This podcast explains the crazy shoot that brought Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman together, and portrays the "Spain is doing well" era like no other.

During the summer of 2000, Spain experienced one of the most unusual film shoots in its recent history: the production of The Others , starring Nicole Kidman and Tom Cruise at the height of their fame. The arrival of Hollywood's most high-profile couple transformed Madrid into an international film set, amid surreal demands, cultural disagreements, and a political climate still resonating with José María Aznar's "Spain is doing well."

The third season of the podcast Delirios de España , hosted by journalist Juan Sanguino and produced by Podium Podcast, takes a detailed look at this unexpected chapter in Spanish cinema. Across twelve episodes, the program reviews the organized chaos that accompanied the filming of Spain's most commercially successful film and reveals how a young Alejandro Amenábar managed to pull off a project that seemed doomed to collapse before it even began.

The careful narration of the historical context and the filming of the movie, which was originally going to be called The House , becomes a sound x-ray of an era marked by economic euphoria and the cultural clash between the Spanish industry and the Hollywood machinery, at a time when the national cinematography wanted to leave behind the burden of the "crisis of Spanish cinema."

Towards a new cinema

In addition to Amenábar himself, the program features key figures such as producer Fernando Bovaira, director of photography Javier Aguirresarobe, and costume designer Sonia Grande, who share anecdotes about filming suspended due to delays, scripts with dozens of changes demanded by Kidman, and the pressure of working with an American powerhouse like Harvey Weinstein , who served as co-producer. Of course, this all happened long before the #MeToo movement.

The new season of Delirios de España not only reconstructs a shoot riddled with obstacles, but also reflects how The Others symbolized the peak of an ambitious Spanish cinema , capable of competing head-to-head with the American industry. But it also portrays the moment when that creative bubble began to deflate, just as Tom Cruise was strolling through Madrid, oblivious to the storm brewing over his marriage.

Published weekly (its fifth episode was released this Tuesday), Sanguino's production delves into the cinema, politics, and pop culture that intersected in one of the most unprecedented deliriums of the turn of the century.