Mireia Oriol vindicates the representation of autism in Atresplayer's 'Ágata y Lola': "A neurodivergent person can contribute a lot"

Ágata y Lola will arrive this July 12 on atresplayer before its subsequent premiere on Antena 3. The police fiction is starring Eva Martín and Mireia Oriol, who plays Ágata, a documentalist within the autistic spectrum who will form a tandem with the impulsive inspector Lola to solve different cases.

On the occasion of the premiere, Oriol has defended the value of neurodivergence in work environments. "A neurodivergent person can contribute a lot to a team, especially of neurotypical people", she stated in an interview with Europa Press, emphasizing that it is not only about talking about inclusion, but about building "more diverse work teams".

The actress explained that preparing the character allowed her to dismantle many prejudices. After researching and talking with people within the autistic spectrum, she understood that "they do not lack empathy or emotionality, but have another way of processing the information of life". "It's like you have another instruction book", she summarized, insisting that emotions are simply expressed differently.

Precisely for this reason, she confessed that one of her greatest concerns was to offer a respectful representation. Oriol criticized that many fictions have shown autistic people as "more robotic or lacking empathy" characters, in addition to portraying them as "very intelligent, but half disconnected from everything". In her opinion, "it is a very reduced vision of what it really is".

To prepare for the role, the actress read the book Pues no se te nota and collaborated with the foundations Aprenem Autisme and Menela, where she was able to talk with therapists and neurodivergent people. She was also interested in the series that they considered better represented and highlighted As We See It, created by neurodivergent people, compared to other productions that, according to what they told her, resort to superficial stereotypes.

Oriol also reflected on the distance that still exists between on-screen representation and everyday reality. In her opinion, there remains "a lot of fear of the unknown" and a tendency to judge those who are different before understanding how they live and process the world, a situation she hopes to help change with Ágata y Lola.

The fiction is a production of Atresmedia in collaboration with Portocabo. The series, composed of eight 50-minute episodes, completes its cast with Antonio Garrido, Eva Fernández, Francis Lorenzo, Xosé A. Touriñán, Monti Castiñeiras, Darío Loureiro, Celia Freijeiro, Miguel Canalejo and Sara Sanz, among others.