Diksha Sundriyal
On the surface, Netflix’s ‘A Man on the Inside’ is a story about a theft case in a retirement home. A private investigator named Julie Kovalenko is approached by a client who asks her to investigate a retirement home called Pacific View, where their parent has been situated and where their family heirloom has gone missing. Because she cannot inspect a retirement home by herself, Julie needs someone to do it for her. This is where Charles Nieuwendyk comes in. Retired and recently widowed, Charles is looking for something that fuels purpose in his life, and going undercover as a spy seems like the most exciting thing that could happen to him. While his enthusiasm for the job is good news for Julie, it also means that she will have to train him harder than a younger recruit. Their dynamic is made more interesting by the fact that there is a real story behind it.
Julie’s Character is Loosely Inspired by a Real Chilean PI
The inspiration for ‘A Man on the Inside’ comes from a Chilean documentary named ‘The Mole Agent.’ Directed by Maite Alberdi, the film follows an 86-year-old, Sergio Chamy, who goes undercover in a retirement home after he answers a call in the newspaper by a private investigator named Rómulo Aitken. While most of the film centers on Sergio’s experience in the retirement home and the lives of the residents, Rómulo appears repeatedly throughout the movie. He is mostly behind the scenes, asking Sergio to deliver reports on him and advising him on how to handle the case. He even presents himself as Sergio’s godson and visits him in the retirement home.
While it is fun to see a novice Sergio learning the ropes of going undercover, Rómulo is a more seasoned investigator. Before he opened his own PI firm, he worked as a federal police investigator for many years, which brought him the perspective and experience that allowed him to shift to the career of a PI. The nature of Rómulo’s job attracted filmmaker Maite Alberdi, who was looking for an interesting subject matter in her cases. And then, the case of Sonia Perez came to Rómulo, and the call was put out for an elderly person who could go undercover in the retirement home for three months.
The case and Sergio interested Alberdi, and that gave rise to the documentary. Rómulo was happy that the documentary turned its entire attention towards Sergio because the nature of his job would make it preferable for him to remain in the shadows. Since the documentary’s success, the PI has been just as secretive about his life as he was before. He is barely active on social media, which leaves little to no information to be gleaned about him. His PI business, on the other hand, is active and thriving.
Mike Schur Made Significant Changes to the PI’s Role
After watching ‘The Mole Agent,’ Mike Schur explored the idea of turning the documentary into a TV series, but he knew that it would mean expanding the characters that haven’t received as much space in the film. Several changes were made to the premise, from the story’s setting (which is moved to San Francisco) to the crime and the involvement of the PI who hires the elderly spy. We don’t get to know much about Rómulo in the documentary, but Schur wanted the audience to be more familiar with the PI in ‘A Man on the Inside.’ For starters, Rómulo was turned into Julie, who has a very different background from her real-life counterpart. Moreover, while Rómulo appears sporadically in the film, Schur makes Julie a prominent character by having her pose as Charles’ fake daughter so she can contact him while he is undercover.
There is also a greater scope of interaction between them, which opens the space for more comedic situations while also allowing the audience a better look into the PI’s work and her motivations. For actress Lilah Richcreek Estrada, the material in the script was enough to gain an insight into the character. Still, the actress worked up a background story for Julie to know why her character is a certain way and what she actually aims to achieve through the case. While much of it is written out in subtext, it was very helpful for Estrada to play the role and make her more sympathetic and relatable to the audience. This way, she kept the realism of Rómulo Aitken’s work and role in the documentary while bringing her own spin to the character.
Read More: Rómulo Aitken: Where is the Private Investigator Now?
