Playing the anti-hero Teresa Mendoza in the hit Telemundo drama “La Reina del Sur” has become second nature to its star, Kate del Castillo. In a way, her eventful career as a producer, actress, and businesswoman reflects her character's upstream fight against the patriarchy, without guns or contraband.
Speaking via Zoom from the UK, where he is working on the independent film "A Cuban Girl's Guide to Tea & Tomorrow" with director Katherine Fairfax Wright, del Castillo reflected on the parallels between handling the challenges of his multifaceted career with which Mendoza faces. in the long-awaited third season of the show, which premieres October 18 on Telemundo. “La Reina” is a co-production between Telemundo and Netflix, which has the international rights to the series.
Creators: Lina Uribe, Dario Vanegas, Roberto Stopello
Stars: Kate del Castillo, Humberto Zurita, Alejandro Calva
The new season sees the titular The Queen taking on South America's brutal male-dominated cartels once again, four years after US authorities convicted her of the murders of three anti-drug agents. The season opens with a furious Mendoza inside a cell where she has been in solitary confinement for 1,493 days.
Revisiting her alter-ago on her screen required some adjustments, given Mendoza's history. Based on the novel of the same name by Spanish journalist Arturo Pérez-Reverte, the series has been Telemundo's most ambitious series production to date, culminating in an International Emmy Award for Season 2.
“La Reina” emerged as a huge success for Telemundo in 2011 when the network began experimenting with shorter drama series designed for multiple seasons instead of the traditional telenovela format that has been the staple of Spanish-language television. Season 2 of “The Queen” came seven years later in 2019. Season 3 spans 60 episodes.
This time around, unlike previous iterations that saw Teresa Mendoza moving across Europe and other parts of the world, season 3 shows only Latin America. The lens was carried out in places as iconic as the Salar de Uyuni in Bolivia, Machu Picchu in Peru, the glaciers of Argentina and Santa Marta in Colombia.
As she has done before, del Castillo worked nearly eight months on the series, and this season was filmed in some 300 locations in Colombia, Bolivia, Peru, Argentina and Mexico. In addition to keeping up with the hectic schedule, the production had to follow strict COVID protocols.
“We were very afraid that the production would have to shut down at some point, but we were lucky,” del Castillo recalled. Ironically, she contracted the virus once she returned to her home in Los Angeles.
Revisiting her alter-ago on her screen required some adjustments, given Mendoza's history.
“The hardest thing was losing weight. No one asked me, but I thought someone in solitary confinement for years would surely lose weight," she noted, adding: "That was a challenge, she wasn't eating anything!"
The third season of “La Reina del Sur” was written by Lina Uribe and Darío Vanegas. Directors included Carlos Bolado, Carlos Villegas and Claudia Pedraza. Marcos Santana, who stepped down from his previous role as president of Telemundo Global Studios in January, serves as executive producer and showrunner for the series, alongside executive producers Ximena Cantuarias of Telemundo and AG. Rodrigo Guerrero Studies.
In the nearly twelve years since “La Reina” made del Castillo a star in the US, the actress who first made her mark as a soap opera star in her native Mexico has also starred in the Netflix drama series “ Ungovernable". She produced the Netflix documentary "The Day I Met El Chapo," about her fateful 2016 trip with actor Sean Penn to meet now-imprisoned drug cartel leader Joaquín Guzmán at her hideout. She also launched her own production company, Cholawood Productions, and starred in several films.
In 2019, Cholawood signed a first-look deal with Endemol Shine Boomdog, a division of Mexico City-based Banijay Americas. She holds meetings “every day” with her Cholawood partners, Carmen Cervantes and Jessica Maldonado, who run the company. “We are Latinas, we are women, so we have to stay on top of things,” she said.
Cholawood is now in post-production on "A Beautiful Lie," a contemporary Spanish-language version of Leo Tolstoy's "Anna Karenina," which she produced with Endemol Shine Boomdog. The six-episode series filmed in Mexico City earlier this year with Del Castillo as the lead.
“We are retelling a story with strong female characters where infidelity is a main element. We will also address various mental health issues, including postpartum depression and the sometimes disastrous impact that social media can have.
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