Queen of the South not your usual rags-to riches saga
J.R. EWING’S reputation as the biggest, baddest business hombre ever to hit the city of Dallas is secure. But it’s worth noting that there is a formidable new power player in town.
Her name is Teresa Mendoza. She’s the dona of the largest drug cartel in Latin America and the United States — and she has made Dallas her base of operations. They call her ‘‘Queen of the South’’.
Hers was a perilous ragstoriches saga: Naive Mexican girl falls for a drug runner, becomes the target of hit men (but cheats death . . . and a rape attempt), thrives as a drug mule, then climbs through the cartel ranks, ultimately calling the shots as the most powerful woman in a tough man’s world.
Queen of the South — a brutal, bloody, badtothebone drama series — tells the story of how she became that criminal ‘‘queenpin.’’
The series stars Alice Braga in a chameleon role that most actresses would kill to get a crack at. Over the course of the 13episode first season, Teresa goes from unworldly and vulnerable to cultured and dangerous.
Through it all, Teresa never loses her humanity. She didn’t choose to live in this criminal world, after all. It’s an existence that was thrust upon her.
Complex character
Teresa is a role that Braga dreamed of playing for years.
‘‘I read the book that inspired this show [La Reina del Sur ,by Spanish novelist Arturo PerezReverte] eight years ago,’’ she says. ‘‘A friend gave me the book and told me there’s a really beautiful story here, with a wonderful journey for a female character.
‘‘So I read it and fell in love with it, wished I could play this character onscreen, but at that time Eva Mendes was going to do a film of it.’’
That movie never came to fruition.
Eventually, once there was a movement to make an Englishlanguage version for television, the producers approached Braga, whose films include City of God
(2002), I Am Legend (2007) and
Elysium (2013).
Braga didn’t hesitate.
‘‘This is very special,’’ she says. ‘‘Teresa is a strong woman. I love that she is someone who was born in very poor life circumstances, but she is a resourceful woman and a resilient woman who never allows herself to become a victim.
‘‘It’s also a very interesting acting challenge to make a character with many bad qualities likeable, to make her someone people will root for. Yes, Teresa is a drug queen, but she’s a different kind of drug queen. She never does something evil just for the sake of doing something evil.’’ Season one of Queen of the
South premieres at 7.30pm on Thursday, on Box Set (SKY Channel 9). Season two premieres next Thursday.