A beauty contest as the setting of a political thriller set in the late 1980s Mexico is the topic of a new Spanish-language series.
"Señorita 89" recently began streaming on Pantaya, the streaming service for Spanish-language series and movies.
It centers around the contest for Miss Mexico, one of the most important beauty pageants in the country.
But the contest takes a dark turn.
The series follows Concepción, the woman in charge of welcoming 32 women finalists, one from each of the Mexican states, to La Encantada, her glamorous estate, where they prepare for three months for the pageant's final.
From afar, La Encantada seemed to be a place full of beauty and glamour until what's really taking place is revealed. What at first is expected to be a journey toward a crown ends as a fight for survival, as the women are welcomed by a team of surgeons, trainers and makeup artists.
This is not a series about “a group of young women put together in a beautiful place, [where] they would chew their head off for a crown,” said Lucía Puenzo, the showrunner and director of "Señorita 89."
Puenzo said the series is set in the fictional La Encantada estate, where the women are locked away. She said the estate is shown as a place of power, where all the most powerful men of Mexico, presidents from across Latin America and the United States would go. "And they wanted young women to be there, kind of in the corner. And that’s where the real story is.” said Puenzo, who's the daughter of Oscar-winning director Luis Puenzo (“The Official Story").
The series was written by women — Puenzo, María Renée Prudencio and Tatiana Mereñuk. Puenzo highlighted their emphasis was on steering away from stereotypes about females and beauty pageants and shining a light on the machismo that co-existed at the time with no repercussion.
They also wanted to highlight the diversity of women and points of view.
"We made a core story where we have [contestants] from all the corners of Mexico, and they’re tremendously different, and this is their story also, and they have their voices there,” Puenzo said.
The cast includes an all-star group of multigenerational women. Ilse Salas (“The Good Girls”), Ximena Romo (“This Is Not Berlin”), Bárbara López (“Unstoppable”), Leidi Gutierrez (“Chicuarotes”), Coty Camacho (“Unstoppable”), and Natasha Dupeyrón (“The House of Flowers”).
When Salas, who plays the role of Concepción, was first approached to be a part of the series, she rejected it, since she wasn't interested in another conventional beauty pageant series. It wasn’t until Puenzo called her to explain the show that she agreed to come on board.
“I used to judge the beauty contests very harshly but also the women who participated in them as frívolas (frivolous) … and after doing this show, I realized that I was being unfair with them," Salas said. "Sometimes, that’s the only way to get out of their hard reality."
Puenzo is a well-known Argentinian producer and screenwriter. While working in Chile on another production, “La Jauria” (The Pack), with Oscar-winning producer brothers Pablo (who directed the 2016 drama "Jackie" with Natalie Portman) and Juan de Dios Larraín, she was offered a chance to work with them again. From the beginning, the goal was to unveil the prejudice against beauty pageants.
The original series is a production of Fabula, Fremantle, Pantaya and Starz Play.
"Señorita 89" premiered Feb. 27 on Pantaya in the United States and Puerto Rico and Starz Play in Latin America and Spain. The first season has eight episodes and it's in Spanish with English subtitles.
Follow NBC Latino on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.
