Kate del Castillo, from 'La Reina del Sur' to Hollywood honcho

Kate Del Castillo is back in action.

The Mexican actress, who has grown alongside antihero Teresa Mendoza in Telemundo’s hit drama “La Reina del Sur” (Queen of the South) for more than a decade, is reprising her role on the small screen after a 3½-year wait. Season 3 premiered Oct. 18 (9 EDT/PDT) on Telemundo; new episodes air weeknights.

Fans shouldn’t be surprised Season 3 took this long. There was an eight-year gap between its 2011 debut and the Season 2 premiere. “We’re just a very ambitious series,” Castillo says. Still, fans are “very intense and passionate” about “La Reina,” she adds with a warning: “Be prepared for everything that’s coming.”

Season 3 opens four years later, with Mendoza serving time in an American prison for the murders of three drug enforcement agents. Once freed, she forms new allies and enemies, and risks her life throughout Latin America, hoping to reunite with her daughter, Sofia (Isabella Sierra) and kissing her life as a fugitive goodbye.

Castillo says the new season continues to unravel Mendoza's multifaceted character, who rose from humble beginnings to a drug-lord legend. “Teresa is this powerful, street-smart woman,” she says.

Castillo says she and Mendoza share some “fortunate and unfortunate” traits and qualities. After all, as actors, “we are called to do a role and give a little bit of our personality in some way or the other.”

“We both love men, we both love tequila, we are borrachas (drunks),” Castillo jokes. (Castillo runs her own tequila business, Honor.)

“We curse all the time, but we love with a passion and we are protective.”

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The daughter of telenovela actor Eric Del Castillo, the 50-year-old  grew up in this industry. “I’ve done it since I can remember,” Castillo says.

She got her start at a young age with leading roles in telenovelas including 1991’s “Muchachitas,” 2000’s “Ramona” and 2001’s “El Derecho De Nacer.” Then she ventured out with recurring roles in English-language shows including Showtime’s “Weeds” and CW’s “Jane the Virgin.” Her first Hollywood roles were in Gregory Nava's “Bordertown,” starring Jennifer Lopez, and "Under the Same Moon," alongside America Ferrera, Eugenio Derbez and the late Mexican actor Carmen Salinas in 2007.

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“I say now that I would be an actress regardless of who my father is, but I will never know that for sure,” Castillo says. “All I know is that I owe my professionalism, the love and the respect I have for my craft to my father – not because he taught me to, but because I saw how much love he put into every single thing that he made and how much he sacrificed.”

But her father, 88, didn’t want Castillo to be an actor. “He just didn’t want me to be rejected,” she says.

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The passion Castillo has for her work trumps rejection any day. “For me, to be a successful woman is to live out whatever you love, and that’s what I do,” Castillo says.

Aside from the international success of “La Reina,” a co-production between Telemundo and Netflix that also spawned a 2016-21 English version on USA Network, Castillo stars in another Netflix drama, “Ingobernable.” She also produced the 2017 Netflix documentary “The Day I Met El Chapo,” which followed her meeting with actor Sean Penn and the now-incarcerated drug cartel leader Joaquin Guzman.

In 2019, Castillo launched her own production company, Cholawood, to secure better roles than those she was being offered. Cholawood is currently in post-production of "A Beautiful Lie," a modern take on Leo Tolstoy's "Anna Karenina," for ViX+. Cholawood also co-produced the action-thriller movie, "Hunting Ava Bravo," which premiered earlier this year on Amazon Prime Video and Roku. Castillo stars in both projects.

She's also filming "A Cuban Girl's Guide to Tea and Tomorrow," based on the rom-com by Laura Taylor Namey, and starred in a new Peacock dark comedy, "Til Jail Do Us Part" (now streaming).

Castillo, who's lived in the U.S. for over 20 years, has proved more than a telenovela actor, who can go beyond "La Reina del Sur," and shows no signs of stopping her foray into Hollywood.

"Passion is what we have as Latinos," she says. "We have to work very hard in order for people to get to know us."

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This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: 'La Reina del Sur': Kate del Castillo on Teresa Mendoza, new season