Motherhood has been a theme that has haunted Kate del Castillo throughout her career, even outside of screenplays. In her most recent film project, the 52-year-old Mexican actress plays Maggie, a pregnant woman who faces an extreme situation when her home becomes the scene of a violent confinement that puts not only her life at risk, but also that of her future child.
The plot of Instincts becomes a metaphor for feminine strength and survival instinct, but it has also served as a starting point for the actress to return to a subject that has been with her for decades: her personal decision not to become a mother.
In recent interviews, Del Castillo has firmly expressed that, despite the years, she continues to receive insistent questions about motherhood. A situation she considers unequal and loaded with gender stereotypes.
“I’ve been saying for 30 years that I decided not to be a mother. It seems absurd to me that they keep asking me that question, as if it were something pending. I have never seen men being asked that question. I don’t need to be a mother to play one, that’s what I’m an actress for,” she commented.
The performer stresses that motherhood does not define acting ability, and that her commitment to the character in Instincts goes beyond personal experience.
Kate del Castillo talks about the challenge she faced in ‘Instintos’.
The film, a psychological thriller co-produced by Eugenio Derbez (3Pas Studios) and Frank Ariza (AF Films), will be available on the ViX platform. The film was directed by Sebastián Borensztein and shot on location in Madrid and the Canary Islands, where the crew worked for six weeks in an almost enclosed environment, which ended up permeating the atmosphere of the film.
In the plot, Maggie and her husband Sean (played by Bruno Bichir) expect to enjoy a quiet weekend on the eve of the birth of their son. However, the bursting in of two criminals transforms the calm into terror. Among them is Cara (Daniela Schmidt), a woman who, far from limiting herself to a robbery, executes a plan much more sinister than it appears.
For Kate del Castillo, playing a woman in the last days of pregnancy was a different challenge, more emotional than physical. The story explores the most animalistic part of the human condition: the instinct to protect life.
“It’s about preserving the life of your child. We all have that animal part, whether we are mothers or not,” said the actress. The intensity of the shoot, in which the cast constantly stayed in the same location, helped to recreate the tension her character experiences.
“You have nowhere to go, you’re there, you eat… you almost only had to sleep there. It helped me a lot to be in that environment because I was 100% focused,” she recalled with a laugh.
Instincts poses a confrontation marked by the tension between two women: Maggie, driven by the need to protect, and Cara, whose plan reveals an unexpected undercurrent. Actress Daniela Schmidt noted that her character embodies the real threat of the story, providing a contrast to Maggie’s visceral struggle.
With this film, Kate del Castillo reaffirms her versatility and her ability to tackle complex roles that transcend labels, while continuing to challenge the questions surrounding motherhood in her personal life.
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