La Reina del Sur star Paola Nuñez is soaking up the December sun at the beach with friends and family. Nuñez, who plays Manuela Cortés on the show, shared a reel of herself frolicking on the sand in a stripy one-piece swimsuit, captioning the video “It’s good to escape”. Nuñez worked hard to go from telenovelas to Netflix—here’s how she finally made it in Hollywood, and her advice for young actors.
Nuñez found acting to be a great outlet in dealing with shyness. “When I was young I was very awkward and shy, but I started copying characters that I saw on television,” she says. “By doing this, I realized I could be the person I always wanted to be while in character; I could be outgoing and confident. So I became more and more comfortable in that place, in character. I did this throughout my childhood, then when I got older, I decided I wanted to go to acting class, and it was there that I found where I truly belonged; with other creatures, called actors.”
Nuñez is proud to portray strong female characters on screen. “We are accused of seeing stories of love, in which the female figure is fragile, vulnerable and always victimized by their circumstances,” she says. “That’s why I think it’s worth changing the paradigm and representing women with personality, independent and interesting. The current woman has a lot to say.”
Nuñez learned how to speak English from TV shows, further cementing her ambition to one day act herself. “I’m from a border town in Mexico called Tecate, which is a little town next to Tijuana,” she says. “When I was a kid, I used to see a lot of TV in English, and that’s how I learned how to speak English. I’ve always had a lot of influences, like sitcoms from the States. I always wanted to do a series when I was a kid. But, when I moved to Mexico City to become an actor… I did lots of telenovelas. You only had telenovelas or movies, but series, they didn’t do that. It didn’t exist in Mexico. Now they do. I always wanted to come here just to do something like that.”
Nuñez learned from experience how important it is not to give up. “I was just auditioning and I was not getting anything. Then my accent was getting in the way,” she says. “I was getting super nervous in the room. I was getting so nervous sometimes I was forgetting my lines. I was crying every time after an audition. I had so many embarrassing moments. I was calling my agents: ‘Oh my god. Don’t send me another audition because I did so bad!’ And they were like, ‘No, don’t worry. It’s fine. You’re going to get better at this!’ Then I did.”
Nuñez worked hard and dealt with endless rejection before achieving success in Los Angeles. “It’s not easy, and if you come thinking that you’re going to make it, you probably won’t, or the opposite: You think you’re not going to make it, and you do,” she says. “I believe in hard work, that’s the only thing. For me, that’s the only thing I can control. Even though I was crying every day, I never thought, I’m going to go back to Mexico, this is not going to work for me. I was like, ‘This is what I chose and I have to keep going. It’s the way it is.'”