Carolina Gaitán thought she had said goodbye to Catalina Marín years ago. She had moved on to Disney's Encanto, performed on some of the world's biggest stages, and become a mother. But there was one character she couldn't quite leave behind, even when she was thousands of miles away from Colombia.
"I could be at the Eiffel Tower one day and someone would shout, 'Catalina!'" Gaitán recalled in an interview with this reporter.
Nearly a decade after she first played the young woman whose parents drew a yellow line to keep her away from danger, Gaitán is returning to Sin Senos Sí Hay Paraíso. This time, however, Catalina is about to cross a boundary far more difficult to erase.
The new season, premiering November 16 on Telemundo, takes the franchise into the world of webcam modeling, digital exploitation, and organized crime. And Catalina, who once fought to escape the fate her family feared most, finds herself making decisions that threaten to bring that nightmare home.
"Circumstances in life put her in very difficult situations and lead her to make wrong decisions, because they are definitely wrong decisions," Gaitán said.
One of those decisions involves becoming a webcam model, a development that places Catalina on a collision course with her mother, Hilda, played by Catherine Siachoque. "For a woman like Catalina, having to tell her mother, 'I'm a webcam model,' is one of the most uncomfortable, painful, and saddest things that could happen to a character like her and to a character like Hilda," the Colombian actress explained.
The irony is difficult to miss for anyone who followed Catalina's journey from the beginning.
When Sin Senos Sí Hay Paraíso premiered in 2016, Catalina was the daughter Hilda and Albeiro desperately wanted to protect. The yellow line drawn outside their home became a symbol of the limits they imposed, hoping to shield her from the violence, exploitation and obsession with physical appearance that had devastated their family.
Now the danger no longer waits on the other side of a street. It can enter through a screen.
Gaitán sees the parallel clearly. "There are yellow lines all the time in life," she said, explaining that Catalina's upbringing instilled values she tried to pass on to other young women, including the importance of education and refusing to sell their bodies.
But the world around Catalina has changed. "Now it's a contemporary world, it's a digital world, so women sell their bodies in a different way," Gaitán said, describing the issues explored in the new season.
What makes the situation especially frightening to the actress is the permanence of what happens online. "It's as if you were writing, but not with a pencil that you could erase. It's as if you were writing in ink forever."
That fear of irreversible consequences becomes part of Catalina's struggle, particularly as she tries to hide her activities from the parents who dedicated their lives to protecting her.
For Gaitán, returning to such emotionally demanding material was not an obvious next step.
During the later seasons of the original series, she had asked producers for permission to reduce her participation so she could pursue other creative projects, including a musical monologue.
"I had been doing it for a long time, and being creative and telling different stories also feeds my spirit as a performer," she recalled.
Then came Encanto, in which she voiced the tempestuous Pepa Madrigal, along with international recognition, major awards ceremonies and motherhood. Gaitán described the extraordinary feeling of seeing ambitions she once considered distant become reality, including holding an Oscar and a Grammy connected to her work on Encanto.
Yet Catalina remained part of her life. "Time passes, you become a mother, and people still love this character," she said. "There's an infinite gratitude toward the audience, and being invited to play her again is a great satisfaction. How could I say no?"
Returning to the set brought a sense of familiarity, particularly when she reunited with castmates she had known for years. But the woman playing Catalina was no longer the same.
Gaitán is now raising a young son, and filming the new season meant six months of work, often 13 hours a day, six days a week.
Motherhood has also sharpened her awareness of the boundaries she maintains as a performer.
Despite the sensual nature of the new storyline, she says she has never filmed a fully nude scene in her career and has no intention of changing that approach. "I've always been a big fan of scenes that suggest rather than show," she explained, adding that directors have consistently respected her preferences.
That does not mean audiences should expect the new season to avoid sensuality. "There's going to be a lot of skin, it's going to look beautiful, there's going to be a lot of dancing," she said, promising a visually striking production.
The emotional demands, however, may prove more difficult than the physical ones.
Gaitán described scripts that repeatedly called for Catalina to cry uncontrollably. She and Siachoque developed a way to escape the intensity between takes. "We try to make each other laugh. They yell cut, and we're dying of laughter," she said.
The reunion also brings back Majida Issa as La Diabla, although Gaitán acknowledged that the two actresses share relatively few scenes. She described their renewed connection as warm and genuine, shaped by the changes both have experienced over the years.
And there is another surprise waiting for Catalina.
Gaitán singled out actor Yankel Stevan, whose character will have a significant connection to hers, although she refused to explain exactly what happens between them. "I thought what Yankel Stevan did was absolutely crazy," she said enthusiastically. "That character has a lot of interaction with mine, and I think something is coming that will surprise you enormously because it's not predictable at all."
For an actress who once believed Catalina had completed her journey, the new season offers something more complicated than a nostalgic reunion, as tge young woman who once crossed a yellow line to pursue love now faces a world in which mistakes can follow her indefinitely.
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