Netflix to Create Drama Series About Frida Kahlo with Directors Patricia Riggen and Gabriel Ripstein

Netflix has announced a new scripted series focused on renowned Mexican artist Frida Kahlo and her husband, fellow artist Diego Rivera. According to the streaming giant, the drama will explore how the couple’s love, betrayals, and artistic endeavors were influenced by the political and social climate of their era.

Directors Patricia Riggen and Gabriel Ripstein will collaborate on the project, which is being produced by Mónica Lozano of Alebrije Producciones.

The series will adapt French novelist Claire Berest’s book that delves into Kahlo’s life and her complex relationship with Rivera. María Renée Prudencio is set to serve as the head writer, though the series currently lacks a title.

While specific timelines for the project’s development remain unclear, Netflix has confirmed its announcement today. The streaming service described the series as “the story of a woman who refuses to be only a muse and decides to tell her own version of pain, and of a man who tries to sustain his creative genius despite his contradictions—showing how their relationship became a driving force, a battlefield, and a public spectacle.”

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Moreover, the series is characterized as “a bomb wrapped in silk; a bomb that is the two of them, that is Mexico, and that is, inevitably, the entire world.”

Carolina Leconte, VP of Content for Mexico at Netflix, commented on the project, stating, “It’s a daring proposal that takes us into the most intimate spaces of two figures we feel have been exhausted by myth, but whose true story we have not yet dared to face directly.”