On Netflix’s latest series Elite, not everybody is warmly welcomed to the esteemed halls of Las Encinas. And if there’s somebody you don’t want to cross, it’s the incredibly smart, supremely wealthy, and totally ruthless Lucrecia, played by Mexican actor Danna Paola.
The streaming service recently released its highly-anticipated Spanish-language series, which follows the lives of three teenagers from different backgrounds attempting to fit into their new prep school, Las Encinas. But after an unthinkable crime happens, all the characters get tangled in a web of lies and suspicions — and believe us when we say you’ll be hooked as soon as you start watching. Though the concept of working-class scholarship students clashing with their wealthy classmates is not exactly new (hello, Gossip Girl and The O.C.), Elite throws in the extra punch of a murder mystery that stems from the suppressed social tensions bursting at the seams of Las Encinas. Sure, the eight-episode drama uses all the allure of shadowy romance, a traumatic murder, and glitzy houses complete with swimming pools — but it also speaks on a deeper level to the real problems rampaging through the teens’ lives. The show tackles a number of different issues, including the stigmatization of living with HIV, drug use, discrimination, and morally questionable family members.
Audiences get close and personal to many of the prep school’s best students throughout the first season of Elite. As we could expect from any high school drama, there has to be at least one mean girl whose own personal life doesn’t seem to be unraveling quite as rapidly as everybody else’s. Enter Lucrecia.
Danna is a twenty-three-year-old actor, singer, model, and no stranger to the small screen. In fact, she grew up starring in a multitude of Spanish-language shows for kids and teens, including ¡Vivan los niños!, Amy, la niña de la mochila azul, and Atrévete a Soñar. But taking on the role of Lucrecia, or Lu for short, is a complete 180 from the types of characters Danna has portrayed in the past.
"I was tired of playing the ‘poor little girl,” she tells Teen Vogue. “[It’s] the first time in my whole career that I played a character like this, ‘the villain’ and ‘mean girl,’ and I’d always wanted to experiment a challenge like this as an actress. I enjoyed it so much because it has so much meat to dig in."
📸: Netflix
