MIAMI—Karla Souza does not soften the edges of her new series 56 Days. If anything, she leans straight into the discomfort, and not only the viewer's. The series brings her back to one of the darkest periods of her life: the death for her brother Adrián Olivares, the only Mexican to have taken part of the Menudo boy band.
Souza, one of the most prolific and versatiles Latina actresses in Hollywood, embraces the raw edges of the riveting story presented in 56 Days, already avaliable in Prime Video, even if the memories that bring tears to her eyes. She was filming the series when she heard the news of Adrián's passing. Visiting Miami now is bittersweet, her nieces are here, as well as his absence. But Souza is used to duality. Also, loves her work and the quirky characters she was brought to life, as well as the craziness of the story she is telling now.
"There's a body in a bathtub in the first episode," Souza told me, laughing nervously. "And yeah, it was disturbing. I was seeing it live, right there."
The Mexican actress leads the psychological thriller adapted from the bestselling novel by Catherine Ryan Howard, and the series wastes no time announcing its intentions. The story begins with a corpse discovered in a tub and unravels backward, tracing a relationship that accelerates under lockdown conditions and slowly reveals obsession, lies, and self-destruction.
Souza plays the central character, detective Lee Riordan, a woman whose public identity suggests morality and control, while her private life is quietly collapsing. It was that contradiction that pulled her in.
"She should be someone with integrity," Souza explained. "And yet the mess she's in personally could literally end her life. She's very self-destructive."
That internal fracture felt familiar. Souza openly connected the character's unraveling to her own tendencies. "I have self-destructive tendencies," she admitted. "And that was what made me say, 'Oh, I know what it feels like to be in that place.'"
Prime Video's 56 Days, where Souza shares the screen with Dove Cameron, Avan Jogia and Dorian Missick, traps its characters together, emotionally and physically, forcing secrets to surface. Souza described her character as obsessive, hyper-detailed, and possibly neurodivergent, someone whose intensity becomes both her strength and her undoing.
"There's also this public facade versus the private reality," she said. "We're living in a moment where that difference is huge, socially. That really interested me thematically."
The role also places Souza in rare territory. She leads a major English-language thriller without playing a stereotyped Latina character. Her ethnicity is not explained, translated, or turned into a plot device. She simply exists.
Still, she found subtle ways to bring her culture onto the screen.
In the opening episode, as viewers take in the crime scene, Souza's character's bathroom contains small but unmistakable details. "They asked me what props I wanted," she recalled. "And I said, 'Give me my mini Vicks. Give me Vivaporú.'"
The moment passes quickly, but for many viewers, it lands like an inside joke. "It's like an Easter egg," Souza said. "I didn't say it came from our culture, but it does." It's not the only way she brought her mexicanidad to the screen. "It's always with me, so it's part of everything that I do. It's a reality", she said.
Filming some of the show's most graphic scenes tested her limits, particularly when it came to sensory overload. "Smells really affect me," she said. "My husband can't wear perfume. I can't wear perfume. So when we were filming, thank God it didn't actually smell like what you think."
She paused, then added, "What you see in the series, I was seeing it live. It was intense."
Souza's bilingual, bicultural background has long allowed her to move seamlessly between industries. She spent years living in both Mexico and the United States before adulthood, a fact she says surprises people who assume she grew up entirely in Mexico.
"I lived five or six years in the U.S. before I was 18," she explained. "So I've always been split between these two cultures. My career reflects that." That split now feels like an advantage, particularly as streaming platforms expand their reach. Yet Souza remains clear-eyed about representation.
"Only one percent of studio films have Latinos," she said. "And we represent way more than that in American culture. Music has figured it out. Acting hasn't."
And talking about music brings her back to Adrián. "Being here in Miami really makes me think about him a lot. I was actually filming 56 Days when he died, and the production let me leave and come back. I was incredibly grateful to them for that," she remembers.
"Adrián is the reason I felt, or believed, that I had something to do with this artistic world. He had so much love for music and for what I did. He loved everything about my career. He was like a cheerleader, and having that in my family was so beautiful, because he was a creative who understood, and someone I respected and admired deeply", Souza added. For her, everything she does now is part of her brother's legacy.
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