Attendees of the Toledo, Spain-based forum got an exclusive preview of the pilot episode to the seven-part limited series, which is set to bow July 26 on Star Plus Latin America, Hulu in the U.S. and Disney’s Star label in the rest of the world.
The dramedy series created by Mariano Cohn and Gaston Duprat turns on a prominent food critic who depends on a woman who has served as a personal assistant-housekeeper-cook for decades. When he loses her, he hires a young Paraguayan lady, which leads to a clash of cultures and generations, and eventually to some valuable life lessons. De Niro plays a renowned American writer and long-time friend who witnesses the food critic’s life take this unexpected turn.
Based on the eponymous bestseller by Argentine journalist Tomás Eloy Martínez, “Santa Evita” follows the surreal fate of the embalmed body of Eva Perón, the charismatic wife of Argentine President Juan Domingo Peron, after her death in 1952. After it remained unburied for three years while a monument was being completed, a military coup overthrew Perón.
“It’s how they used her body to establish that they were in charge, that they were in power. That was what drove me to make this story,” she continued.