It was 2000 years ago, so the stories reflected those views. Jorge: When we started researching all the lore, we noticed that women were portrayed as sleeping beauties, as a prize to be won, or worse, as the victim.

So going by what Jorge was saying about the strong impression the anthropology museum left on him as a child, we went on to assemble an odyssey together with a flawed heroine and female-centric narrative. He’d been saying for a while that he really wanted to do something where the main character is female but imperfect that she would have flaws to make her feel more human. Sandra: One of the nice things about working with Jorge is that he’s always looking for a way to bring female characters into their empowerment, to have strong representation. He said something that really stayed with me: “Jorge, we come from the blood of warriors.” I went home and I told my dad and he got really excited because I was into it. I was already in love with warriors, witches, and dragons, but there I also fell in love with Mesoamerican mythology. They also have wings for the Incas, and for other parts of Latin America. I also grew up in Mexico City and I got to go to the Museum of Anthropology in Mexico which is the greatest museum for Mesoamerica, and the Aztec and Mayan cultures. Her father was a doctor, her three sisters wanted to be doctors and she wanted to be an artist, so I just thought she was incredible. I met Sandra when she was 17 and I was 18 at a punk rock concert in Tijuana, Mexico, and I fell in love with this crazy rebel girl. Jorge: The inspiration is sitting right next to me, I call her the muse. Could you tell us a little bit about that? We would love to hear more about the inspiration behind Maya and the Three and how it came into being. Again, I like saying this, he is from the school of “more is more” and I am “less is more.” When we first started doing CG animation with Book of Life, I would be very scared to go into detail, while Jorge was the complete opposite. Sandra: We both come from a design background, and we’re yin yang when it comes to a lot of things, including our work. We created a TV show called El Tigre: The Adventures of Manny Rivera for Nickelodeon, and then we made a movie called The Book of Life, and most recently, a new limited event series for Netflix called Maya and the Three.

Jorge: We are Sandra and Jorge Gutierrez, a husband and wife artist team. Could you introduce yourselves and tell us a bit about your roles for this project?

The power of myth netflix