*Peacock’s new crime drama “M.I.A.” drops its audience deep into Miami’s neon-lit underworld, where one young woman’s dangerous quest for revenge collides with a powerful cartel family navigating its own reckoning.
The series, which premiered May 7 with all episodes available to binge, centers on Etta Tiger Jonze — a Florida Keys dreamer pulled into the shadows of Miami’s criminal kingdom after her family’s drug-running operation ends in tragedy.
For actors Maurice Compte, Gerardo Celasco and Marta Milans, the appeal of the show runs much deeper than the crime genre trappings. Created and executive produced by Bill Dubuque and showrun by Karen Campbell, “M.I.A.” is a series built on character contradiction, generational grief and the price of loyalty.
Milans plays Caroline, a woman positioned on the opposite end of the spectrum from Etta – and not by accident. “She is avenging the death of her family that has been murdered by my family,” Milans explained. “So, I suspect there will be a reckoning happening between those two characters.”
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Caroline has been carefully groomed by her father as the family’s legitimate face, while her brothers run the cartel’s operations and she launders the drug money behind the scenes. Even within her own household, Caroline’s place is complicated.
“There is a lot of interesting dynamics there,” Milans continued, “and then there’s a lot of dynamics between her and her two brothers, who, once our dad passes, they run the show, and she doesn’t like that very much.” Despite the internal friction, Caroline’s core motivation stays fixed. “She’s incredibly loyal to her family,” Milans said. “I think even after her father passing, the legacy that he wants to leave, she is all about protecting that and making sure that happens.”
Compte’s character Mateo runs a parallel track to Etta’s arc of self-discovery. “This is all about Etta’s journey,” Compte said. “Everybody is a cog in the world that Etta is creating, that she’s gonna be stepping into.” What makes Mateo compelling, he noted, is a shared experience of loss and reinvention that mirrors what Etta is going through. “Her father dies, our father dies, and there’s this giant sense of loss where we’re all grieving, and we’re all reinventing ourself.”
When loyalty is tested, Compte says Mateo’s struggle is ultimately an internal one. “I think his is more a struggle of being able to own who he is,” he said. “When you’re put into these positions where you’re thrust into it, you have to reinvent yourself. You may think you have an idea of what your trajectory is, but when something like that happens and you’re actually inside the machine, you realize that it’s very different.”
Celasco’s character Samuel rounds out the sibling dynamic with quiet, simmering complexity. “I like to consider it a character drama, than it is a thriller,” he said of the series overall. His character is a study in contradiction — formidably capable yet structurally constrained. “He was extremely loyal to a family that didn’t know how to love him back,” Celasco said. “He was the most competent person in his family in a system that doesn’t know how to reward him for it.”
That tension between competence and confinement defines how Samuel wields — and withholds — his power. “I think he controls it,” Celasco said. “I think he controls his power. He’s also in a structure where he can’t really show his power. His older brother’s kind of taking the reins, and he has to respect that and protect that and pretty much just be loyal to him and his family.”
“M.I.A.” is now streaming on Peacock.
Watch our conversation with Maurice, Gerardo and Marta below.
MORE NEWS ON EURWEB.COM: ‘M.I.A.’ Cast Talks Survival in Miami’s Criminal Underworld on New Peacock Series | EUR EXCLUSIVE
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