As the second and final season of HBO’s ‘Like Water For Chocolate’ premieres on HBO Max, Azul Guaita is saying goodbye to a character whose love story has simmered, burned, and transformed against the backdrop of revolution-era Mexico. And in many ways, she says, Tita changed her.
“I’m taking Tita with me,” Guaita shares during an exclusive interview with ¡HOLA! “I’m taking her story, everything she learned — I learned it alongside her. All of her mistakes, the decisions she made… Whenever I play a character, something strange happens.”
She continued, “Either I’ve already lived through what they experience, or after we finish filming, something very similar happens to me. I don’t know if it’s some kind of unconscious manifestation. But what I carry with me the most is Tita’s love — the way she loves without fear.”
That fearless love sits at the center of the series’ final chapter. This season, Tita finds in Dr. Brown the promise of a gentler destiny, one where sweetness offers refuge and stability. But Pedro’s return reignites a forbidden passion that refuses to be extinguished.
© Courtesy of HBOAs violence and social upheaval reshape Mexico, every character must confront their limits and decide how much they are willing to sacrifice for love and freedom. For Guaita, some of the most powerful moments aren’t the explosive confrontations, but the quiet ones.
“All of the scenes at Dr. Brown’s house are very special to me,” she explains. “They’re the kind of moments where Tita doesn’t say anything, but at the same time, she says so much. They’re incredibly beautiful scenes — the kind I carry in my heart. They feel like lived moments.”
Those restrained, emotionally loaded exchanges evoke the language of classic romantic storytelling. It’s something Guaita intentionally studied while preparing for the role.
“I watched ‘Pride and Prejudice’ because it aligns so closely with the themes and emotions of our story, and we built from there,” she says.
© Courtesy of HBOThe influence is subtle but unmistakable, longing conveyed through glances, tension carried in silence, love constrained by social expectation.
Much like the heroines of 19th-century English romantic cinema, Tita navigates a world where desire must be coded, where decorum masks devotion, and where passion simmers beneath the surface until it can no longer be contained.
© Courtesy of HBODirector Julián de Tavira sees that fusion of influences as essential to the show’s identity. “It’s been a beautiful journey exploring these Mexican love stories — something we do well,” he says. “Mexicans have this way of loving so passionately, with a kind of delicious suffering. You can see references to that in Mexican literature, like ‘Arráncame la vida,’ in the original novel, and of course, in 19th-century English romantic cinema. All of these influences shaped the way we approached the story.”
That “delicious suffering,” the ache that makes romance feel almost sacred, runs deep in Mexican literary tradition. From revolutionary-era novels to contemporary love stories, passion is rarely simple. It is layered with duty, sacrifice, family expectations, and moral conflict. In ‘Like Water For Chocolate,’ those tensions are distilled into the kitchen, where emotion quite literally transforms into something tangible.
© Courtesy of HBOThe result is a love story that feels both intimate and epic, rooted in cultural specificity, yet universal in its longing. As the series comes to an end, Guaita returns to what Tita ultimately taught her, courage in vulnerability.
In a world defined by rules, repression, and consequence, Tita chooses to love anyway. Fully. Recklessly. Without apology. And that, Guaita says, is what will stay with her long after the final scene fades.
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