La Madrastra

The Stepmother is the fifth adaptation of a story originally created in 1981 by Chilean playwright Arturo Moya Grau, following versions such as Vivir un poco (1985), Para toda la vida (1996), and Forever (1996) in the United States.

Before choosing Victoria Ruffo as the protagonist, producer Salvador Mejía considered Verónica Castro, Lucía Méndez, and Colombian Margarita Rosa de Francisco, but negotiations with Méndez and Castro did not come to fruition.

Salvador Mejía stated that he chose Victoria Ruffo because the actress was better suited to play a mother who returns to rescue her children and seek revenge.

Victoria Ruffo and César Évora, protagonists of the telenovela, had previously starred as a romantic couple in Abrázame muy fuerte (2000), also produced by Salvador Mejía.

Filming began on November 3, 2004, and concluded in July 2005 with the special The Stepmother: Years Later, which aired immediately after the series finale.

Due to the series' great audience success, Televisa ordered ten additional episodes, expanding the production from 115 to 125 chapters; the final episodes were reduced from one hour to thirty minutes to make way for The Virgin Wife.

In 2007, during a rerun of the telenovela, an alternative ending was filmed with the same cast, in which the character Fabiola Morán (Sabine Moussier) turned out to be the main culprit, unlike the original ending in which the villain was the character Guillermo García Cantú.

The telenovela was parodied on the Mexican comedy show La Parodia in the sketch 'This Mother', with the character María played by Gaby Ruffo, Victoria Ruffo's younger sister.

In the United States, the telenovela gained notoriety in 2005 after being repeatedly shown on E!'s The Soup program, where host Joel McHale mocked details such as the eye makeup of the character Bruno and the so-called 'crazy eye' of Alba.