Woman in the Book (2021 series)

Woman in the Book (also known by its Spanish title La Mujer en el Libro) is an adult animated comedy-horror miniseries, based on the 2017 short film, Woman in the Book by horror website, Crypt TV, written and directed by Justin Martinez and produced by Allison Vanore.

The show was produced by animation studio, Starburns Industries. The series premiered on Facebook, on its video-on-demand streaming service, Facebook Watch, on June 4, 2021, until the final episode aired on August 6, 2021.

During its premiere, the show was met with positive reviews.^[1]

The series follows the lives of three estranged siblings who reunite at an aging Mexican hacienda to wrestle for their inheritance, but inadvertently unleash a book-bound horror upon them that has plagued their family for generations.

• Diane Guerrero as Lily Navarro. Upon returning to her family's hacienda, Lily encounters The Woman in the Book and begins experiencing strange visions of Christina Navarro, a deceased member of her family from the late 1800s. Lily was adopted by a family in California after her parents' deaths, and as an adult, she became involved with a man named Liam, who she later married. Liam was physically abusive to her, and after she became pregnant by him Lily stopped taking her anxiety medication as she "didn't feel right" on it.
  • Iliana I. Castillo voices Lily as a little girl. Castillo also voices an unnamed child in the season finale.
• Alfonso Herrera as Ricardo Navarro, Lily's and Daniel's older brother. Some time before the events of the series, Ricardo got into a scandal regarding questionable business practices and is in danger of losing custody of his children. Ricardo originally wanted to restore the hacienda and try to capitalize on it by turning it into an upscale bed and breakfast to restore the fortune he lost, but soon lost sight of that ambition after The Woman began her attack on him and his siblings. Ricardo appears to harbor a lot of guilt over not keeping in touch with his siblings, as it felt too painful for him to interact with them after their parents' death.
  • Hector Santiago, Jr. voices Ricardo as a little boy.
• Jose Ruiz-Gonzales as Daniel Navarro, Lily and Ricardo's baby brother. Eighteen years earlier, their mother attempted to kill Daniel in the hacienda library while she was possessed The Woman. Daniel was adopted by a family in the village near the hacienda, and learned about basic tactics to ward off spirits. He was originally excited to move into the hacienda, but this excitement faded with the arrival of The Woman. At the end of Episode 6, Daniel attempted to destroy The Woman by throwing her book into the fire. However, the book proved indestructible and The Woman slit his throat for his assassination attempt, completing the task she set out to finish eighteen years earlier.
• Bryan Greenberg as Liam, Lily's husband and the father of her unborn son. Liam was abusive towards Lily, but while the extent of this abuse is unknown he did leave scars on her and frightened Lily enough to leave her home in the US without telling him where she was going. Liam repeatedly called Lily and left her messages until Episode 7, when he arrived at the hacienda after using the Find My Phone tracker in Lily's phone. He attacked both the siblings and The Woman until a final confrontation in the hacienda office, where he got his arm caught in the antique printing press. He is sucked into the printing press when Lily turns it on and is killed.
• The Woman in the Book, a demonic entity that possesses the Navarro family's history book. She has ties to the Navarros and has a particular animosity towards Antonio Navarro.
  • Karen Furlong Arellano as Christina Navarro, Antonio Navarro's first wife and the true identity of The Woman. Christina was abused by Antonio, who saw her only as a means to have a son. He tried to keep her from her hobbies and locked her in a secret dungeon in the hacienda library, but Christina managed to keep her work going through the secret delivery of paper by her curandera and the use of her own blood as ink. Christina eventually bore a son, but the years of abuse effected her mental health and led her to drown him in the lake outside the hacienda. Christina was then murdered by her husband, who drowned her in the bathtub and mixed ink into the water. However, Christina's soul was bound to the Navarro family history book by The Curandera, who put a second spell of protection on the book to keep it from being destroyed.

• Licia Alonso as Nena, the elderly groundskeeper of the hacienda. She lived down in the village near the hacienda, and has heard stories that the house is haunted. After The Woman kills Juana and traps the siblings on the hacienda grounds, Nena tries to stand up to the woman and is killed when The Woman floods her insides with ink, drowning her.
• Carlos Carerra as Antonio Navarro, the great-grandfather of the siblings. Antonio was a prominent book publisher in the late 1800s, and married a woman named Christina. Antonio was built up in history as a kind and loving man to his family, but in secret he abused Christina when she did not bear him a son, going as far as to kill all six daughters she bore and locking her in a secret dungeon in the hacienda library. After Christina drowned the only son she gave birth to, Antonio drowned her in the bathtub by mixing ink with the water and forcing her to stay underwater.
• Tomás Navarro, the siblings' father. When Daniel was a newborn, Tomás caught his wife Maria trying to murder him in the hacienda library. Not knowing she was possessed, he tried to stop her and wrestle the knife away from her. Maria then killed him by stabbing him in the stomach.
• Patricia de Leon as Maria Navarro, the siblings' mother. When Daniel was a newborn, Maria came into contact with the family history book and was possessed by The Woman. While under the influence of the demon, Maria attempted to murder the infant Daniel and murdered her husband Tomás by stabbing him in the stomach. After she killed her husband, The Woman forced Maria to kill herself by slitting her own throat.
• Alejandra Flores as Juana Salazar, the lawyer responsible for handling the siblings' estate. She tried to keep all the siblings together during their adoption process, but ultimately failed as many people only wanted Daniel as he was an infant at the time. Eighteen years later, on Daniel's eighteenth birthday, she returns to the hacienda to divide up the Navarro's estate, and she tells them about their great-grandfather. Upon mentioning how Antonio was a kind and loving father, she was attacked and killed by The Woman.
• Graciela Valderrama as The Curandera, an elderly woman who was called in to provide a supernatural advantage towards Christina bearing a son. She secretly helped Christina by smuggling her papers so she could keep writing. After Antonio murdered Christina, The Curandera performed a spell to bind Christina's soul to the Navarro family history book, as well as a second spell to keep the book from being destroyed. After Antonio Navarro learned what she had done, he locked her in the same dungeon he left Christina in, leaving her there to die of starvation as she cursed his family name.

Previously, Crypt entered a 5-series deal with Facebook Watch in July 2019; it also partnered with Screen Gems to reboot the 1960s classic, 13 Ghosts.

In 2018, Crypt TV completed the series with a fundraising in the amount of $6.2M, which brought their funding total to over $10M since opening their doors in 2015. Investors include Blumhouse Productions, Lerer Hippeau, NBCUniversal, and Advancit Capital.^[2]

Diane Guerrero (Orange Is the New Black, Doom Patrol) was cast for the series, alongside Alfonso Herrera (Queen of the South), Jose Ruiz-Gonzales, and Bryan Greenberg (The Left Right Game).^[3]

Starburns Industries, the studio behind Rick and Morty and Anomalisa, produced the animation for the series. Darren Brandl said that Woman in the Book is "the first of many television animated series Crypt plans to launch and we couldn’t have imagined a more talented partner than Guerrero to voice the leading role, and Starburns to lead the animation of this special show built for our global Spanish speaking audience on Facebook Watch”.^[4]

NOTE: Each episode was written by Pamela Garcia Rooney and Eva Gonzalez Szigriszt, and directed by Jeanette Jeanenne.