La Madrastra is a Chilean television soap opera created by Arturo Moya Grau, that aired on Canal 13 from April 21 to September 18, 1981, starring Jael Unger and Walter Kliche. The series, set in Los Angeles and Santiago between 1961 and 1981, depicts the memoirs of Marcia Espínola, a woman wrongfully accused of murder in America. Twenty years later, she is freed from prison, returning to Chile for revenge, and to see her children as their stepmother. La Madrastra having achieved both wide acclaim and commercial success with 80% television ratings, became a significant part of the 1980s Chilean popular culture.

La Madrastra is a Mexican telenovela. It was produced by Televisa and broadcast on Canal de las Estrellas in Mexico from Monday, February 7, 2005, through Friday, July 29, 2005. The program became an unexpected success, garnering ratings in excess of 30 points. Starring Victoria Ruffo and César Évora, who last appeared together in 2000's Abrázame muy fuerte, along with Eduardo Capetillo, Jacqueline Andere, Ana Martín, Cecilia Gabriela, Martha Julia, Guillermo García Cantú, René Casados and Sabine Moussier, La madrastra tells the story of María, a woman who lost twenty years of her life after being falsely accused of murder and who returns to Mexico to exact revenge on her husband and friends who abandoned her and to see her beloved children once more.