My Sad Dead Cast and Character Guide

My Sad Dead is less an ensemble of strangers than one complicated family surrounded by a neighborhood that keeps intruding on its grief. Pablo Larrain and Mariana Enriquez merge characters from several of Enriquez’s stories into the same bloodline, placing Ema at the center as a recently retired doctor whose ability to see the dead has shaped her life since childhood. Her daughter Carolina, sister Lidia, niece Julie and late mother Susana each respond differently to that gift, while Tomás and Lautaro give the story two very different perspectives from outside the women at its center. Netflix lists Mercedes Moran, Dolores Fonzi, Alejandra Flechner and Carolina Alvarez among the principal performers, with Carlos Portaluppi, Luz Jimenez and German de Silva completing the central cast.

Related: My Sad Dead Ending Explained: What Happens to Julie and Why Everyone Starts Seeing Ghosts

Mercedes Moran as Ema

Mercedes Moran plays Ema, the 60-year-old doctor around whom the miniseries is built. Newly retired and still grieving her mother Susana, Ema has the unusual ability to see and hear people after they have passed. She calls them presences rather than treating them as monsters, and years of experience have taught her that some of them need acknowledgment more than they need to be feared.

Ema is also an imperfect mother, sister and aunt. She can show enormous compassion toward strangers in Piedrabuena while being defensive or dismissive with Carolina and Lidia. That contradiction gives Moran much more to play than a conventional supernatural medium.

Moran previously worked with Larrain on Neruda, where she played Delia del Carril. Netflix has described My Sad Dead as their second collaboration.

Dolores Fonzi as Carolina

Dolores Fonzi plays Carolina, Ema’s adult daughter and a photographer who has a complicated relationship with both her mother and the supernatural stories surrounding the family. Carolina grew up watching Ema communicate with people nobody else could perceive, leaving her with a mixture of skepticism, resentment and curiosity.

Her storyline becomes particularly important when the water in Piedrabuena temporarily allows her to hear the same presences. She finally experiences what Ema has spent years describing, while also reconnecting with Facundo, a man from her past whose final days left Carolina carrying unresolved guilt.

Fonzi is one of Argentina’s most recognizable contemporary actresses and filmmakers. Her screen work includes Paulina, Truman, The Aura, Blondi and Belén.

Alejandra Flechner as Lidia

Alejandra Flechner plays Lidia, Ema’s sister and Julie’s mother. She returns from the United States after Susana’s death, but the family visit has another purpose: Lidia and Tomás have struggled for years to handle Julie’s behavior and hope the Argentine medical system can provide help they can no longer manage abroad.

Lidia does not initially believe Julie is genuinely communicating with anyone. Her inability to accept her daughter’s experience becomes increasingly painful once the supernatural phenomenon spreads through Piedrabuena and proves that Julie had been describing something real.

Flechner’s long career includes Argentina, 1985, Puan, En terapia and 27 Nights. Her performance here is built less around supernatural fear than around a mother slowly realizing how much of her daughter’s life she misunderstood.

Carolina Alvarez as Julie

Carolina Sanchez Alvarez, credited by Netflix as Carolina Alvarez, plays Julie, Ema’s niece and the character who changes the rules of the story. Julie shares Ema’s ability but experiences it with greater intensity. The people she calls her friends are not imaginary companions within the logic of the series, but people who have already passed and with whom she maintains emotional and intimate relationships.

Julie has also endured severe bullying and years of psychiatric treatment because the adults around her interpret what she describes as illness. The tragedy of her storyline is that the audience eventually learns she has been telling the truth about the ghosts even though that does not mean every decision she makes is safe.

Netflix describes Alvarez’s appearance as her introduction in the principal cast. The production required intensive underwater preparation for Julie’s water-tank scenes, with Alvarez training to perform while submerged and holding her breath.

Carlos Portaluppi as Tomas

Carlos Portaluppi plays Tomas, Lidia’s husband and Julie’s father. He and Lidia have spent years trying doctors, medication and other approaches in an effort to understand their daughter, but those efforts have also left their marriage strained and both parents exhausted.

Tomas initially treats Julie’s stories about dead friends as symptoms rather than reality. His position collapses after exposure to the Piedrabuena water allows him to hear Susana himself. The experience is overwhelming because it forces him to accept, almost instantly, that Julie had been telling them something they repeatedly refused to believe.

His final scenes leave him far less settled than Ema or Carolina. Tomas does not transform into a comfortable medium. Hearing the dead feels invasive and frightening to him, which emphasizes how differently each character responds to the same phenomenon.

Luz Jimenez as Susana

Chilean actress Luz Jimenez plays Susana, Ema and Lidia’s mother. Although Susana passes away before much of the central story unfolds, she remains one of its most persistent characters because Ema continues seeing and hearing her around the family home.

Susana’s presence carries years of unresolved family history. Lidia reveals that their mother was frightened by Ema’s ability when Ema was a child and sometimes punished her for talking about the people she saw. Yet after her own death, Susana becomes one of those very presences, leaving Ema with a relationship that remains complicated even beyond life.

The role required extensive prosthetic work, with Netflix noting that Jimenez sometimes spent as long as four hours in makeup.

German de Silva as Lautaro

German de Silva plays Lautaro, one of Ema’s most dependable neighborhood connections. He knows the local history, hears the stories circulating around Piedrabuena and frequently helps connect Ema with people who need her unusual ability.

Lautaro also provides one of the series’ gentler relationships. His affection for Ema is obvious long before he openly admits it in front of the neighborhood, and his loyalty becomes important when others begin treating her as responsible for the supernatural chaos around them.

Rather than functioning as a conventional romantic subplot, Lautaro represents the possibility of community around Ema. He believes her without demanding that she turn her ability into spectacle.