“Just hearing the name and seeing the promotional artwork, you could tell that this was a fresh take on a premise that had worked a thousand times from ‘Pygmalion‘ to ‘Pretty Woman.‘ “īut getting it off the ground was not easy. Ben Silverman, then an agent at William Morris who had already made his name importing the popular British game show “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire” and would eventually go on to be the executive producer of the surprisingly successful American version of “The Office,” was first told of the show by a colleague who represented Mr. It wasn’t long until Hollywood took notice.
Other versions followed - in Germany as “Falling in Love in Berlin,” in the Netherlands as “Lotte,” in Russia as “Born Ugly.” They all tweaked the tone of the original (the German version all but excised the comedy) but kept the ugly duckling storyline intact. In India, Betty became Jassi, and the show, “There’s No One Like Jassi,” was an instant smash. Soon production companies from around the world came calling, snatching up the rights not to rebroadcast the show but faithfully to remake it. By 2000 the show was drawing record ratings throughout Latin America in Puerto Rico, when the leaders of political protests in Vieques noticed crowds thinning out, they erected a giant screen for viewing the show. So did the show’s production company, RCN. Betty, of course, did not accept the bribe, and for her integrity she was rewarded with an enormous raise. Gaitán wrote a column urging the show’s fans to remain calm. El Tiempo, the country’s influential daily newspaper, ran an article on its front page decrying “They Want Her Ugly, But Not Corrupt,” and Mr. With Colombia in the midst of a huge political bribery scandal, Betty briefly considered accepting money from a fabric company desperate to get into business with her boss. Betty’s every move became a national obsession.
Gaitán - “Yo Soy Betty La Fea” was Colombia’s most popular telenovela, pulling in three million viewers a night.
“The traditional telenovelas tend to be Cinderella stories of social mobility,” said John Sinclair, author of the book “Latin American Television: A Global View.” “With Betty, she is able to change her unfortunate situation not by discovering her father was secretly a very rich man but by discovering she is beautiful.”īy the end of its two-year run - 340 half-hour episodes, all written by Mr. Gaitán seemed to be upending the form’s self-serious conventions and reimagining its customary story arc.
It was a first in two regards: in the appearance, amidst all the airbrushed beauties, of such an unsightly woman, and in the way the show - rather than pitying her - poked fun at her looks and those who judged them. Gaitán created Beatriz Pinzón Solano, a woman with brains (Betty holds a master’s degree in economics), a heart (she is caretaker to her aging father) and a face so unfortunately contoured that it comes as a relief to find her forehead hidden under a fringe of oily black bangs. (Women now compete for the honor of being crowned Senorita Papa, or Miss Potato.) So Mr. He wanted to critique the legendarily superficial culture of his country, which has so many beauty pageants it has run out of cities to name them after. But its creator, Fernando Gaitán, had greater ambitions. That show, “Yo Soy Betty La Fea” (“I Am Betty the Ugly”), could have been another one of the telenovelas - the nightly soap operas featuring a breathless blend of camp, melodrama and cliffhanger - that dominate primetime programming in Colombia. HOW a modest Colombian telenovela about a pitifully ugly woman trying to navigate the shallow waters of the fashion industry became one of the world’s most popular television shows is a Cinderella story of its own, one more unlikely than even the most optimistic screenwriter could imagine.
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