The comedy show “Telenovela” was picked up by NBC for its first 13 episodes in January 2015. But now, the peacock network has cancelled the series starring Eva Longoria after one unsuccessful season.
Longoria once described the show as “not Latino.” “The perspective is basically mine. It’s about a telenovela star who doesn’t speak Spanish,” Longoria said at the time. “I don’t speak Spanish, but I have strong ties to my culture. That’s what we’re trying to do. It’s a mainstream show that has lots of Latin culture.”
And even though Bob Greenblatt, NBC entertainment chairman said the network was extremely excited about the show bringing the network ahead of the curve with “an all-Latino cast,” it just did not perform well enough. “Even with its star-power in Eva Longoria, “Telenovela” was also the lower rated of the two. During its winter run on Mondays, it averaged a 1.3 rating in adults 18-49 and 4.4 million viewers overall in Nielsen’s “live plus-7” estimates,” Variety reported.
Initially, the show had been extremely promising and even won a bidding war even despite Longoria’s one condition that the deal was closed with a straight-to-series 13-episode order. It was not only meant to bring Longoria back to TV stardom after the hit ABC series “Desperate Housewives,” but it was supposed to bring more Latin-themed content to the network’s roster.
Things began to feel uncertain for the show when NBC cut the order short from 13 to 11 episodes, as they did with “Superstore,” the sitcom starring America Ferrera. But “Superstore” did get an early renewal for their second season and “Telenovela” was left to wait.
While it will probably be sad for Longoria to say goodbye to her character Ana Sofía and to the show she helped create and produce, we have no doubt that the unstoppable actress has many new and exciting upcoming projects in the horizon. Also, let’s not forget that she is planning a wedding!
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