Soap operas by nature don’t have an ending. They evolve over time and new characters come in, old characters leave and sometimes return years later to continue their storyline and branch into new stories.
Telenovelas, when they’re written, have a definite start and end part — and they can last anywhere between 12 and 18 months. That’s the plan, but sometimes they become so popular with viewers that they’re turned into a soapie. Like Isibaya — when it started way back in 2013, it was planned as a weekday drama, which then turned into a telenovela, which then turned into a soapie.
“There are lots of differences between telenovelas and soap operas,” says Aaron Diaz, best known as Ricardo Calderon in Betty en NY (Betty In New York, the Mexican remake of Yo Soy, Betty, La Fea — the Colombian telenovela that became dramedy series Ugly Betty). The American-Mexican actor has starred in a telenovela every year since 2001 and says that “telenovelas are part of our TV culture. Us Latins like a lot of drama and that’s one of the reasons they do so well.”
“I actually got started in musicals,” says Eugenio Siller, who played twins separated at birth Leonardo and Pedro in 2015 telenovela ¿Quién es quién? “And I get to sing and perform in some of my shows because we’re all about being spectacular. My one song was the romantic theme for the entire show.”
Style says a lot
Telenovelas are wildly popular in the Latin-American market (such as Mexico, Argentina, Chile and other Spanish-speaking countries). They’re usually over the top in production style and flair, with characters being involved in storylines that are crazier than stories you’d hear in a psychiatric facility.
Everything from twins being separated at birth and accidentally meeting up as adults, to super villains trying to force a vineyard owner to sell his property by poisoning his crop and murdering half his staff. You name the theme, and it’s almost guaranteed to have been used as a plot in a telenovela.Soapies, on the other hand, tend to either be ultra-realistic (like local hospital drama Binnelanders or long-running US soap opera The Bold & The Beautiful) or they incorporate the supernatural into storylines (Isibaya featured zombies and witchcraft, while iconic US soapie Days Of Our Lives has had everything from zombies and mind control to robots with memories transplanted from dead Salem citizens, devil possessions and more).
The acting is more realistic, so don’t expect too many bomb blasts and survivors escaping with their make-up looking perfect. At the same time, soapies tend to draw out storylines into a full week or so, while telenovelas time hop — one episode can see a character go from discovering she’s pregnant, to having a huge bump, to being in the delivery room, to having a toddler … and fans love it!
Egoli: Place Of Gold was a hit for M-Net in the 1990s all the way through to 2010 because it incorporated multiple languages, diverse cultures and races, yet still kept its theme: the rich getting richer and doing everything in their power to stay ahead of the pack.
SA soaps tend to take actors and give their careers a life — people are referred to by their past characters years after the shows ended, like Brümilda van Rensburg, for example, who has had loads of other projects and roles since Egoli (such as in Lui Maar Op, Belinda) but she’s still known as “the actress who played Louwna Edwards in Egoli”.
“Telenovelas are a lot of fun also for us actors because they’re self-contained,” says Rafael Amaya. “Telenovelas have 180 episodes, things happen overnight because we’ve got a set story to tell. What happens in a week on a soap opera happens in a day on a telenovela.”
There are exceptions, and Rafael is one of the best examples. He’s played drug lord Aurelio Casillas in seven seasons of El Señor de los Cielos (Lord Of The Skies), a telenovela that has been renewed for seven seasons so far, with each season somehow connected to the previous, yet a whole new story. His character has also appeared in three other shows as a crossover.
Soapies very rarely cross over (sister shows Days and Bold have done it fewer than 10 times in their history — and that says a lot since Days has had almost 14,000 episodes to date, and has run since November 8 1965).
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