Gloria Trevi is hungry. The year is 1987, he’s 19 years old, he’s been taking aerobics classes all day and when he comes home he has nothing to put in his mouth. Home even though it’s not home; He lives in the academy where he rehearses and trains day and night to become a star. But no, you can’t be a star without food. So Gloria secretly grabs a can of tuna from the kitchen and locks herself in the bathroom to greedily eat it with her hands. Her partner catches her, scolds her and tells her about nonsense that is more of a necessity. They both end up being caned, and Gloria ends up running away from home. And all for some tuna.
The anecdote is the first scene of Ellas soy yo, the new series running on the streaming platform ViX (owned by Televisa-Univisión) and broadcast across Latin America; it is currently unknown if it will reach Spain and via which platform ) premiered on August 11th. And it’s real, at least that’s what Trevi himself says in an old interview at the end of the chapter. The sequence serves as a prelude and example of what this anticipated project wants to convey and be, on which its creators have been working for five years and which now sees the light of day to tell the story of Mexican singer Gloria Trevi (Monterrey, 55). years old), one of the biggest music stars in Spain and with a complicated career that took her off the charts and even ended up in prison; from success and condemnation to salvation. This series tries to unveil his story, always from his point of view, which marks the entire path. However, according to its creators and the artist herself, the point is not to relieve them, but to help others who find themselves in their situation: “For those who believe that there is no way out, who have to endure everything; for those who swallow their tears, because they are me,” says Trevi himself at the beginning of the first chapter.
Although the star was present throughout the making process – she was the one who hired Carla Estrada, the project’s executive producer and screenwriter – to direct it – she is not granting interviews for this project; It is played by Estrada herself and actors Scarlet Gruber and Jorge Poza, who play Trevi and César Santiago, the fictional reflection of Sergio Andrade, the man who shaped the artist and who became her first husband and father to her eldest son. In the early 1990s, the couple achieved fame and fortune in Mexico and throughout the Spanish-speaking world, but then allegations of abuse and rape by a multitude of women began, and in January 2000 both were arrested in Brazil after being prosecuted by Interpol had been.
The courts accused them of forming a kind of cult, both of which recruited inexperienced young women to make their names known, but which was essentially a sexual abuse network. She spent four years in prison awaiting trial until a judge found there was no evidence to support the allegations of kidnapping, rape and corruption of minors and released her in mid-2004; Andrade spent seven years in prison. She always defended her own innocence, which she continues to do in this series. She is now facing a civil lawsuit in Los Angeles, California, in which two women allege that she put her on the road to Andrade’s fame program when she was 13 and 15, and that she abused her and they accuse her of doing so do an acquaintance. She keeps denying it. In a recent interview with EL PAÍS, he assured: “We have all experienced that your story was told badly and you looked like the villain.” I am a jellyfish [título también de su nueva canción]I think my story was mistold. I received an unfair punishment, but it made me more powerful and stronger.”
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If, during these two decades of reproaches and counter-reproaches, Trevi has declared himself the victim of this process and Andrade, now this series seeks to reaffirm that point of view, from fiction but with its very contemporary side. In the first chapter, she herself gives a long introduction in which she explains her point of view and makes it clear that this series is a part of it. In a minute he reveals his situation; In five cases his position is clear. “I really wanted to be famous, have friends everywhere, be loved, meet my needs, leave a mark and why not change the world, my world,” she says offstage. “I was 15 when I met a fashion producer who immediately looked for a way to become the mirage of what he portrayed to me as love, a love so absolute that I had to gradually betray myself . It’s been 17 years of manipulation, beating and abuse,” he said.
“I came to betray myself,” continues Gloria de los Ángeles Treviño Ruiz, the real name of the singer. “I lost everything, I was left with empty arms, almost insane, distorted, the truths and lies intertwined, with the interests of a media company being picked up by other media companies,” she is heard saying as images roll by. fictionalized about his life. “My story was badly told in books, movies, TV shows, magazines, newspapers, millions of lines were written that were written about me, but they didn’t talk about me. I said to myself: Everyone is looking at me. my family needs me I made headway in the middle of the storm. And I keep getting up. Many point to me without knowing me. He was not my creator because I showed that with him and without him I am Gloria Trevi. Today I’m going to expose myself, not for myself because I’m already fine, for those who believe there is no way out, who have to endure everything, for those who swallow their tears for being me.
And it is from this very personal point of view that Estrada built this story, these 50 episodes – about 40 minutes each; They are released five times a week. Estrada and Trevi met in their early stages when the artist was a rising teenage star, but they didn’t get back together until many years later. “It was on a journey,” Estrada (Mexico, 67 years old) recalled in a video conference with this newspaper. “I was doing a series about Joan Sebastian, a very famous singer in Mexico, and when she talked about it she said to me, ‘If one day I tell my story, you’re the only one who can tell it.’ But something was missing for that. Then the people at Gloria Televisa agreed and that was it. In addition to designing the project, she worked as a screenwriter and producer and was responsible for conducting interviews with about 70 people, who gave her the documentary basis for the implementation and “guided her to create the profile of all the characters”. “. “It was then that we understood that this story must be told from Gloria’s point of view, because it is the first time that she speaks about her story, but also about four girls who lived through this period of their lives,” he explains to the storyline.
Mexican singer Gloria Trevi during a concert at the Teatro Real in Madrid on 28 July 2023. Ailén Desirée Montes (EFE)
“Don’t judge what you haven’t seen” or “Observe and decide” are some of the slogans used to advertise the series. Is it a clear position against the Trevi version, a guide to favoring the main character, a Manichaean point of view? “It’s not about favoring one character,” argues Estrada. “Yes, she tells it through her eyes, through the eyes of the other girls, and I’ll tell you that one story confirms the other. Does it favor Gloria? Yes, definitely, and to please all the girls who were there because they were all going through the same thing,” she explains. “But Gloria tells this story from the point of success, she doesn’t tell this story for people to believe, say ‘This is great’ or buy a ticket to see it. Huge places just arrived in Spain, in Mexico he is an international star. She’s not telling this story to make people say, “Oh, that’s great!” or “Let’s see if someone buys a ticket.” She’s telling this story to face the fact that this reality she’s experienced , can be lived by many other people and that the goal for all of us who work is to open our eyes: to judge yourself, to judge your relationships, to judge your neighbors , but be aware that we can open our eyes, that women can raise our voices and we can say: “So far, what I’m experiencing has been called violence, it’s called harassment, it’s called abuse.”
The person who knows Trevi’s character best and digs deeper into these abuses is Scarlet Gruber (Caracas, 34), alongside Estrada, who brings the star to life through his teenage and adult phases. “It was a very enriching research process because we had these interviews, these testimonies and he said to me, ‘Today, up to here.’ It was too emotional an impact,” he admits to the difficulty of being in Trevi’s skin to hatch, and about the abuses that Andrade tells. “I couldn’t have imagined the level of abuse, the level of violence these women were subjected to and we thank you from the bottom of our hearts, it gave me a different perspective from which to approach Gloria.” Um To prepare herself as one of the most famous women in the song world, she looked for resources, watched dozens of videos, “YouTube interviews, her concerts …”: “It brings with it a lot of responsibility that I have as an intense actress that I am , [risas]I didn’t take myself lightly at all. I also looked into another facet of Gloria that very few people know about, which is Gloria in her family, with all of her close people, introverted, submissive…” She had a few conversations with the singer, but “never over the work.” Problems” and reiterates that he gave him all the liberties to be able to prepare the character with Estrada.
This take on Trevi gives Gruber’s co-star, Mexican Jorge Poza (Tulacingo de Bravo, 45), the darker facet of his role as Sergio Andrade. “He’s a character of complexity because of his profile,” he admits, who doesn’t agree with being the villain in the film, or in this case the series. “This adjective shows that he is a villain. It’s not that, it’s not the bad, it’s not the worst. “He’s a narcissistic psychopath, which perfectly describes him and structures the character’s profile,” says Poza without hesitation. “He meets all the criteria, one through 20, as both a psychopath and a narcissist. This made it a lot easier for me to build because that’s all it’s painted. The text contains everything that is perfect for interpretation and day by day it gave us details to refine and perfect.” Like Gruber, Poza reiterates that it was Carla who, after her conversations with Trevi and all the investigations and Interviews were most gifted at “building a narrative about what was seen.”
Estrada defends that the series is intended to be a lifesaver for victims who find themselves in the situation Trevi claims he lived in. They have created a website where anyone in the United States and Mexico can contact civic institutions to ask for help and find a guide or accompaniment, or to make a complaint… “I have a feeling that these series arrives at the point where society as a whole has its eyes open and the ability to change, grow and be a better person,” he asserts. For her it would be worth changing a life. That would be the main goal of the series. “But I can tell you,” he affirms with conviction, “that in that moment we have already changed lives, girls who gave us their testimonies are already different, even in the production people who saw themselves reflected and said: ,I don’t know.’ “I don’t want to be like that, I want to change, I want to ask for help”. For us, the goal has been achieved. Imagine what we can do if we can make a lot of people aware of this. The series will create controversy, the controversy will create conversation, and the conversation will create awareness.”
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