“Senda Prohibida”, the telenovela that destroyed Silvia Derbez’s reputation for years

“I said: oh my god, they are not going to do something to me.” With this phrase, Silvia Derbez used to remember what she experienced with “Senda prohibida”, the first telenovela in Latin America and of which a serial version of 7 episodes is currently being broadcast.

“Forbidden Path” premiered in 1958 and was broadcast live at half past six in the evening. Siliva Derbez had a long history as an actress of soap operas, performances of plays that were broadcast on television and that were also done live, so when the idea of ​​doing a “daily soap opera” came up, she was the ideal actress.

This is how “Forbidden Path” was made

At that time, television did not contemplate videotape, so it was basically a means of live transmission of their programs.

When the idea of ​​making a daily telenovela was raised, the challenge was enormous, as Silvia Derbez recalled in an interview for Televisa: “The sponsors went with me and asked me ‘do you think it can be done?’ And I told them: of course you can. Because I had a very good memory.”

The pace of work was exhausting: Silvia Derbez and the cast arrived early at what is now Televisa Chapultepec to do a cold rehearsal for the episode.

“Then we would do a rehearsal with cameras, we would make a cut to go eat right there, at Chapultepec 18, and we would return to get our makeup done and ready to go on the air at night.”

Even more amazing, when the episode ended, the actors were given the script for the next episode. “We had to study at night,” says Silvia.

Silvia Derbez, the legend

Silvia Derbez’s career is so extensive and successful and names like Perdo Infante appear on her resume, with whom she shared the set in the movie “They say I’m a womanizer.”

The charming scene in which Derbez milks a cow while Pedro Infante looks at her coquettishly remained for history. At the same time, she sings “The Milk Cow”.

The secret of his success was very clear to him: “I always look for truth in my characters, that I feel what I am acting. There are some actors who manage to project without feeling, I don’t, I have to feel it… and that I think it is reflected in the affection of the public”.

Silvia Derbez, for example, was very proud that she never put drops in her eyes to cry. “This is how I work, when they see me cry, the tears are real, I never allowed them to put junk on me.”

Nora, the woman who scandalized Mexico

Perhaps it was that veracity with which Silvia Derbez worked that caused some confusion among viewers. Eugenio Derbez, his son, remembers what his mother told him about “Senda prohibida”: “She told me that people still didn’t quite understand the soap opera format and that they believed the stories as if they were real, and people I was waiting for her outside Televicentro, there on Televisa”.

Silvia Derbez played Nora, an unscrupulous, beautiful, ambitious, vain woman. Throughout the story, Nora is hell-bent on becoming the lover of her boss and destroying her three-decade home marriage. So that? To keep the boss’s money.

“She was a villain, a very bad woman,” said Silvia, who died in 2002.

The audience that saw her on the screen knew that Silvia was at Chapultepec 18 and spontaneously went to the doors of the building to yell in her face that she was a bad woman.

“I used to go out with policemen to my car because I said: oh god, something is not going to happen to me. And people yelled at me: women like you should not exist, we are going to gouge out your eyes.”

The telenovela had 50 episodes, but its impact on Silvia was such that it took almost a decade for her to accept another villain character.

And in general, the rest of her career in soap operas was almost always in the good role. “For the record, after that I almost didn’t do villains anymore,” he said in the interview with Televisa in which he fondly remembered Nora because, regardless of the anecdote of people who insulted her, he gave her a privileged place in the history of television .

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