Gary LevinPASADENA, Calif.--Eva Longoria is best known as Desperate Housewives' Gabrielle Solis on ABC's soap hit. Now she's going behind the scenes at a Spanish telenovela.
NBC has signed her up for Telenovela, a comedy that focuses on the inner workings of a soapy show. She'll play Ana Maria, the no-doubt tempestuous star of Latin America's biggest hit. The 13-episode half-hour comedy series expected to air next fall.
NBC Entertainment chairman Bob Greenblatt, at the Television Critics Association Friday, likened the project to Soapdish, the 1991 movie that starred Sally Field and Kevin Kline. "We're just going to go at the telenovela, which will be fun."
He's talking to NBC's Spanish-language sibling, Telemundo, about using "snippets" of its novelas as the "show within the show."
NBC isn't the only network mining novelas for humor: CW's Jane the Virgin adopts the style of the format while sending it up, and ABC had a hit with Ugly Betty in 2006.
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