The actress Ana Maria Orozco revealed in an interview the difficult process she had to go through to win the leading role of "Ugly Betty".
The telenovela Betty, the ugly was released in October 1999 in Colombia and created by Fernando Gaitán, although it was a production that at first did not have a large budget, that did not prevent it from becoming one of the most watched in the country months later and a worldwide success thanks to the story of Beatriz Pinzon Solano.
In Yo soy Betty, the ugly leading role was played by actress Ana María Orozco. Thanks to this soap opera, the actress managed to consecrate her acting career, however, the process to keep the role of Beatriz Pinzon Solano was not easy. Next, we will tell you how Orozco got the leading role in one of the most successful soap operas.
In an interview for the Colombian program Bravissimo, Ana María Orozco told what the process was to choose who would give life to Betty, the ugly one.
“At that time I was doing my career and with great enthusiasm doing the job, preparing myself and suddenly this casting came along and she was an incredible character. I began to imagine it and prepare it, then it was a long casting process, it took several weeks," said the actress.
The protagonist mentioned that she already had an idea of how she wanted Betty to look.
“I remember that I came more or less with the idea of the character and I kind of imagined it and she was staying. It's very clearly written so it was easy to get inspired,” she said.
On the other hand, she recalled that the casting was difficult since she had to play the pretty and the ugly Betty.
“It was not easy, the casting was divided into two parts: one was the ugly one and then the beautiful one. I don't know how that change was going to be, an ugly protagonist was very risky, but that was the difficult part. In the beautiful one, they were already divine women doing casting, it was the part where they doubted and after rehearsals with other characters, how it turned out ”, recalled Ana María Orozco.
Ana María Orozco also shared in the interview that she was the one who had the idea of giving Betty some braces, which she made with paper to appear at the audition.
“Your job as an actor is to do the research, it was an exercise and I enjoyed trying it out. I arrived with the proposal, it stayed and then it was polished. I put together some braces with aluminum foil, but I had that image, ”she said.
In the program, The story behind the myth, the journalist Graciela Torres mentioned that in addition to the braces, Ana María Orozco had the idea of using bottle-bottom glasses and adding that peculiar hairstyle to the character.
“She earned it because she put on the braces, the hairstyle, and the bottle-bottom glasses, she was the one who created and invented Betty, the ugly one because Ana María is not ugly. That characterization was what made him win,” said journalist Graciela Torres.
The success of Betty, the ugly
In the interview for Bravissimo, the actress commented that even though Betty's character increased her popularity and success, she cannot enjoy this stage due to the exhausting hours of recording the soap opera.
“At that time we were recording an average of 18 hours a day, Saturdays and holidays, suddenly this boom began because they were already giving it outside and the madness began, but we were stuck recording, we began to feel it. We were very tired, it was a year and ten months, the last months we were almost on the air and we had to record at any time, the rest was little, I did not sleep well, "added the actress.
She commented that the success that the telenovela had was not expected, but that neither she nor the other actors who participated in Betty, the ugly one enjoyed it at that time.
"We never imagined something so overwhelming, within the same production nobody was prepared, it was something that surpassed all of us, Unfortunately, everything that happened outside I did not receive well because I was working, stressed, and dead tired. There were demands that I could not meet, I exhausted myself a lot from that and it was very difficult not to be able to go out on the street, ”commented the protagonist of Betty, the ugly one.
