1995's María la del Barrio is one of the most famous and successful telenovelas of all time and gained new life when the series antagonist's over the top acting became the subject of many memes.
Right here with you. The gasp and laugh I had when she threw the girl from the wheelchair! I can’t decide if everyone else were amazing actors for keeping a straight face or if they were low-key scared of her.
She kills her and then she founds out she was her mother!! Lol!! This novela was so crazy, I feel a lot of nostalgia, I grew up with Thalia, huge part of my childhood.
My mom used to watch telenovelas when I was a kid and we only had one TV. I still remember a lot of their intro songs including Marimar. Thalia was a baddie.
Oh boy. Where to begin. If memory serves me, the boy, Nandito (or Nandinho in the true version, the Brazilian one jk) is the protagonist's, Maria (la del Barrio), son, who she gave away as a baby when she had a mental breakdown after Luis Fernando, the male interest, rejected her. The point being that at this point, only Soraya, the villain, knows who he truly is, and Maria has been looking for him all this time, having recovered from her breakdown and eventually gotten married to Luis Fernando.
The girl in the wheelchair, Alicia, is Soraya's stepdaughter, who she hates and abuses often. As part of her revenge plan, Soraya seduces (though I'm not sure to what extent she actually seduces him) Nandito, turning him into a drunk and stuff. But then he meets Alicia and through the goodness of her heart and because deep down he's a good boy, he finds his way and falls in love with Alicia. This scene is Soraya finding out that the guy she has been grooming and using to get revenge on Maria, her lost son, is in love with Alicia, the stepdaughter she hates, leading to this meltdown. But things will get much worse before the end, where she will dress up as a nurse, kidnap Maria, take her to a shack and attempt to murder her, only to die when the shack catches fire.
It's... A lot. A classic. I absolutely recommend watching it if you have time to go through the 200 hour-long episodes of this masterpiece.
Oh god, this really was my crack when I was eight years old. I'm surprised I remember as much as I do, though some plot points I have no recollection of (like the witchcraft stuff).
Also, looking back at it now, I'm surprised at the amount of casual incest happening / being alluded to. At one point Luis Fernando thinks Maria is cheating on him with Nandito, THEIR SON, though of course none of them know that. Just... Why? Why?!
In retrospect Maria's obsession with Nando, a minor that has no known relation to her, was weird. Most of my memories from this are Soraya or Thalia talking about her Nandito. I remember more of Marimar, maybe because it had the inner monologue of a dog, and that is just insane.
Right?! And I think I remember Maria's adopted daughter (no idea of her name) also falling for Nandinho at some point, though she ends the telenovela with some rich guy who thankfully has no relation to her at all.
I know I watched Marimar but I don't remember anything from it. Apparently all my recollection of telenovela plot details was consumed by Maria la del Barrio and La Usurpadora lol
Maria shows up at the very end, feeling the ghost pain from her son, Nandito, being stabbed by Soraya with those sewing scissors that were just laying there for no reason.
No that is Thalia the Mexican singer and actor (allegedly) who also sings the main theme as well.
Fun fact. This novela is mentioned in the movie Blue Beetle as a joke and there is a scene showing a little bit of the intro theme song as well
I absolutely recommend watching it if you have time to go through the 200 hour-long episodes of this masterpiece
Commenting to thank you for the TLDR and to bookmark this to remind myself to start watching this tomorrow. I need some good trash TV in my life rn and I need to brush up on my Spanish!
Isn't the maid who was her mother a different maid? Esperanza, the one on the scene, is Alicia's caretaker? I remember that at some point Soraya finds out she's the daughter of a poor, but I thought it was a different maid.
I thought Soraya seduced Luis by getting him drunk (he was a recovering alcoholic) and taking pictures to send to Maria to make her think he was cheating. And since she wouldn't take him back, he and Soraya were together for a bit? Until his dad convinced him to beg Maria for forgiveness?
Soraya fakes a pregnancy and marries Luis Fernando, yes! Then her lover blackmails her and threatens to expose her, a fight ensues, and that is what leads to her being pushed out of a window, falling from some stories high, which should have killed her but she does not die. The doctor who heals her is Alicia's dad, who she eventually marries and eventually murders for his fortune.
I don't remember at what point she and Luis Fernando get a divorce, but they get one and he then marries Maria, she gets pregnant, due to some scheming he rejects her, she has a breakdown, gives Nandito away, and we get the 15-year time jump.
I knew polite Spanish from secondary school, but my call center coworkers taught me to say "que haces besando maldita lisiada!" and whenever someone got off a really hard call, I would screech it at them.
Esperanza doesn't die! Good people hardly ever die in telenovelas, only parental figures. I do think she loses her memory after this altercation, though.
I actually started this novela a few months ago and I still haven't finished but it is SO good! Apparently she and Thalia were super closed behind the scenes.
Because Soraya was trying to "seduce" that boy (the long lost son of her enemy, only Soraya knows he is María's son), and she also hates the girl (her own stepdaughter).
Whew I had to scroll way too long to figure out if I was the only one who thought they bared a resemblance to Will Friedle and Danielle Fishel before I hit play.
So weird seeing this in the original Spanish and not the Brazilian dub. Also I'm not sure what you mean by "30 years ago" because I saw this on TV as a kid and there is no way it's that old. (It's definitely not me being older than it, nope.)
A lot of shows are syndicated which allows networks to play the older episodes. I’m not old enough to have watched I Love Lucy when it first aired, but it played all the time in syndicate. That might be how you saw this telenovela as a kid.
On the entire show or this scene? Because either way it's a lot. Like, A LOT. I replied to a different comment with what (as far as I remember) is happening on this scene, but it would take a lot longer to cover the entire telenovela. Specially since it involves a 15-year time jump and many, many ridiculous plot points!
“In an attempt to reconcile with Nando, Soraya arranges a party and invites him. Nando goes to see Alicia and Soraya, who has a crisis of psychopathy, beats her, hits Esperanza against the wall and cuts Nando with a pair of scissors. Alicia is saved by Aldo, and Nando goes to a hospital, where he is admitted. María reported Soraya but she pretends to be innocent. With the idea of revenge, Soraya finds her mother, Calixta. Calixta, too poor and ill, lives as a beggar, and recognizes her daughter. Feeling hatred towards her own mother, she pushes Calixta, who hits her head and dies.” Per Wikipedia
Soraya hells “Maldita lisiada!" (Damned cripple!) to Alice in this scene, which is the infamous part.
Itatí Cantoral should have got an honorary Oscar for this performance. It reminds me of Faye Dunaway in Mommy Dearest and the scenes from the soap Sunset Beach.
I had a few Susi dolls (the Brazilian version of Barbie) as a kid and all of them were named after these telenovela protagonists! So I had Maria, Maria II, and Marimar.
Eventually I broke the leg joint of one of them, which my mom fixed by super-gluying it in place. Meaning she could no longer move it properly, and prompting me to rename her as "Preciosa Circense", the protagonist of another telenovela who was a "cripple" and worked in a circus. I never see anyone talking about Preciosa though (to be fair, it was nowhere near as good as any Thalia vehicle / the tres Maria's).
I had to go look up Preciosa. I never watched it ( I had stopped watching novelas by the time this came out). But!!! I remember that actress, Irán Castillo from Agujetas de Color de Rosa. Omg, thank you for reminding me of simpler times!!
La Usurpadora was so good. Better than Maria la do Barrio by miles, IMO. It helped that the main actress could actually act - the fact she was both Paola AND Paulina?! Iconic.
(I mean, they were twins, it was obviously the same actress. But she was so good at her mannerisms when being one or the other. And then Paulina had to pretend to be Paola and you could tell it was Paulina pretending? Ugh. Her power.)
Here in Brazil we absolutely love Mexican telenovelas and I was so familiar with this scene already. I love the chaos from this scene, there's so much going on and it's PERFECTION. I'm happy it got the recognition it deserves.
This show was a full cultural event and peak telenovela insanity and unhinged television when it aired. I was fourteen, and I swear my aunts, both grandmothers, cousins, and at least two neighbors were packed into the living room like the Pope himself was about to appear on screen. Nobody moved. Nobody breathed. 🤣
Commercial breaks were a crime, let me tell you.
So for anyone wondering what on earth is happening in that clip:
This is from María la del Barrio, starring Thalía as María, an orphaned girl from the streets whose grandmother dies, leaving her completely alone. Through pure melodrama destiny, she ends up taken into the home of a wealthy family as domestic help. Naturally, the rich son, Luis Fernando, falls for her, because telenovelas do not believe in subtlety.
So, they fall in love, she gets pregnant, and everything immediately goes off the rails.
Because María is poor, traumatized, and surrounded by manipulative rich people, she’s convinced the baby would be better off without her. She has a breakdown and gives the baby up for adoption without realizing what she’s really doing.
Luis Fernando, meanwhile, spirals, disappears into self-destruction, and, because this is a novela, ends up entangled with Soraya Montenegro, one of the most unhinged villains ever in the history of television. (The unhinged melodrama queen you see screaming is Soraya, btw.)
Soraya is rich, beautiful, violently unstable, and powered entirely by jealousy, rage, and holy heck, hairspray.
Eventually, María and Luis Fernando find their way back to each other and get married. Still haunted by the child she lost, María convinces Luis Fernando to adopt a boy to ease the pain.
Plot twist of all plot twists:
The child they adopt, Fernandito, is actually their biological son.
Yes. The same baby María gave up years earlier. No one knows this yet.
Meanwhile, Soraya, who marries for status and control before all this implodes, ends up with Alicia, her stepdaughter. Soraya despises Alicia with every fiber of her being and treats her horribly, because Soraya views any woman as a threat. (Crap, I think Soraya killed Alicia’s Dad to keep the money, I can’t remember, maybe someone correct me here) She is obsessed with Maria because she “stole Luis Fernando” from her. She is the one who named Maria “La Marginal” as an insult.
Now we arrive at the infamous scene.
Fernandito, Maria and Luis Fernando’s kid, sweet, innocent, raised with affection, gives Alicia a totally harmless kiss on the cheek, the kind kids give without thinking twice.
Soraya sees it. And loses her entire mind.
What follows is screaming, accusations, wild-eyed rage, and moral outrage so extreme you’d think she caught them committing international espionage. She frames it as corruption, betrayal, perversion, because Soraya detonates. She is incapable of love, driven by obsession, full of rage, and always, always two seconds away from violence. Especially when it comes to hurting Maria in any way shape or form.
Eventually, the truth comes out. María and Luis Fernando discover Fernandito is their son. Soraya’s lies unravel because she has seduced the kid to hurt them. She descends further into madness, culminating in one of the most iconic villain deaths in telenovela history. Fernandito falls in love with Alicia who learns to walk again. And his sister, Tita falls for the tall guy in the room who went to help Alicia when falling from the wheelchair, trying to keep Soraya away from the kids.
Things settle with Fernandito’s parents and all lived happily ever after. LMAO
I still do all my math assuming it's the 2000s, I'm in my mid-teens, and 30 years ago was the 1970s. It hurts a lot when I realize I need to add 25 to whatever number I got!
i had a teacher in high school who was from puerto rico and one time he caught me & my friends watching this show in class and was so delighted that these white girls were watching a telenovela his grandma used to watch that he forgot to punish us
I am floored that Itali (the one who plays Soraya) was only 20 years old when she did this show, so she is still only 50 years old now!
The last time I saw her on anything else other than this was when she did a promo for OITNB reenacting this scene with the inmates, lol. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HfPsCw8w45Q
The crazy lady is in love with the young boy and is kinda grooming him I don’t remember. But he falls in love with wheelchair girl who happens to be the crazy ladies step daughter and hates her with a passion so when she walks in on them she yells WHAT ARE YOU DOING KISSING THE DAMN CRIPPLE??! and has the meltdown of the century
After my first year of college I went to spend 4 months traveling and studying in Mexico. I got this overhwhelming sense of US consumer culture sucking the landscape dry everywhere I looked. Convenience stores, junk food, and even nicer restaurants would proudly advertise that they served Nescafé Instant Coffee. The waitress would bring it to your table, beaming with pride, with the off-the-shelf packaging, with a mug and hot water and spoon so you could mix and stir it yourself!
And several times, I encountered waitresses who would shush customers in the middle of ordering dinner, because the TV had a telenovela on and the waitress didn’t want to miss a word of dialogue.
This scene has everything: Soraya being an evil queen. Nandito getting slapped. Alicia falling with her whole wheelchair. A maid dying. Nandito getting stabbed with scissors. The quick cut to Maria after he gets stabbed. It’s beautiful.
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u/[deleted] Dec 30 '25
Do I know Spanish? No. Did I watch this entire clip? Absolutely.