When Telemundo comes to her mind, the first thing Bianca Quesada thinks about is her grandma’s television set and seeing telenovelas with the same soapy narratives that have been told by the genre for ages. Fast-forward to today, and Quesada will be producing unscripted and scripted content for Telemundo that will expand the aperture of the medium, redefining what a telenovela can be.
“We both fundamentally believe that the Latinx experience is not monolithic and that it is not a one-size-fits-all narrative. We want to bridge the nuance and reliability of characters and move from just a Latin or a Hispanic experience to a universal human experience,” Quesada tells Variety. “Hollywood has been a perpetrator of regurgitation of negative stereotypes about our people, and to a degree, there weren’t enough of us to hold the people in storytelling accountable for the types of depictions,” she added.
Quesada is hoping that, through her exclusive first-look deal with NBCUniversal Telemundo Enterprises, she can be one of many to develop content that is both forward-thinking and authentic.
Quesada’s production banner, Arcus Studios, is dedicated to “expanding the aperture of the Latina)e)o)x narrative.” The multi-year deal Quesada has inked will, specifically, lead to the creation of programming in both English and Spanish for Telemundo’s new content brand on Peacock, Tplus.
Through the first-look deal with Telemundo, Quesada is hoping that she and her company can produce programming that tackles machismo culture and colorism, among other prejudices, within the broader Latinx community.
“I had been talking for a really long time with Tplus and Telemundo about this, and about how their space within the film and TV medium can examine and excavate these themes within different genres through different worlds and characters,” she continued.
