How Salma Hayek Pinault Used Math to Get ‘Ugly Betty’ on the Air

Salma Hayek Pinault struggled to get Ugly Betty made in the U.S., so she turned to math to get the job done.

Speaking to Marie Claire for the cover story for our March Craftsmanship issue, Hayek Pinault opens up about how hard it was to convince the powers that be to create the hit TV show.

"Nobody wanted it. Nobody thinks it’s going to work," she explains.

One of the studio executives' main concerns with this show, an English-language remake of a Colombian telenovela, was that the country's Latino demographic wasn't significant enough to drive viewership, Hayek Pinault says.

To change their minds, the star gathered data that showed the buying power of the Latino market. Lo and behold, the series premiere, which aired in 2006, attracted a whopping 16 million viewers.

(Image credit: Claire Rothstein)

Hayek Pinault was an executive producer on the show, which starred America Ferrera, and also appeared in a handful of episodes.

The series, which ran until 2010, "featured a Black magazine editor-in-chief, her openly gay assistant, one of network television’s first openly gay kids in prime time, and a trans character who undergoes gender reassignment surgery," writes Hayek Pinault interviewer Lola Ogunnaike.

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