A dress, a revenge, and dozens of successes: the telenovela life of a telenovela writer.

Amo y Señor. Quiero gritar tu nombre. Un mundo de 20 asientos. La cuñada. Una voz en el teléfono. Marcela Citterio was very young, but she remembers the excitement with which she awaited each episode of the telenovela of the moment. From the helplessness of seeing her heroines cry, to the suspenseful life and shared happiness when, after months of adventures, these suffering women met their prince charming en un beso, de repente. Luisa Kuliok, Cristina Alberó, Gabriela Gili, Maria de los Angeles Medrano, María Valenzuela and Carolina Papaleo. Arnaldo André, Antonio Grimau, Claudio Levrino, Gustavo Garzón, Raúl Taibo. The faces of fictional loves that marked a passion of her own that had been born even earlier, when at 7 years old she stole her grandmother's Corín Tellado novels.

Later, a series of coincidences, or the path of so many insecure teenagers in the late 80s. Marcela is tall, very tall, extremely tall, and what eventually made her stand tall in the world with the certainty of a panoramic view of events and things, at 16 made her tremendously insecure: "My mom enrolled me in a modeling school so that I could learn to walk and loosen up a bit, and there were theater classes there, so I enrolled. Since I liked the novels so much, I thought I wanted to be an actress. So I went to a class and the teacher, whose name was Alberto Rinaldi, asked us to write about the characters of a monologue. When he saw what I had done, he said to me, 'Oh, but you write better than you act. Have you ever thought about writing for television?'"

And no, the truth is that although she had always loved reading and writing, she had never thought about being a screenwriter. Being a screenwriter was not a common career choice for anyone at that time, especially not for a girl, although it may seem unbelievable now that everyone wants to be a screenwriter. But that question sparked her curiosity, Citterio tells Infobae: "I started writing series that I imagined and enrolled in a course by Carlos Lozano Dana, who encouraged me to continue: 'You're going to be a great author,' he said. I hadn't turned 18 yet and I couldn't believe it. Suddenly, I knew exactly what I wanted to do."

The path, however, was not so straightforward. Marcela wrote non-stop, but worked as a promoter and as a waitress in a pizzeria in Paseo La Plaza. She had a friend with whom she went to theaters to bring her favorite actors the books she imagined for them. "Carlín Calvo, Luisina Brando, everyone you can think of. It was our way of getting closer. We also went to the channels with our folder, but nothing happened."

Until one day she saw screenwriter Jorge Maestro - who was then working on the television series "Estado Civil" (1992) - at one of the tables in the pizza shop. It wasn't her turn to serve him, but she took advantage of her colleague's lack of enthusiasm to take her place. "Since he had an open script, I went for it: 'Oh, I write for television!'. And he said to me, 'What do you write? Because we are going to open a scholarship at Canal 13, initially for people from 13, but if what you do is good, there may be a place for you'. I told him I wrote novels, comedies, youth comedies... because that was the truth, I wrote everything. And we agreed that I would leave my material at the pizza shop and he would pick it up. I brought everything, but convinced that it wasn't going to go any further than that," she says.

But then Marcela's life took its first novel turn. Maestro came back to look for her texts and shortly after he notified her and her friend, now also a screenwriter, Marisa Milanesio, that they had been selected to participate in the editing course offered on the channel. "We were much closer now. Zona de Riesgo and La Banda del Golden Rocket were being recorded and they told us they were going to test us to write the dialogues for La Banda. We were ecstatic!" she recalls.

Maestro also gave her a small role in Estado Civil, which was the success of the year. Marcela played the role of Soledad Silveyra and Gerardo Romano's secretary. It was almost as if she finally understood that acting was not for her; every time she crossed the door of the still embryonic department of screenwriters that Maestro created on Channel 13, she realized that her passion lay elsewhere. Only among other writers and imagining the future of the characters that moved her on screen did she feel the call of her true vocation, "I was happy".

A call that would eventually turn her into the brain behind hits such as Los buscas de siempre (2000), Amor en custodia (2005), Patito feo (2007), Corazón valiente (2012), Chica vampiro (2013), Yo soy Franky (2015) and Heidi, bienvenida a casa (2017), among many others.

The debut had been crazy: Citterio and Milanesio became the dialogue team of La Banda, a program that broke audience records for three seasons and where, in addition, Araceli González and Adrián Suar met and fell in love. It also had a peculiarity that for Marcela was a great event, for the first time an authorial team appeared in the credits. The Citterios waited and celebrated in each episode the microsecond when their daughter's name appeared on the screen.

A year later, Maestro called them and said that he thought the role of dialogue writers was already too small for them: "You are here to be authors," he decreed and put them in touch with Quique Torres and Enrique Estevanez, the two star producers of the 90s novels. One offered them to join the team of a series that was already on the air, the other said he had a project for which he needed authors.

They chose the project, which never developed. Instead, they ended up writing the scripts for the joke novels that Jorge Porcel and Jorge Luz did in La Piñata, which Estevanez also produced. This also came with the proposal to write a miniseries for Telefé: Un hermano es un hermano, with Guillermo Francella and Javier Portales, which was an absolute success. It was 1994 and Citterio, at 24, was already an author in the big leagues. The height that had so intimidated her now served her well: most people thought she was older.

The first novel she led alone was avant-garde: the story of a 50-year-old woman who separates after 20 years of marriage. The protagonist was Ana María Picchio, as Mecha, and the series was called De Corazón. Marcela also had a broken heart at that time, it was her first major job after her father's death and her life had completely changed. In addition, her friend Marisa got married and Marcela was left without a writing partner. Although they were different ages, just like the Mecha in her novel, she also suddenly felt alone in the world.

"I found it interesting to tell the story of this woman and it was a gamble because the channel thought it was a strange story. But the response from the public was overwhelming, we ended up making 400 episodes, it was wonderful. It also helped me a lot because I focused on work and was able to get through the sadness that way. And the novel ended up winning the Martin Fierro Award," she says. Although, of course, Citterio did not dare to go up with the team to receive it: "I stayed at the table thinking 'Someday I will dare'."

Two other successful novels followed, which were also very disruptive to the tradition of soap operas: Como vos y yo (1998) and Los Buscas. "Nancy (Dupláa) got pregnant when we had just started, and the novel wasn't meant for that. So she offered to step aside and I said, 'We can't lose her, we have to take a chance on this story'. So I had fifteen episodes written, went back, and in episode 9 I had them make love. And it was what it was, it was incredible."

The future of each novel was determined in three months. Three months to know whether it would continue or be discontinued. Los Buscas had 200 episodes and in its journey, like many other productions that Citterio participated in, it was breaking down prejudices. The story of what the audience tolerates in a novel is also the story of social changes. "Women over 50, blended families, or homosexuality were things that had no place and were gradually making space, sometimes in a scandalous way," says the screenwriter.

Amor en Custodia (2005), with Soledad Silveyra and Osvaldo Laport, started at one o'clock in the afternoon and with few expectations: "The channel told me they put it on at that time because they didn't have anything else. Solita came from prime time and didn't feel like it was going to go well, but as she always gives her all in her work, she put everything into the character and was surprised by the impact. She's still surprised today," says Citterio.

In the end, it was the novel that opened the doors of the world for her. "TV Azteca bought the books and I did the adaptation, so it was a great learning experience. Then Televisa did it, Colombia bought it," she says. There was no time for celebrations, because by then the work on future projects was already Monday to Sunday. Marcela put together a team of women, including her friend Marisa and Claudia Morales: "I always felt more comfortable like that - with exceptions of great colleagues - we supported each other, there was no problem if someone came with the baby (Marcela has Chiara, 19, who follows in her footsteps: on May 6th, she presents at La Feria del Libro Buenos Aires Jefa at 17, in a panel with Marcela) and most importantly, it was a team of talented authors with whom I continue to work".

Amor el Custodia also allowed her to fulfill her old personal promise. She went to the Martín Fierro Awards dressed by Pablo Ramírez and held the award high. But the next day she was disciplined with subtlety: "They didn't like that you had such a high profile," a producer told her. It seemed that her fear from her youth was justified: a woman occupying a prominent place sometimes bothers people. After that, she was fired, she recalls. "They offered me to stay in the novel I was in, but to write in secret. And I said no. But it was very strong, I was losing my job with a young daughter," she remembers.

It was a shock that she recovered from quickly thanks to another coincidence: "I had always worked, and that week, for the first time in my life, I didn't have a job, so I went to buy pasta with my daughter in downtown Vicente López. And when I passed by Café de Paris, I heard someone calling my name. It was the screenwriter Mario Schajris, who had just finished working on Los Roldán. He told me he had an idea and had thought of me for it, it was called Patito Feo and it was a children's show. I wanted to do things for kids because I saw how fascinated Chiara was with High School Musical, and I also needed the job, so I said yes almost without hesitation."

At that moment, everything was lived with joy, she says. Patito Feo was a boom that allowed her to start traveling to international production fairs and take and sell her projects, something she still does to this day. But over time, the novel exploded for the wrong reasons, terrible reasons, and even more so in a series for children, when Thelma Ferdin denounced the adult protagonist of the series, Juan Darthés, for abuse that occurred on an international tour. Citterio says that the atmosphere on set never hinted at what was happening, although she worked from home. "It was an unexpected, painful ending," she says.

She did not speak to Thelma again, but she says she did stay in touch with Santi Talledo and Brenda Asnicar, who later went to Telemundo with her. "I feel that there was no awareness of the magnitude of fame and responsibility. I wasn't afraid to think about other products for kids, because I don't think it's something that's going to happen all the time, and even less so now. I understand that it's part of the change: there were so many things so normalized in the industry before, so many renowned actors you had to be careful with and no one said anything! It's so important that that has stopped being taken as something normal, that women have told their stories, that they have been able to speak," she says.

After Patito, Citterio made big projects for Telemundo, Nickelodeon, and Netflix, many of them for children and teenagers, like Mirada Indiscreta (2023), which is now on that platform. And she created her own publishing house, Orlando Books, which aims to publish works with a great narrative pace, very cinematic and with stories capable of captivating readers from the first page. Like a novel. Like those Corín Tellado that she stole from her grandmother.

On the 29th, at Feria del Libro Buenos Aires, she will present her own novel, Lady Voyeur, designed with that dynamic and on which Mirada Indiscreta is based. She will also give a talk on one of the current topics, how to go "from book to streaming," something she has vast experience in.

A few months ago, Marcela had an idea: to put that black high-necked dress that Ramirez designed for her on a mannequin on her desk. As a symbol. That she no longer hides, that the place of a female screenwriter is no longer just a credit that passes at the end, in a second. That that dismissal for her high profile encouraged her to keep growing, to lift her head even higher. And that like the princesses and heroines of soap operas, she also had her dress of revenge.