La Reina Celia Cruz was a one-of-a-kind talent, and now, her nephew wants everyone to know how spectacularly Telemundo failed at capturing what made her special. Starting late last year, Telemundo aired an 80-part novela following Celia from her life as a schoolteacher in Cuba to the superstar she became.
Related: You Can Now Watch the First Episode of the Epic Celia Cruz Novela Online For Free
According to El Diario, Jesús Hernández – the real son of the only sibling that made the novela cut – said the novela was a “fictionalized account made in bad taste.” To be fair, Telemundo was honest about what the viewer could expect. Before each episode aired, there was a warning that while the novela was inspired by real events, not everything in the hour-long episode was factually accurate.
Perhaps, the most frustrating part for Hernández is that people weren’t able to differentiate between fact and fiction, and his family members ended up with drastically different personalities. Telemundo’s version of Celia’s father, Simón, was wholly unsupportive of her singing career, and he ends up abandoning his family. Hernández said that they made him seem “abusive and ignorant,” and his mother is made to look like a “frivolous person.”
“[The writers made Celia seem] puny, timid, without much personality, with a father who was abusive and a husband who is violent, chauvinistic, and a womanizer,” he said. “That’s not how it was.”