How to Use telenovela in a Sentence

telenovela

noun
  • The song was a huge hit and was used as the theme song for a telenovela that shared the same name.
    — Los Angeles Times, 26 Aug. 2021
  • Power is our telenovela and people come back from the dead all the time.
    — Rosy Cordero, Deadline, 4 Oct. 2024
  • And heaven knows the course of true telenovela love never did run smooth.
    — Robert Bianco, USA TODAY, 8 May 2017
  • In their downtime some of the girls watch telenovelas, paint their nails, braid their hair.
    — San Diego Union-Tribune, 3 Oct. 2019
  • This film starts as a documentary but slowly takes the form of a telenovela.
    — Leo Barraclough, Variety, 13 Aug. 2024
  • Gascón, who lives in Mexico, has long been known for her roles in telenovelas.
    — Antonia Blyth, Deadline, 28 Oct. 2024
  • In the living room, my grandmother watched a syrupy telenovela.
    — New York Times, 20 July 2021
  • One is a charming telenovela actor and the other is a hidden figure who has to work twice as hard to make her voice heard.
    — Pamela Avila, USA TODAY, 20 July 2023
  • The telenovela works itself out in under a year, with a finite cast of characters.
    — New York Times, 4 July 2021
  • The telenovela has had its unforeseen plot twists, its moments of madness and its bursts of brilliance.
    — Aleks Klosok, CNN, 11 Aug. 2020
  • But those revelations added more drama to a telenovela that seems to add plot twists on a weekly basis.
    — Kevin Baxter, Los Angeles Times, 6 Sep. 2022
  • The telenovela star and her husband share an 8-year-old daughter, Aitana.
    — Christi Carras, Los Angeles Times, 30 Aug. 2022
  • In the telenovela-style thriller, a woman has an affair with a stranger in a nightclub and the fallout includes a dead body in a bathtub.
    — Ellen Gamerman, WSJ, 10 Dec. 2020
  • Omar Ayuso, who shares the same name as his character, is a pillar of the teen telenovela Elite.
    — Kalia Richardson, Rolling Stone, 21 Oct. 2023
  • Serena stands in the background, watching them with a mixture of sadness and envy like the third wheel in a telenovela.
    — Sarah Bichsel, baltimoresun.com, 15 June 2017
  • Her real-life crush shows up, and Cabello’s final telenovela form chooses self-love over the boy.
    — Allison Stubblebine, Billboard, 24 Oct. 2017
  • If the outlines of the plot sound like pure melodrama, that's not far off; at least a few of the movie's more outrageous threads wouldn't feel out of place in a telenovela.
    — Leah Greenblatt, EW.com, 22 Sep. 2021
  • Max Brazil’s first telenovela didn’t have a happy ending for its lead characters, as is customary in the genre.
    — Armando Tinoco, Deadline, 21 Mar. 2025
  • Alexia has done it the right way, by putting in her time, forging bonds with all the women, and bringing more storylines than a decade’s worth of telenovelas.
    — Brian Moylan, Vulture, 7 Aug. 2025
  • It was shot in Mexico and mimics a telenovela about a fatal love quadrangle.
    — Jean E. Palmieri, Footwear News, 3 Sep. 2019
  • In this romantic comedy, the two stars of a new streaming telenovela are working very hard, for good reasons, not to fall in love with each other.
    — Jim Higgins, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, 18 Nov. 2020
  • Fans of the popular pop-rock music group and Rebelde telenovela will love the instant collection of the beloved group.
    — Jessica Roiz, Billboard, 14 Nov. 2023
  • Joao Emanuel Carneiro will write the next Globoplay telenovela, Bretas said.
    — Marcelo Cajueiro, Variety, 1 May 2022
  • Only one, Mexico, canned it after one season and that was after an almost telenovela-length first run of episodes.
    — Max Goldbart, Deadline, 18 Feb. 2026
  • Based on a Colombian telenovela, this satire of the high-fashion world proved that having a strong mind and an open heart is more important than what's on the surface.
    — Danny Horn, EW.com, 24 Jan. 2025
  • Sofía Gascón, a trans Spanish actor known largely for parts in telenovelas, works wonders with the toughest of roles.
    — Bilge Ebiri, Vulture, 19 May 2024
  • Thomas and Lee have turned that kind of sickening hatred into a telenovela, spiked with easy targets and derisive laughter—by the many for the many.
    — Steven Strogatz, The New Yorker, 5 Mar. 2018
  • Like other Latina actresses, Salma Hayek first stepped in front of the cameras for a telenovela.
    — Selena Barrientos, Good Housekeeping, 30 June 2022
  • Then the video pulls back to reveal Cabello watching the telenovela drama unfold on a retro TV set.
    — Johnny Diaz, Sun-Sentinel.com, 24 Oct. 2017
  • The show, just as popular in Israel as in the West Bank, is written and directed in the over-the-top telenovela style.
    — Kenneth Turan, Detroit Free Press, 8 Aug. 2019

Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'telenovela.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

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