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Daily Inspiration Quote by Erik Estrada

"They do the soaps differently in Mexico. You just have to know the storyline and not memorize the lines. There would be someone feeding you lines while you were performing"

About this Quote

Estrada’s anecdote is a tiny wrecking ball aimed at the fantasy of “professional” acting. By framing Mexican soaps as a place where you “know the storyline and not memorize the lines,” he punctures a very American idea of craft: that seriousness equals preparation, and preparation equals reverence for the script. The punchline lands on that deliciously insider detail - someone literally feeding you lines mid-performance - turning the set into something closer to live TV, a relay race of competence, than the sanctified space we imagine when we picture actors “doing the work.”

The subtext isn’t that Mexican productions are sloppy; it’s that they’re optimized. Telenovelas are famously high-volume, high-speed cultural engines. When you’re making episodes at a relentless clip, the premium shifts from textual fidelity to momentum: hit the emotional beats, sell the relationships, keep the narrative machine moving. Estrada is describing an ecosystem built around continuity of feeling, not purity of dialogue.

There’s also a sly self-positioning here. Estrada, best known in the U.S. for CHiPs, isn’t bragging about method technique; he’s aligning himself with working-actor pragmatism. He’s saying: I can survive in an industry where the camera is rolling, the schedule is unforgiving, and the audience wants intensity now. The line-feeder detail becomes a metaphor for television itself: collaborative, industrial, and less precious than Hollywood mythology would like to admit.

Quote Details

TopicMovie
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Citation Formats

APA Style (7th ed.)
Estrada, Erik. (2026, January 15). They do the soaps differently in Mexico. You just have to know the storyline and not memorize the lines. There would be someone feeding you lines while you were performing. FixQuotes. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/they-do-the-soaps-differently-in-mexico-you-just-145464/

Chicago Style
Estrada, Erik. "They do the soaps differently in Mexico. You just have to know the storyline and not memorize the lines. There would be someone feeding you lines while you were performing." FixQuotes. January 15, 2026. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/they-do-the-soaps-differently-in-mexico-you-just-145464/.

MLA Style (9th ed.)
"They do the soaps differently in Mexico. You just have to know the storyline and not memorize the lines. There would be someone feeding you lines while you were performing." FixQuotes, 15 Jan. 2026, https://fixquotes.com/quotes/they-do-the-soaps-differently-in-mexico-you-just-145464/. Accessed 6 Feb. 2026.

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Erik Estrada (born March 16, 1949) is a Actor from USA.

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