Building 'Betty'

Second song: "Euro trash." He adds: which might work.

Third: "Too five years ago."

Fourth: "That's not bad."

On the computer, with the help of Windows Media Player the song is actually playing along with a clip of the club scene, so Horta can hear how the music adds or subtracts. The song he picks is called "Voodoo Juju." He says he likes it because it's party music, but it has a now edge, "but it doesn't sound like a song you know." Of course, each song sample -- called a "needle drop" -- costs money. Some are free, others cost $25,000. "And there's never enough money," Horta says.

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On his desk, there is a bottle of Advil and a lone cigarette. Horta has his assistant, Brian Tanen, hold on to the pack and dole out the butts very sparingly. Horta exits a long, open window and grabs a few quick puffs on the roof.

One of the other reasons why Hayek and Silverman wanted Horta for "Ugly Betty" is because he grew up in Betty's world. Not in a Mexican household in New York, but a Cuban one in Florida.

Horta's parents came from the island to Miami in 1969 and little Silvio was born in 1974. "My parents, my mom, barely speaks English," he says. His mother worked as a cashier in grocery stores in the super-Cuban enclave of Kendall (where just about everybody speaks Spanish). His father was a guitar player in house bands in local clubs and restaurants. His folks divorced when Silvio was 6.

Like many first-generation Latinos, Horta was both appalled and mesmerized by telenovelas, the TV novels his mother was addicted to. These are mostly Spanish-language imports, airing on stations such as Telemundo and Univision, that resemble our American daytime soap operas, but are more like melodramatic miniseries with a limited run.

They often air nightly in Latin America (vs. once a week) and the ur-narrative is a familiar one: A poor but beautiful girl falls for a rich and handsome man -- then all hell breaks out as their families and society do everything they can to keep them apart, until true love ultimately prevails, and they have twins.

"Me and my friends would laugh at the telenovelas," Horta says. "They were so stupid. But we watched them. You're hooked."

In "Ugly Betty," Horta borrows heavily from "Yo Soy Betty La Fea," but the ABC show is not technically a telenovela. It is instead a one-hour comedy with soapy telenovela notes (there is a visual gag in every episode that shows Hayek in an bodice-ripping telenovela role -- a kind of TV show within a TV show). Plus this: In addition to riffing on the telenovela, Horta wanted to touch on the experiences of first-generation Latinos, a quote from his own life. So in the pilot Betty is on the phone negotiating with her father's HMO, letting the viewer know that here is a woman who hears Spanish in one ear and English in the other. Horta is proud of this.