One would think a telenovela-inspired, 23-year-old virgin who becomes unexpectedly pregnant wouldn’t have much in common with a newly created superhero. But when The CW showed off its fall wares at the kick-off to this fall’s PaleyFest Saturday night in Los Angeles, the two casts and crews together presented what the network is already calling two of the two biggest hits of fall TV.

LA’s Paley Center for Media invited fans to watch advanced screenings of networks’ fall television offerings then meet the teams behind each show for more insight into how the series were made and where they may go next.

First up? The CW’s Jane the Virgin and The Flash.

Jane the Virgin is inspired by a Venezuelan telenovela where small moments at home meet big, over-the-top, telenovela-like declarations. When asked why he wanted to bring the title to U.S. networks, executive producer Ben Silverman said he loved the concept, it had so much space to play with the premise and he “just really loved the title.” Executive producer Jenny Snyder Urman agreed, saying that she saw it as a sort of fairy tale, which explains some of the producers’ creative choices. Silverman, NBC’s former president of entertainment and now the CEO of Electus, was behind the U.S. adaptation of another popular telenovela, Betty La Fea, which became ABC’s Ugly Betty, starring America Ferrara.

The story of Jane the Virgin is told through an omniscient narrator straight out of those telenovelas, beginning with Jane’s childhood, when her religious and well-meaning grandmother taught her the preciousness of her virginity, and of protecting it at all costs. Jane grew up with that lesson at the back of her mind, along with the knowledge that her own mother became an unwed mom at the age of 16 and she had no desire for that in her own life. So when she is mistakenly artificially inseminated at the doctor’s office at the age of 23, her life is thrown upside down very quickly.

The show’s lead, Gina Rodriguez, who reportedly turned down many roles—including Lifetime’s Devious Maids —in favor of this show, says that Jane is the character she always wanted to see on TV when she was young.

“Now I get to play a role model,” Rodriguez said. “Jane can be that for so many others.”

The telenovela inspiration takes a few obvious forms and a few not-so-obvious. A prominent character in the show is a telenovela star, who jumps right off the screen into Jane’s family’s life. Snyder Urman says that the show is all about “going from those small, emotional moments at home” to larger, telenovela-like “swoops in story.” After all, in the first episode, when Jane finds out she is pregnant, it messes up her carefully planned life, providing an opportunity for rebellion, says Snyder Urman. “You know, all the fun telenovela tropes.”

The Flash is similar in that sense, providing a chance for CSI investigator Barry Allen’s rebellion, but his is of a different type altogether. The Flash‘s pilot packs a lot of information into one episode, telling Allen’s origin story from when his mother was killed to a freak storm that turned him into The Flash to his decision to do something with his new powers.

The Flash was originally part of The CW’s Arrow, thought up as a spinoff very early on that could have been a back-door pilot. Instead, The Flash/Barry Allen, played by Grant Gustin, showed up in episodes eight and nine in Arrow, providing the segue into his own story.

Executive producer Greg Berlanti says that he was always a fan of the hero as a kid. He added that originally The Flash was “always bright and funny and optimistic” until DC Comics reimagined him as slightly darker, changing the storyline about his parents’ death so that his mother was killed when he was a child and his father blamed for her death. His main goal becomes to exonerate his father and find out what really happened to his mother – as well as what happened to him. After waking up from a nine-month coma, he’s told that he was hit by a bolt of lightning, to which he replies: “Lightning gave me abs?”

They also reimagined his relationship with best friend/secret crush, Iris West, played by Candice Patton. Berlanti calls the relationship between West and Allen a cross between When Harry Met Sally and the Albert Brooks/Holly Hunt relationship in Broadcast News. West’s father, Detective Joe West, is played by Jesse L. Martin, who viewers may recognize from his days as a detective on Law and Order. When asked if he had ever envisioned himself wearing a badge and gun again, Martin answers: “Nope! I didn’t know anything about The Flash other than there were Underoos and I had them.”

Martin and Patton also admitted that though they had read up on the comics for their roles, they didn’t look into everything. “I want to experience it as Joe does,” said Martin. “I want to see it all as the audience does.”

And the audience will, when The Flash starts off The CW’s fall season on Oct. 7 at 8 p.m. Jane the Virgin debuts the following week on Oct. 13 at 9 pm.

[Image courtesy of © Kevin Parry for The Paley Center for Media]

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