Mexican artist Mario Morán was filming a nighttime scene in the town of Nopala, Hidalgo, Mexico, when something happened that stopped him in his tracks.
The actor was shooting an early episode of Sabor a Ti, his first leading role in a traditional telenovela. In the scene, his character, Mariano, confronts Ángela, played by Eva Cedeño, for waiting until her grandmother was dying to return and see her.
Morán understood Mariano's anger, but the director wanted another emotional layer. He needed to deliver the rebuke without making the character appear cruel toward the woman he was beginning to love.
Technical problems gave him several opportunities to try again. The lights failed. Then there were issues with the microphone. Morán paused, relaxed, and breathed.
That was when, he said, he heard his late father's voice.
"I just heard my father say, 'Chaparro (shorty), pay attention. Look, do it like this,'" Morán told this reporter in Spanish. "I felt that he entered me because I am him."
Morán began the scene again. When he spoke to Ángela about respecting her grandmother, he recognized his father in his own delivery.
"I heard my father," he recalled. "When they said, 'Cut, that's it,' my whole body trembled. I thought, 'What just happened to me?'"
Afterward, Morán quietly thanked him.
"Thank you, Dad. You came to continue teaching me," he remembered saying.
The moment became part of a remarkable chapter in Morán's life, one in which professional breakthroughs repeatedly arrived alongside profound personal loss.
His mother died from cancer one month before he began filming the ViX biographical series Se llamaba Pedro Infante. The production, released in December 2023, cast Morán as Pedro Infante, the singer and actor whose movies and music turned him into one of the most enduring icons of Mexico's Golden Age of cinema.
Morán has said the opportunity to play Infante helped save him during his grief. His father also influenced his understanding of the legendary performer.
"My dad was always a gentleman, in every sense of the word," Morán said. "Thanks to him, I was able to portray Pedro Infante because he was also a leading man. I don't think being a leading man is about being handsome. It is an attitude." He described his father as respectful, old-fashioned and reminiscent of both Infante and Mexican actor Mauricio Garcés. Morán said he never saw him treat anyone arrogantly, even when others were disrespectful toward him.
His father died unexpectedly in November 2025. Just months later, Morán received another career-changing opportunity when he was selected to star in Sabor a Ti. Production began in March 2026, and Morán publicly dedicated the milestone to both of his parents.
The telenovela premieres in the United States on Univision on Tuesday, Sept. 29, at 8 p.m. ET/7 p.m. CT. It will air Monday through Friday. Mexican audiences will get an earlier premiere on Sept. 21 at 8:30 p.m. on Las Estrellas.
Produced by Lucero Suárez, with Ángel Villaverde as producer, Sabor a Ti is a new Mexican adaptation of the Chilean telenovela of the same name created by José Ignacio Valenzuela and first broadcast in 2000.
The story follows Ángela Herrera, a young woman who returns to a family vineyard after years away and becomes entangled in its secrets, rivalries and contested legacy. At the center of the conflict is a mysterious wine connected to Ángela's grandmother and the people fighting over the future of the property. Ángela's return also brings her closer to Mariano, setting up the show's central romance. Standing between them is Tomás Sarmiento, played by Juan Diego Covarrubias, a wounded and ambitious member of the vineyard-owning family.
The ensemble brings together several generations of major Mexican television performers, including César Évora, Erika Buenfil, Eduardo Santamarina, Nuria Bages, Lisset, Arturo Carmona, Ara Saldívar and Alejandro Ibarra.
Covarrubias said the atmosphere created by Suárez and the cast allowed the actors to work without the clashes that sometimes complicate large productions.
"She has a clinical and specialized eye for choosing talent that makes everything work correctly," he told this reporter. "There are zero egos. You have people who are committed, hardworking and who have the same desire to work that you do."
Although Covarrubias and Morán had known each other casually before the production, the actors developed a stronger connection during rehearsals and filming. Covarrubias said he witnessed Morán carrying his grief through the demanding production.
"I admire him very much," Covarrubias said. "He is a fighter, disciplined, committed and a person with a very good heart who deserves everything beautiful that is happening to him. Despite all the pain he was going through at the time, he knew how to channel it and used it to create something as beautiful as his character, Mariano."
Covarrubias' Tomás is positioned as an antagonist, but the actor does not see him as inherently evil. He described the character as a man shaped by an absence of affection and paternal protection.
Tomás seeks refuge in his grandfather Vicente, played by Évora, after being neglected by his father, portrayed by Santamarina. His resentment grows when Vicente appears to form a more natural bond with Mariano.
"He is a good person, but he is hurt," Covarrubias said. "He does some very ugly things because of that pain."
For Morán, leading a daily telenovela meant early alarms, heavy scripts, long shooting days and repeatedly summoning intense emotions.
"There comes a point when the alarm goes off and you think, 'Again? I have to cry all day again. I have to get angry again,'" he said.
But the work also gave him somewhere to place his grief. Morán said actors, singers, musicians and painters inevitably draw from their own emotional histories. During Sabor a Ti, that process allowed him to feel connected to both parents.
"Every day, I entrusted myself to them," he said. "I told them, 'This is for you. Accompany me, teach me, guide me. Make the magic that I cannot make by myself.'"
For Morán, moments like the one in Nopala became more than acting.
"That is pure medicine for my heart," he said. "I have the good fortune of finding that medicine in fiction for my personal life."
