NEW YORK — What’s the hardest role for an actor? A reality TV star, says Sissi Fleitas, cast member for WE tv’s docuseries My Life Is a Telenovela, about actors vying for roles in the Telemundo Spanish- language scripted drama Eva La Trailera (Eva the Truck Driver).

Fleitas and other cast members on the WE tv program spoke at the Multichannel News and Broadcasting & Cable Hispanic Television Summit on Oct. 20 about My Life Is a Telenovela, based in Miami, Fla., a.k.a. Latino Hollywood. Fleitas said she’s had an amazing but challenging experience taping the reality series while competing for a role on Eva La Trailera.

Though, to hear from other cast members, producing a telenovela is a huge grind, often requiring actors to film three, 30-minute episodes virtually every day for a minimum 120-episode season.

“It’s extremely hard — it’s a lot of, lot of work,” said Enrique Sapene, a Venezuelan-born actor who plays a villainous character (Ramon Estevez) in Eva La Trailera. “But we love it and we enjoy ourselves.”

(It’s also not as lucrative as fans might expect: As The New York Times reported on Oct. 21, many actors on telenovelas produced for NBCUniversal-owned Telemundo in Miami are not paid union scale, something SAG-AFTRA is trying to change by urging Telemundo to come to an agreement. Telemundo told The Times it’s committed to keeping employees’ salaries and working conditions competitive and noted its created hundreds of jobs in Miami.)

Series actress Maria Portillo, who goes by Raquenel, said the WE series gives viewers an important look at the lives of Latino actors even as the presidential campaign has magnified inaccurate, negative stereotypes of Hispanics.

“I don’t call My Life Is a Telenovela a regular reality show. To me, it’s a very good and amazing experience,” Portillo (Rebeca Marin in Eva La Trailera) said. “We as Latino talent are showing to the audience how the behind the scenes is at a telenovela — for example, the joys of shooting and shooting and shooting.

“This is exactly the right moment,” Portillo added, “because we are in a political moment and we as Latinos want to show the people we are talented people and we came to this country to work and to be better and to help this country be much better than the way it is. And not just to be, like, assaulting people, and we are not criminals,” she added, to applause.

“Very timely,” panel moderator Dade Hayes, editor of Broadcasting & Cable, noted.

An audience member at the session at The Grand Hyatt, who said he’d recently watched the show (which premiered on Oct. 7), asked what sounded like an existential question about reality TV: “Do you guys come up with the script or is there a script writer who comes up with it?”

“It’s a reality show, there’s no script in our show,” replied Fleitas, a Cuban-born model and actress who was a longtime host on Univision’s Sabado Gigante. “We just go with the flow. This is our real life, shot in our real environment, after we are done with hours and hours of shooting telenovelas and movies, doing casting, preparing ourselves for our lives as actors.” For her, that includes home life with her mother, her grandmother and her three pets.

“In my opinion, reality TV — and I have done two reality shows already — is the hardest of entertainment. It’s harder than doing a theater play. Because in a theater you have a script, you know your entrance, you know your exit, you know your dialogue as an actor. Here, you know nothing. … Here, it’s the real thing, and that to me has a lot of merit and it’s very difficult. It’s the most difficult format I have ever done in my life.”

My Life Is a Telenovela airs Fridays at 10 p.m. on WE tv.

Friday nights are getting a little sudsier, thanks to AMC Networks’ female-targeted WE tv.

Starting Friday, Oct. 7, at 10 p.m. ET, WE tv will air the eight-episode My Life Is a Telenovela, a “docu-reality” series that turns the camera on the drama transpiring between the actors on a fledgling Telemundo soap opera when they’re not reciting lines from the script.

Set in Miami, the series follows a group of “beautiful, talented and hard-working Hispanic actors” working in the hyper-competitive world of telenovelas. Hour-long episodes will run through December.

Stars include veteran actress Sissi Fleitas, a former model and presenter on the now-concluded Univision Saturday-night staple Sábado Gigante. Fleitas has also been featured on the cover of Playboy magazine in Latin America.

Also featured on the series are Telemundo telenovela actress Maria ‘Raquenel’ Portillo, who first gained fame as “the Mexican Madonna;” Venezuelan actor Enrique Sapene [Borderline; Hacienda Heights]; Mexican actor Gustavo Pedraza [Eva La Trailera; El Talisman]; former Sábado Gigante co-host Alina Robert; and Liliana Rodríguez Morillo, the outspoken and temperamental daughter of José Luis Rodriguez “El Puma.”

In the premiere episode, several female cast members are vying for the same role in a telenovela being produced for NBCUniversal-owned telenovela, “resulting in jealousy, betrayal, backstabbing, rivalry and fireworks on both sides of the camera.”

My Life is a Telenovela is produced for WE tv by Matador, a New York- and Los Angeles-based production company founded in 2012 by longtime friends Jay Peterson and Todd Lubin. Since its launch, Matador has produced nearly two dozen TV series, including Spike’s Lip Sync Battle, GSN’s horror-themed competition series Hellevator, and History’s “comedic historical series” Great Minds. Matador is also responsible for HBO’s Emmy-nominated documentary Banksy Does New York, as well as sports and feature documentary specials, virtual reality content and digital programs across several networks.

My Life is a Telenovela is executive produced by Peterson and Lubin, alongside Jerry Carita and Megan Sanchez-Warner. Nathan Carpenter is co-executive producer, while executive producers for WE tv are Lauren P. Gellert and Suzanne Gladstone Murch.

The soapy series is not the only show Matador is producing for AMC Networks:Geeking Out, starring Kevin Smith and Greg Grunberg, is being produced for sister channel AMC.

WE tv will tap the popular telenovela genre with the development of new docu-series My Life Is a Telenovela, said network officials.

The series will follow the lives of several Latina actors and actresses working in the telenovela genre, according to network officials. Several of the characters within the show will be vying for role in a real life telenovela produced by Spanish-language network Telemundo.

“WE tv is a network that was really built on diversity, bringing viewers personalities and programming it has historically been hard to find on the mainstream dial, and this show continues that commitment to new faces and voices,” said Marc Juris, WE tv president in a statement. “We are so excited to bring this world and the passionate men and women who make these incredibly popular soap operas to our viewers, and proud of a strategic partnership with Telemundo that will bring a high level of credibility and authenticity to our show.”