Jenni had been talking about working in television for years, and for at least the last five years she had been seriously considering a proposal to produce a reality show. But Jenni did not want to commit to it when her children were still small; it didn’t seem right to put them on camera without their consent. So she waited until the moment was right.
“They were always asking me to do a reality show about my life, about what I do artistically, on tours, in recording sessions, during interviews,” Jenni told me on Estudio Billboard. “But they always wanted to see the mother side of Jenni.”
Jenni agreed to it—up to a point. In the summer of 2010, the bilingual television channel Mun2 began airing Jenni Rivera Presents: Chiquis & Raq-C, a reality show about two young Latinas in Los Angeles: Chiquis and her friend, the radio personality Raq-C (Raquel “Raq-C” Cordova). Jenni was the executive producer, but a big part of the show revealed the Diva at home with her family.
“I’m not totally out in front,” Jenni told me on Estudio Bill board in the fall of 2010. “In some scenes I’m on camera, but usually I’m behind the cameras. And that’s not weird for me. On the contrary, it’s refreshing to see we’re recording the ideas I have, and then decide what I want and what I don’t want. It’s another side of Jenni Rivera, the producer. It doesn’t bother me. No, I like it; I like to see other people shine.”
Jenni Rivera Presents: Chiquis & Raq-C debuted on July 3, 2010, at three o’clock in the afternoon. Even though the show centered around Chiquis and Raq-C, it offered a glimpse into parts of Jenni’s life that her fans had never seen before: Jenni hanging out at home; Jenni the executive in her office, working side by side with Chiquis, her right hand; Jenni coming home, tired after playing countless shows on the road, greeted by her children and a home-cooked dinner for Mother’s Day. The response on social media was immediate: the fans wanted more. More Jenni, who was irresistibly real. More Chiquis, who was beautiful, sweet, and bursting with personality.
The fans already knew that Jenni was Jenni. But if the show gave them one big surprise, it was Chiquis, who had her mother’s charisma, an irresistible smile, and a sweetness that the television cameras captured incredibly well. Chiquis was a natural. That made Jenni’s fans even more curious, and now they wanted to see the rest of her family. And Jenni responded.
The following year, she renegotiated her contract with Mun2 and returned with a new version of the show, this time called I Love Jenni. This new variation focused on the daily life of Jenni and her family: her five children, and her new husband, Esteban. Just like everything Jenni touched, the show turned to gold.
On March 5, 2011, at two o’clock in the afternoon, I Love Jenni premiered on Mun2, and quickly became the channel’s highest-rated show.
Many of the network’s staff had expected it would be a big hit, but even so, Jenni’s magnetic charisma was surprising. “Once the cameras started to role, our producer, a girl from New York, said, ‘Oh my God, this woman is incredible.’ You don’t have to know her music to see she’s a star,” recalled Flavio Morales, the Senior Vice President of Programming and Production for Mun2, after Jenni’s death. “Once the series started, the surprising thing was how consistent the ratings were, and the quality of the viewer it attracted. She attracted Latinas who had a higher income and were more bilingual than viewers of other shows we produced. And we could show Jenni: she was the mother who had to get up and take care of her children, even if she had only slept for two hours. Once she got to a meeting late, and it was because she had just come from the airport. She was a mom who worked. This was a show about a working mom.”
Jenni’s star power on television had been demonstrated before I Love Jenni. It was evident not only in the hundreds of interviews Jenni was constantly giving, but also when she was a judge on the 2001–2002 season of the show Tengo Talento, Mucho Talento, broadcast on Estrella TV. The Jenni of Tengo Talento was the singer, the diva, the star who many contestants would nervously ask if they could kiss on her cheek. Jenni always let them. Because on that show, more than anything she was their friend, their confidante, even their mom; a very sexy mom, to be sure, but still Jenni was able to form a meaningful relationship with the contestants, and everything she said was very important, and very entertaining.
I Love Jenni was entirely different. Since it was a reality show about Jenni and her kids, it included all of the members of Jenni’s immediately family, but mainly it centered around Jenni (of course) and Chiquis. And someone new was added to the mix: by then Jenni had married Esteban Loaiza, and the baseball player had a kind of neutralizing effect on the family dynamics. Jenni’s family was boisterous, active, and very talkative. Everything they did, they did big. In contrast, Esteban was calm, quiet, almost Zen.
In an interview with Latina.com in March 2011, Chiqui explained that her mom was very strong, and needed somebody who would balance her. She said Esteban was a calming influence, and a nice addition to the family because he let her mom be herself. If Jenni was in a bad mood, he would leave her alone. Chiqui said he was so centered and sure of himself, he would just tell Jenni her bad mood would pass, and when it did he would be there and she could come talk to him. He brought a lot of stability to their home, according to Chiquis, which was great.
As for the television show, Chiqui told Latina.com it was amazing because it’s different. They weren’t trying to be skinny little girls. They were big, they ate, and that’s how they were—it was very real.
I Love Jenni was real in a very refreshing way. One day its star would appear in a dazzling gown, and the next in jeans with no makeup. Jenni boxed and tried to diet, she drank tequila on stage, and played with Jaylah. In a second-season episode, she wakes up in Los Angeles, exhausted, goes right to the airport in a sweat suit, headed to Miami for the Billboard Awards. When she gets there, she immediately transforms into the fabulous diva. Everything that Jenni professed to be—a mother, businesswoman, diva, singer, and just a real woman with a real woman’s problems—all of those sides of her were revealed on the show, straight up. Jenni had always been real, but on I Love Jenni, all the walls came down; her fans had total access to her, and were invited into her home, her life, and her family. Even with all of that, it still wasn’t enough. They still wanted more.
The first season of I Love Jenni was a stunning ratings success. So much so that in November 2011, Jenni signed a lucrative long-term contract with Mun2 to produce a series of shows, including the next seasons of I Love Jenni.
In a November 2011 Billboard interview, Pete Salgado, Jenni’s manager and friend who coproduced I Love Jenni with her, said the deal with Mun2 was “a multimillion dollar commitment.” “Jen’s career has always been about breaking the barriers,” Salgado said in the interview. “And I think we’ve accomplished that—a Mexican American family is just like the Kardashians. We just may eat different meals, but we’re just as American as apple pie.” As part of the deal, Jenni would also produce a new project for Chiquis: Chiquis N’Control.
“Mun2 has become a second home to me,” Rivera said in a press release. “I’m glad to continue and grow our relationship and show mi vida loca—my life, my vision and feelings to my fans. I have built my career on honesty, reality and creating the most vibrant, impactful career for my fans and my family.”
I Love Jenni would become the most successful original series Mun2 produced. “Jenni is an icon,” Diana Mogollon, the General Manager of Mun2, said to Billboard. “She is one of the most respected and acclaimed Latinas in music and entertainment, and is an integral part of the Mun2 family. Jenni represents the vision of Mun2—cross-cultural, bilingual, influential and embodying the uniquely American lifestyle of our viewers.”
Just as Jenni could appeal to a bilingual, bicultural audience, she could also reach an audience of monolingual English speakers, and an audience that exclusively spoke Spanish. She felt a special connection with this last group, and she always talked about it. They were like her. They were her people.
Jenni also had a major goal that she often spoke of: she wanted to be the Latina Oprah. Her ability to connect with the public was clear, but she wanted to take it to the next level. In October 2011, her radio show Contacto directo con Jenni Rivera began airing. On Contacto directo, which Jenni naturally produced herself, the Diva was at the microphone every Wednesday from ten in the morning until 2 in the afternoon, talking to her listeners. On one segment called “¿Qué haría Jenni?” [What would Jenni do?] she directly answered her fans’ questions.
As with her television show, Jenni had been thinking about having her own radio show for years. The opportunity came to her from the Entravision network and its Vice President of Programming, Nestor Rocha.
“Nestor brought the Jenni concept to us,” Jeffery Liberman, COO of Entravision told Billboard. “We had never done anything like it—not with a big star. She talked about her life, she took calls—almost all from other Latinas—she was an inspiration.”
“She wanted to have that direct contact with her fans,” Nestor Rocha told Billboard after Jenni’s death. “Obviously you can’t have that at a concert or on a prerecorded television show. Here she had that direct contact, and she could see exactly what her fans wanted. She wanted to talk to somebody. And she told her listeners everything that happened. She said, ‘this is true, that’s not true.’”
Jenni loved her radio show, and I Love Jenni filmed her a few times while she was doing the radio show, at least once with her sister Rosie at her side at the microphone.
At the Billboard Conference in 2012, Jenni talked about how her radio show gave her an opportunity to clear up any rumors. She said her fans wanted to listen to her version of events, to hear her talk about items in the news and gossip circulating about her.
For Jeff Liberman and his network, having Jenni on the air meant much more than simply having a star on their station. “We thought it was important to give Latinas in the United States a voice. No news station was focusing on that. And Jenni was very unique. Aside from being a Regional Mexican star and very different, what made Jenni particularly unique was with all she had—her television and radio shows and her companies—she never forgot about the U.S. Latina. And through her radio show, she was connecting with that Latina for four hours at a time. I don’t see anybody else doing that.”
Just as important, Jenni ran her radio show in the same way she managed her records, her music, her live concerts, and her television show: with 100% dedication, overseeing every single detail.
“I can’t tell you how many hours Jenni spent going around with us to different advertisers to tell them about her vision for the show,” Liberman told Billboard. “I’d say her desire to help, helped us sell the show […] And I can’t tell you how many times she was in Miami, for example, and the next morning she was with us. A lot of artists don’t do that.”
Jenni was perhaps the Diva of all divas. But she was always a diva with her feet planted firmly on the ground, and always strongly believed in the power and support of her fans and her people. For Jenni, unlike most female recording artists, being fabulous did not mean distancing yourself from the public. Just the opposite: the more fabulous, and more famous she was, the shorter the distance between her and her fans. And Jenni never, ever forgot where she came from.
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On July 1, 2011, Jenni and her husband Esteban were each honored with a star on the Las Vegas Walk of Fame, making them only the second couple ever to have both received this (the first was Emilio and Gloria Estefan). The stars are made of granite, each weighing two hundred pounds, and were placed in the sidewalk on the Las Vegas Strip outside of the MGM Grand Hotel & Casino near other stars for such legends as Dean Martin, Elvis Presley and Frank Sinatra.
A few weeks later, on a sunny Tuesday afternoon, July 26, 2011, Jenni went back to her old high school, Long Beach Polytechnic, to receive a star on the Poly Walk of Fame. She was the fifth notable person to be honored by the school: some weeks before, the former mayor of Long Beach, Beverly O’Neill, the singer Thelma Houston, the former NFL football player Willie Brown and the tennis icon Billie Jean King had all been honored with their own stars.
Jenni attended the event wearing a white sundress with spaghetti straps, a big floppy brown sunhat, sunglasses and hoop earrings. She looked glamorous and beautiful. “This young lady is an inspiration,” said City Councilman Dee Andrews as he called her to the podium.
Jenni stood behind the microphone, looking young and radiant, and said: “I was a nerd that played in the marching band on this same field, and I haven’t been here since and it feels really good to be able to come back and…I would play my music then, and I came back because of my music and that feels really good. Thanks to all of you who have considered little ol’ me from Long Beach, California for a star here at Poly High School, and thanks for remembering that I came out of here,” she said, wiping away a tear, “I don’t forget it. I’m still a Poly Jack Rabbit!”
Television, radio, stars. The year 2011 was a great one for Jenni. But it didn’t stop there. That same year, Jenni Rivera took another big step in her career: she ventured into the movies.