Who Plays Fabiola Torres In Never Have I Ever?
The emergence of Netflix as a major player in the TV world and the flag-bearer of the medium's ongoing streaming age has been analyzed to the ends of the earth and back over the course of the past decade. But one aspect of Netflix's rise that can be counted as a pretty unambiguous net positive is the space it has afforded to once-marginalized creators to tell their stories and find an audience that traditional TV might not have been interested in courting.
The teen dramedy series "Never Have I Ever" is arguably the most shining example of this. The show, created by Mindy Kaling and Lang Fisher, is primarily inspired by Kaling's own experiences growing up Indian American in the United States, and it gradually became one of Netflix's most winning offerings thanks to its smart, delicate writing, its unassuming diversity of underrepresented teen perspectives, and its incredible cast of young performers. Among those, one of the show's MVPs is undoubtedly the actress who plays Devi Vishwakumar's (Maitreyi Ramakrishnan) close friend and robotics whiz Fabiola Torres: Lee Rodriguez, for whom "Never Have I Ever" has been a breakthrough role.
Lee Rodriguez is an up-and-coming Mexican American actress
The character of Fabiola Torres is one of the pillars that make "Never Have I Ever'"s cast alchemy so rock-solid. In many ways the grounding, level-headed "straight woman" (only in a character dynamic sense, mind you) to the overcharged teen antics of Devi Vishwakumar and Eleanor Wong (Ramona Young), Fabiola eventually finds that even all her rationality and inveterate geekiness can't keep her from facing her own emotional turmoil. This comes when she realizes that she's a lesbian, thus beginning an extended coming-out process and a journey of self-discovery in her newfound identity.
Both the comedic and dramatic aspects of Fabiola's evolution are nailed by Lee Rodriguez. Born LaRhonza Lee Rodriguez in 1999 to a Mexican father and an African American mother, the Victorville, California, native prepared for an acting career by attending the Encore Jr/Sr High School for the Visual and Performing Arts, where she studied singing, dance, and piano before finding a calling as an actor and beginning to appear on school plays. Her first screen acting credits came in 2018 when she had a recurring role as Bea on the Snapchat original thriller series "Class of Lies," and a guest spot as Naomi on an episode of Freeform's "Grown-ish." "Never Have I Ever" was her third screen acting role, and her first as a series regular; in addition to it, she has also guest starred on a Season 6 episode of ABC's "The Good Doctor."