Perla Farías Lombardini (born April 23, 1962) is a Venezuelan-American television director, producer, screenwriter, and an executive at Telemundo.
Early life
She is the daughter of Italian actress Gioia Lombardini and Cuban director Daniel Farías.[1] Her younger sister, Gioia Arismendi, is also an actress, and her brother, Dionisio, also worked in television.[2] As a child, Farías reportedly did not enjoy the atmosphere of fame around her parents, but still chose to be an actress.[3]
At the age of 14, Farías was enrolled in an international high school in Switzerland. She studied Social Communication at Northwestern University.[3]
Career
Farías was formerly a telenovela actress in Venezuela. Both uncomfortable with acting[3] and unhappy with the storytelling of the typical novelas, she had her character killed off and then began a new style of telenovela in the United States, promoting her network Telemundo to overtake rivals Univision.[4] She began writing with her cousin José Ignacio Cabrujas, who had encouraged her to write and not act because it suited her better.[3] Her move to the United States to continue television production in 2005 is considered to be part of the Venezuelan diaspora.[1]
Farías' productions have become popular in the regular prime-time markets: Juana la virgen was remade into Jane the Virgin, and La Reina del Sur's premiere beat out even English-language programming and stars an unconventional female lead.[1] She has also been applauded for creating shows that depict Latin Americans positively and start discussions.[1][5] She has described creating La Reina del Sur as "a big risk",[6] but several years later was steering Telemundo into dramas with fewer telenovela stereotypes, accounting for growing change in tastes and the Spanish-language US broadcast sector.[7]
In 2011 she helped write the musical Magicus: El Bosque Reciclad, created by her sister.[8] In 2016 she was promoted to be Senior VP of Scripted Development at Telemundo,[9] where she is also Head Writer.[10]
In 2018, some of her creative works were seized and broadcast by RCTV.[11]
