Lee Rodriguez is helping a generation of queer teens feel seen
Shooting to fame during the first year of the pandemic isn’t ideal, and it certainly isn’t easy. Yet when Lee Rodriguez, the queer actress who immortalized the role of Fabiola on Netflix’s Never Have I Ever, rose to prominence after the show’s first season hit in 2020, she found herself unprepared for the windfall of probing questions that were directed her way.
Typically, they were all about one thing: her sexuality.In Mindy Kaling’s coming-of-age comedy, high schooler Devi (a brilliant Maitreyi Ramakrishnan) has to come to terms with the loss of her father and the loss of her ability to walk all in one swift blow.
After recovering her trauma and regaining the use of her legs, Devi starts discovering that there’s more to life than getting straight A’s.
That “more” is Paxton Hall-Yoshida, Devi’s longtime crush who’s just starting to take an interest in her at the start of season one.But there was no way Devi was going to get through high school alone: with the help of her best friends Eleanor Wong (Ramona Young) and Fabiola Torres (Rodriguez) Devi finds a way to live life as a somewhat-normal high school kid dealing with an anything-but-normal home life.Viewers instantly became obsessed with the heartwarming, heartbreaking show, and Fabiola was always a big reason why.
