Venezuelan Novelas' Cast and Crew: Where are they now?

A certain statement that our professor made during one of the lectures was really interesting and stuck out to me when talking about Venezuela. As we discussed, Venezuela’s media content laws have dramatically stripped apart its telenovela industry and many of its crew have gone to pursue the industry in other countries or completely different fields. I thought this was an extremely depressing thought and it got me thinking about the regulation and production of novelas as well as how much these real people on and off the camera likely had to sacrifice to achieve their passions in the industry under President Chávez’s rule. So, I was curious and looked up a couple of different Venezuelan telenovelas and their cast and crew to do a sort of “Where are they now?” approach for this blog.

The first novela I wanted to discuss was the frequently mentioned Cosita Rica (2003).

We’ve talked a great deal about this novela and I don’t think it needs any special introduction. The series was created by Leonardo Padrón, who has worked on several different telenovelas before and after this series.

His most recent work is Rubí (2020), which was filmed in Mexico and is a reboot of the famous 2004 telenovela of the same name. He is also a journalist and is currently a professor at the University of Salamanca. So, after the dramatic shift in the industry, he has worked all around the world in countries like Mexico and Spain. 

What about some other crew members? Cosita Rica was directed by César Bolívar, one of the most famous telenovela directors of all time. His most recent work is the film Tango Bar (2020) as the photography director, and is also a professor at the Central University of Venezuela. So, he was lucky enough to still find work within Venezuela.

Cosita Rica stars Gledys Ibarra as Patria Mía. Gledys gained a lot of popularity in the telenovela world for her acting as is still acting to this day. Her most recent role is in the novela Piel salvaje (2015), which is a Venezuelan telenovela produced by RCTV for Televen.

Gledys plays the recurring character Madre Isabel (recurring character). The novela was outsold to other places around the world such as Ecuador and parts of Africa, which is an interesting point as our professor did mention that a lot of modern Venezuelan novelas are low budget and outsold to other countries, which seems to be the case with this particular novela.

Arquímedes Rivero was the executive producer for the show, and his most recent works have been El Talismán (2012) as a producer, and Cosita Linda (2014) as a main director as it is a remake of Cosita Rica. He does still currently work in Venezuela.

Another novela I wanted to highlight is the classic Kassandra (1992).

This popular romance telenovela from Venezuela revolved around a gypsy maiden marrying into a rich family (the classic Cinderella story). The show was created and written by Delia Fiallo, who has often been called the “mother of the Latin American telenovela.”

She is retired now, but she has done a few minor writings for telenovelas about a decade ago. I found her interesting as she moved away from Venezuela a few decades ago and has not visited since the election of Chávez in 1998. Her story made me realize that not only has the former President caused the decline of the industry in Venezuela, but also kept many native Venezuelans out of the country to seek better lives outside of the polarization.

Kassandra was directed by prominent novela director Olegario Barrera. Previously working in Columbia, Olegario directed various novelas in Venezuela with this show being the most prominent one. In 2000, Olegario returned to Columbia to work with RTI Television on various other novelas and is now a producer of works such as El Manzano Azul (2012). I guess this is another addition to the long list of people that had to find work outside of Venezuela.

The series stars Coraima Torres as Kassandra, who has been active in many different telenovelas internationally.

Her most recent work involves the novela 5 viudas sueltas (2013), which is a Colombian telenovela. She stars as Virginia Mazuera (one of the main characters) and now works in many different Latin American countries, but not Venezuela.

What did you think? This post was actually supposed to include another novela (La Mujer de Judas (2002)), but this post was already getting extremely long so I decided to cut it. I had a lot of fun researching about the current industry and some of its members and wanted to share some of my findings. I think regulation in Venezuela is very unfortunate and I sincerely hope that in the future the novela industry is able to regain its glory under future laws that are significantly less strict. What are some of the projects that some of the behind the scenes crew of your novelas been up to? I would love to hear about it from you guys!