Rubí Pérez Ochoa Ferrer is the titular main protagonist of the Mexican telenovela Rubi and Rubí, la Descarada/Rubí the Brazen, both being based on a short story by Yolanda Vargas Dulché, published as a serial on the 1960s Mexican comic book Lágrimas, Risas y Amor/Tears, Laughter and Love, which has also been performed twice in 1968 by Fanny Cano and in a 1970 film version with Iranian actress Irán Eory.
An ambitious fatal woman who will do everything to make money and get out of her poor life, even betraying her loved ones.
She was famously portrayed by Barbara Mori (who also portrayed her niece Fernanda in her adult years). In the 2010 Philippine remake, she was portrayed by the Filipino-American Angelica Panganiban, unlike the other versions, she is more sympathetic and is actually an anti-heroine, while still vain, manipulative, and scheming like the other adaptations, she still has a heart, she genuinely did love her mother and at the end, she does feel remorse for everything she’s done, unlike the 2004 version, where Rubi is still obsessed with Alejandro and wants to take revenge on Maribel for taking him away from him, she lets him free and reconciles her friendship with Maribel. In the 2020 remake, she was portrayed by Camila Sodi, on her first villainous telenovela role.
Biography[]
Rubí Pérez is a very beautiful but poor woman who is only interested in money due to her family's economic struggles since Rubi's father died. She studies at an exclusive university thanks to the financial support from Cristina, her hard-working older sister. Rubí hopes to become rich by befriending rich people. She is best friends with Maribel de la Fuente, a kind and wealthy young woman. Maribel has a small defect in her leg, which prevents her from having a normal social life. Rubí is actually jealous of Maribel's social status and often insults her behind her back, with Pancha, Maribel's nanny being the only to distrust her and suspect about her true intentions.
Rubí in the comic book Tears, Laughter and Love.
Rubí meets Maribel's online boyfriend Héctor Ferrer, an architect, and his best friend Alejandro Cárdenas, a doctor. Héctor intrigues her because she knows he is very rich, and marrying a rich man has always been her ambition to leave poverty behind. However, she finds herself falling in love with Alejandro, believing him to be rich like Héctor. Héctor and Maribel get engaged. Rubí starts dating Alejandro, but when she finds out that he is from a middle-class background and is not rich, she dumps him, though it breaks her heart. Rubi's mother tries to make Rubi see that money is not everything in life and that she will regret leaving Alejandro, but Rubi refuses to listen and then sets out to seduce Héctor by having Maribel to get her a job in his office.
Héctor quickly falls under Rubí's spell. On Héctor and Maribel's wedding day, Héctor leaves a devastated Maribel at the altar and elopes with Rubí instead to Cancun where they soon get married. Rubí finally has the lifestyle and money that she has always dreamed of, when Héctor buys her clothes, expensive jewelry and a huge mansion in Cancun, despite her being shunned by her family and friends. On her wedding night Hector tries to make love to Rubi, Rubi keeps thinking about Alejandro, which makes her run out to the beach crying. Despite this, she is still in love with Alejandro, though he vows to her that he would never forgive her for what she did to Maribel. Hector was supposed to move to New York and work on an important project, but is kicked out after he dumps Maribel at the altar.
The three versions of Rubí (From left to right; Fanny Cano (1968); Irán Eory (1970); Barbara Mori (2004).
Rubi soon meets a tycoon named Yago Pietrasanta who is a womanizer, and quickly starts going out with him despite her being still married to Héctor and also her mother and Alejandro's warnings. Rubi also gets envious of Cristina's happiness because of her loving relationship with Maribel's ex-chaffeur Cayetano and to separate them, Rubi frames him of theft by slipping on him a priceless jewel, sending him to jail days before his wedding with Cristina, where he gets a sentence of five years in prison. However Cristina finds that she's pregnant and tells her mother about it, who goes with Rubi to ask for her help to release Cayetano from jail, but there Rubi reveals to her mother that she sent Cayetano to jail, and a disappointed Refugio tells Rubi that she's ashamed of her and has a heart attack, dying before she could tell Cristina the truth about Cayetano, and in Refugio's funeral, Rubi is angrily shunned and thrown out by her neighbors and Cristina, who found out that Rubi caused their mother's heart attack and sent Cayetano to jail and disowns Rubi as her sister.
Rubí's civil wedding with Héctor after betraying Maribel.
Héctor decides to travel the world with Rubí, since he is not entirely sure that she has gotten over Alejandro. They are away for three years. When they return, they have economic problems and Héctor becomes agressive and jealous, also Rubí discovers that Alejandro is now very rich and has a new wife named Sonia. During an argument with Rubí on a glass bridge, the floor below Sonia shatters, and she falls through the glass to her death. When Rubí is phoning Loreto, Héctor enters his wife's room and snatches the phone away from her. He accuses Rubí of going to see Alejandro, but Rubí claims that she went to see Marco instead of Alejandro. Enraged, Héctor pushes Rubí into the bed and forcefully makes love to her after Rubí attempts to warn her husband not to do this again. That night, when Rubí and Héctor end up naked under sheets after making love, Rubí scolds her husband for being intimate with her, but Héctor tells her that, since they are married, Rubí is going to make love to him. Héctor forcefully makes love to his wife again. Rubí comforts Alejandro after Sonia's death and seduces him once again. He and Rubí become lovers.
When he hears that Rubí was at the scene when Sonia died, he has her arrested for murder. They seemingly hate each other now, but Rubí begins to feel love for him again when she learns that she is pregnant with his child, despite her not liking the idea of parenthood. Because she does not want to divorce Héctor and lose her money and status, she lies and tells Héctor that the baby is his. She is released from jail, since it is ruled that Sonia's death was accidental.
Héctor overhears Rubí telling her friend Loreto that the child is actually Alejandro's. Angry, humiliated and insane, Héctor realizes that she never loved him, so as revenge he keeps her kidnapped in her own home, intending to force her to love him and also to keep her and her child with him forever and away from Alejandro. Rubí manages to get away from Héctor with help of Loreto and Genaro, and the truth about who is the real father of her child finally comes out. By now, Alejandro is aware that Maribel has been secretly in love with him and that he too has feelings for her, but he chooses to stay with Rubí for the sake of their baby, as she told him that she doesn't want to keep their baby unless he marries her.
However, Rubí is hit by a car when saving her beloved niece Fernanda from being run over by it, and ends up having a miscarriage, however to get revenge against Héctor, Rubí blames him for her miscarriage, since he hit her earlier, and everyone except Elena believe her. But determined to prove his innocence, Héctor discovers how Rubí really lost her baby and rushes to tell Alejandro, but on his way to the hospital, Héctor suffers a car accident and is hospitalized, and dies before he could tell Alejandro (who was in charge of the surgery trying to save his life) the truth about Rubí.
Héctor left everything in his will to Rubí, much to his parents' chagrin. However, Elena, who hates Rubí, makes sure that all of Rubí's money is lost in the stock market. Alejandro is unjustly charged with intentionally letting Héctor die on the operating table and is arrested. Immediately afterwards, the suspicions are proven unfounded and the charges against him are dropped. Upon his release, he uncovers exactly how Rubí lost their baby. It is also revealed that Elena is pregnant with Héctor's child, though he never knew it.
Disgusted by the damage that she has done, Alejandro pays Rubí a visit one last time and tells her that it is over between them: he has chosen Maribel. Rubí begs him not to leave her, even humiliating herself by getting down on her knees. He leaves her and begins to walk down the stairs. As Rubí follows him, running down the staircase while holding onto the rail and screaming that she will never let him go, she loses her grip on the rail, falls several stories down, and crashes into a glass table below.
Rubí colliding with a glass table, causing the accident that amputated her leg.
To save her life, doctors have to amputate her leg. When Rubí wakes up, she finds out to her horror that her leg was amputated. Even more devastating, her beautiful face is now full of scars because of multiple glass cuts. However despite all of this, Rubí still doesn't regret her actions and escapes from the hospital.
Finding the wedding date of Alejandro and Maribel, she shows up unseen at the church. She sights a gun through a crack on a door, targeting Alejandro, but she cannot bring herself to shoot him. She then aims at Maribel, but her sister Cristina, Maribel's maid of honor, is in the way and blocking a clean shot. Rubí relents and hides in a corner of the churchyard, despondent.
A disfigured Rubí reuniting with her niece Fernanda after Alejandro's wedding and asks her to help her to get revenge on Alejandro and Maribel.
After the wedding, her niece Fernanda wanders over to Rubí's hiding place. Rubí shows her scarred face to Fernanda, but the little girl is not repulsed by it. On the contrary, she feels sympathy for her favorite aunt. When Rubí asks her if she would like to continue meeting her secretly and serve as an instrument to get her revenge and ruin Alejandro's life, Fernanda happily agrees. Rubí then limps away, dressed in rags, with Fernanda watching her go with a smirk.
Amputated from one leg, Rubi walks to her house.
Eighteen years later, Fernanda is all grown up, bearing a striking resemblance to Rubí, save for her blonde hair. She visits her aunt, who is living in a one-room flat. After hearing that Alejandro has returned to Mexico after years of living abroad, Rubí tells Fernanda that Alejandro and Maribel have a son, and that her job will be making both Alejandro and his son fall in love with her in order to destroy Maribel's family.
A disfigured Rubí telling Fernanda to destroy Maribel's family
Alejandro is now the director of a hospital. One day he finds Fernanda in his office. He is utterly shocked, mistaking her for Rubí. Without revealing her identity, she greets him by pulling him by his tie and bringing him in for what looks like a kiss. The screen caption, "The End..?" then appears.
There is a deleted scene from the ending, where an adult Fernanda meets up with Rubí's old friend Loreto (who has lost his fame and became poor) and he asks about Rubí, since she refuses to talk with him and Fernanda tells him she's getting better and also about her intentions of avenging her aunt, but first asks him to tell him the full story of her aunt Rubí to better know how to plan her revenge, as her family refuses to talk about her, and Loreto tells her about Rubí's wrongdoings, even telling Fernanda that how her aunt lost her baby saving her life, while showing Fernanda, the neighborhood where she grew up, Maribel's empty mansion and Rubí and Héctor's former house, and when Loreto ends the story, Fernanda sees Maribel and Alejandro's son and decides to start her revenge on them.
Gallery[]
2004[]
2020 version[]
Trivia[]
- In Rubi's alternate ending, Rubí finally lets Alejandro marry Maribel.
- Rubí is the Spanish word for "Ruby".
- Fittingly, Rubí usually dresses in red outfits and wears red makeup, which is the color of rubies.
- Rubí is similar to Teresa Chávez Aguirre de la Barrera, however Teresa eventually regrets her actions, while Rubí never does.
- Concidentally, both of them married a rich man portrayed by Sebastian Rulli, however Teresa later falls in love with Arturo, while Rubí hated Héctor.