Leila Farzad

The Prestige After the Voice-Over

Leila Farzad didn't come out of nowhere. Before stepping onto a television set with lead-role credentials, she studied modern languages at the University of Oxford. There she learned French and Italian while her circle expected her to end up working at an embassy or a prestigious law firm.

But she wanted something else.

After Oxford, she went on to the Guildhall School of Music and Drama. It is one of the most demanding institutions in London, and it was there that Farzad realized her Iranian background would shape the roles offered to her in an industry that was still very narrow-minded in 2005. Casting calls were scarce and often stereotyped.

For years, her voice was more famous than her face.

Between 2006 and 2011, she voiced supporting characters in the animated series Peppa Pig, including Mummy Cat and Mrs. Cow. It was a day job that paid the rent while drama auditions kept falling through, one after another, due to a lack of diverse profiles.

The Deal with Billie Piper

In 2020, the project that pulled Farzad out of visual anonymity arrived. Playing Naomi Jones in I Hate Suzie earned her a BAFTA nomination for Best Supporting Actress. Her chemistry with Billie Piper felt natural because the two had known each other since they were 14 years old and shared acting classes.

The British industry took fifteen years to see what Oxford already knew.

And the phone really started ringing. In 2022, she shot the second season of the series, and her name moved from supporting casting lists to leading big-budget projects. Her ability to shift from sharp comedy to dry drama without changing her deadpan expression turned out to be a rare asset in today's television.

The Inspector and the Black Death

In 2023, she starred in Better for the BBC. She played Lou Slack, a corrupt police inspector trying to redeem herself after a family tragedy in the city of Leeds. It was her first full lead role, and critics praised that her performance carried the entire weight of the plot without relying on the exaggerated gestures typical of the police genre.

That same 2023, she appeared in the episode Joan Is Awful from the sixth season of Black Mirror. She starred alongside Salma Hayek and Annie Murphy in a satire about image rights contracts and generative artificial intelligence.

The gamble paid off.

In 2024, she joined the cast of The Decameron, a Netflix production shot in Italy that blends dark comedy and historical drama during the bubonic plague. Farzad plays Stratilia, a maid who keeps secrets inside a villa of nobles trying to escape death.

For the shoot of Better in northern England, she had to spend months away from her young daughter. Filming for that first season lasted exactly 94 days of actual shooting on real locations.