Gabrielle Faith Brown is one of the most talented actresses working in the vertical drama space, so anytime she’s cast in something, I’m going to pay attention. Add Armand Procacci and Mark Pontarelli to the mix, and I’m definitely hitting play.
That’s exactly why I watched Not the Bride He Wanted.
Now, I’ll admit it: I’m a little burned out on werewolf dramas. They’ve become incredibly repetitive, recycling the same plots and twists over and over again. But this cast was enough to convince me to give it a chance.
And within the first few minutes, the show reminded me of one of my biggest vertical drama pet peeves.
You know the trope.
A powerful man is fiercely protective of a woman because he believes she saved his life years ago. Except… she didn’t.
Someone else did the saving, while the “heroine” just happened to be standing in the right place at the right time. She takes the credit, builds her entire life around the lie, and somehow nobody ever asks a follow-up question.
It’s practically a requirement in this genre at this point.
In Not the Bride He Wanted, Mark Pontarelli plays Asher, who is supposed to marry Layla (Gabrielle Faith Brown). The problem is Vivian (Leila Collins), who has built their entire relationship on a lie.
She convinces Asher that she lost her wolf while saving his life years ago.
Spoiler: she didn’t.
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Vivian is exactly the kind of character vertical dramas love to create—the manipulative liar who somehow keeps fooling everyone despite leaving a trail of red flags everywhere she goes.
You know the truth is eventually coming out.
The only question is how many episodes we’ll have to yell at our screens before it does.
When Layla catches her fiancé cheating, she makes a decision that only makes sense in the wonderfully chaotic world of vertical dramas: she’ll switch places with her sister. Her sister can marry Asher, and she’ll marry Lucien (Armand Procacci) instead.
Completely reasonable. Totally normal.
Now, there’s one small catch.
No one wants to marry Lucien because his last ten wives are dead.
Naturally, everyone assumes he’s the one who killed them.
The reality is a little more complicated. Those women were all assassins sent after him, and Lucien simply never bothered correcting the rumor. Honestly, when you live in a world of rival packs and power struggles, not every secret needs a press release.
The moment Lucien meets Layla, though, it’s obvious something shifts. He knows she’s not supposed to be his bride, but he certainly doesn’t seem upset by the possibility.
After discovering Asher’s betrayal, Layla goes through with the switch. Could she have simply walked away? Absolutely. But she also refuses to spend the rest of her life married to someone who doesn’t truly want her.
And honestly, that’s the most refreshing thing about her character.
Instead of fighting for a man who has already shown her exactly who he is, she chooses herself. Even if that choice happens to involve marrying the guy everyone thinks is a serial wife killer.
Sometimes love stories start in unconventional ways.
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Gabrielle Faith Brown continues to prove why she’s one of the strongest actresses in the vertical drama space. No matter how over-the-top the story gets, she never phones it in. She commits fully to every scene, making Layla feel like a real person instead of just another heroine caught in a love triangle.
What she does especially well is yearning.
She has a way of communicating heartbreak, hope, and longing without needing pages of dialogue. It’s subtle, believable, and one of the reasons she’s so easy to watch. Even when the plot gets completely ridiculous, Brown keeps the emotional stakes grounded.
One thing I really appreciated was Mark Pontarelli’s performance as Asher.
He made me hate the character, feel sorry for him, and then immediately go back to hating him again—which is exactly what the role called for.
Asher never truly treated Layla like a partner. He treated her like a possession. Someone he expected to always be there, someone he could ignore when it suited him, and punish whenever she became an inconvenience.
That’s not love.
It’s entitlement.
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The frustrating part is that Asher doesn’t realize what he has until it’s gone. The second Layla walks away, he suddenly sees her value. But that’s the tragedy of his character: he learns the lesson far too late.
Sometimes losing someone is what forces you to grow.
Sometimes it’s just the consequence of taking them for granted.
For Asher, it’s the latter.
And that’s what makes him such an effective antagonist. He’s not evil because he wants to hurt Layla—he’s selfish because he never learned how to love her in the first place. By the time he figures it out, she’s already moving on.
Some doors don’t reopen once they’ve closed.
Asher is learning that the hard way.
Lucien, on the other hand, saw Layla for who she really was.
He recognized that she was hurt, confused, and afraid—but still willing to love if someone gave her a reason to trust again. Instead of trying to control her, he gave her space to understand him. He was patient, persistent, and willing to let her see past the rumors that had followed him for years.
That’s what made their relationship work.
They didn’t just fall in love—they found peace in each other.
Armand Procacci has built a career playing characters like Lucien: men the world paints as villains who, underneath it all, are surprisingly vulnerable. He has a knack for making those characters feel layered, drawing you in with quiet charm and emotional depth.
And yes, the abs don’t hurt.
Not the Bride He Wanted isn’t reinventing the vertical drama formula. If you’ve watched enough of these, you’ll recognize the familiar beats almost immediately.
The difference is that it swaps billionaire CEOs for alpha werewolves.
It’s still packed with mistaken identities, manipulative exes, jealous rivals, and fated love. It’s just wolves instead of boardrooms. It’s parents finally learning that the daughter they didn’t appreciate is the one that they should have appreciated all along.
Is it groundbreaking?
No.
Is it entertaining?
Absolutely.
Sometimes that’s all a vertical drama needs to be.
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