Why I made Jane The Virgin cry

BEVERLY HILLS, California — I didn’t really mean to, honestly. I didn’t intend to make her cry, cross my heart!

It happened on the first of the two-day press conference for nine shows to be launched by CBS this year. Venue was the conference room of Beverly Hilton (yes, where Whitney Houston was found dead in the bathtub of one room in 2012, on the eve of the Grammy Awards where she was scheduled to perform).

During the open forum, I was the third (among more than 50 journalists from around the world) listed to ask Gina Rodriguez a question. You know Gina as the titular character in the hit show Jane The Virgin (for which she won a Golden Globe Best Actress; the Tagalized version was aired on ABS-CBN), don’t you?

“You look very Filipino,” I started. “Do you have any Filipino blood?”

“No,” Gina replied, smiling widely, “I’m Puerto Rican and people often mistake me for a Filipino.”

“You have a lot of fans among the young in the Philippines,” I followed up, “and I’m sure they will be happy to hear from you.”

With undisguised excitement, Gina related that her father, Genaro Rodriguez, is a boxing referee who has officiated two Manny Pacquiao bouts, one of which was against Chris Algieri in Macau (Pacquiao won), and he had just come back from the Philippines three weeks earlier to finalize a fight.

“He showed me pictures of Jane The Virgin billboards around the city, taken with his celfone camera,” said Gina, “and, yes…hmmm…yes…” Overcome by emotion, she couldn’t finish her sentence and, to the pleasant shock and surprise of the media guys, broke down, sobbing as she tried to hide her tear-drenched face.

As soon as she recovered herself, she continued, “Those pictures are just so…touching. I couldn’t help tearing up when my dad showed those pictures to me.”

Aside from the new season of Jane The Virgin, the eight other shows ready for airing are: The Great Indoors (starring Joel McHale); MacGyver (Lucas Till, George Eads and Peter Lenkov); No Tomorrow (Tori Anderson and Joshua Sasse); NCIS (Wilmer Valderrama and Jennifer Esposito); Bull (Michael Weatherly); Doubt (Katherine Heigl); The Affair (Joshua Jackson, Maura Tierney and Sarah Treem); and Man With a Plan (Matt LeBlanc). All the stars mentioned were present at the presscons. (That’s all I can say for now since there’s an embargo…until the release of each show on the RTL CBS channel.)

Journalists are normally not allowed to have photographs with the stars during such junkets. After the Q&A, I asked Gina if it was okay to have a “selfie” with her — you know, to show as “proof” back home that I did have a face-to-face interview with her — and the junket supervisors frowned, “No photographs!” I retreated somewhat disappointed and Gina pulled me back, gave me a hug, put her arm around my shoulder and said, “Why not?” Click!!!

Then, she fumbled with her celfone and scrolled to locate the photos of the Jane The Virgin billboards taken by her dad in Manila. I thought she would cry again but thankfully she did not.

Before she left, Gina said, “Please tell the people in the Philippines that I love them.” (There you are, Gina, I just told them!)

When I reported the next day to the Beverly Hilton conference room, one of the lady junket supervisors asked me with a friendly smile, “Hi, Ricky. Are you going to make anybody cry today?”

“Nope,” I shot back. “Once was enough!”

(RTL CBS Asia Entertainment Network is a venture of two of the world’s largest content producers: RTL Group, the leading European entertainment network, and CBS Studios International, the leading supplier of programming to the international market place. The Network has two channels: the general entertainment channel, RTL CBS Entertainment HD, and the male-skewed entertainment channel, RTL CBS Extreme HD. Both channels are widely distributed in the Asia Pacific and are localized in five languages.)

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