Diana’s sad story

About 98 percent of people in show business have sad stories to tell.

Diana Zubiri’s life story isn’t exactly a tearjerker, in the tradition of most classic soap operas. But the circumstances in her life often bring her to tears – actually tears of frustration over some parasitic members of her family.

When she was about six or seven years old, her father abandoned them and Diana never saw him for many years – save for one occasion when, early during her parents’ separation, he came to visit and made a promise never to marry again.

Diana and older sister Wilma lost touch with her father after that and their mother eventually remarried and had another daughter with the new man in her life.

The first time they had a communication with their father – and this was about after a decade or so – was when Wilma (through a rather circuitous way) managed to get hold of his address in Bulacan. Wilma wanted to resume her studies, but didn’t have the financial means and in desperation sought her father’s help. Unfortunately, their father was also going through a deep financial crisis and didn’t earn much from his job as a tricycle driver and part-time mechanic.

Sometime later, Diana – after a heated argument with her stepfather – decided to leave home and decided to look for her biological dad in Bulacan. The native girl that she was then, she was deeply hurt that her father did not fulfill his promise to them not to marry again. And it was a shock to her that her father was already into his fourth family that time.

Diana stayed with her father only for two weeks. Although she felt some fatherly concern from him, she knew that he already had his own life – and she was no longer part of it.

Shortly after, Diana became a movie star – not necessarily to fulfill some childhood fantasy, but to bring to realization her dream of putting her family to a better financial station.

In one of her location shoots – just next town to where her father lives – she got the surprise of her life when her dad suddenly showed up and castigated her for being "a bold star." Diana carefully explained to her father her profession and why she was forced to accept sexy roles on the screen.

From then on, father and daughter began communicating regularly with each other. They would meet up from time to time and Diana would give him money – P5,000 usually – for his expenses.

But you have to remember that Diana was not yet an established star that time and was not earning that much. Add to that the burden of being breadwinner to her mother, sister, stepfather and stepsister.

In spite of the fact that she herself was going through financial difficulties, she still went on forking out cash to her father every time they would meet – until she found out that her father was spending her hard-earned (stress on the hard-earned) money on gambling and other vices.

On some occasions, she would still give him spending money, but no longer with regularity. Sure, Diana would have been happy to provide for her father even if she had to work to the bones for it. But the fact that he was spending it on vices didn’t sit well with her (but naturally!).

Sometime in 2002, when she was still appearing in Eat Bulaga, her father waited for her outside the GMA Broadway studio to ask for money. When he saw his daughter get into a car (actually a rented vehicle – since Daiana still couldn’t afford to buy her own that time), he followed her and also hopped into it and began asking for P10,000. Diana’s companions – out of concern for her – decided to intervene and told her not to give any more money since it was going to be spent on her father’s gambling anyway. But her father refused to get out of the vehicle until he got his money. And Diana – the good daughter that she had always been – wasn’t about to push her extorting father out of the car.

They must have circled half of Quezon City for about an hour when Diana – just to end the agony for everyone in that vehicle – scraped in whatever cash she had in her wallet and gave it all to her father. He finally got off in P. Tuazon with a P2,000 loot.

Sometime after that, her father returned to the Eat Bulaga studio, but was not let in by the guards. He created a scene outside. Poor Diana had to flee through the audience gallery – with the help of Eat Bulaga top executive Malou Choa-Fagar – and escaped through another exit just to get away from her father who was going berserk outside the studio’s back entrance.

The father was said to have done the same thing during a taping of Bubble Gang (where Diana is a mainstay) at the GMA’s Filmex studio in Makati.

And now, the father has been threatening his daughter that he would seek media to expose Diana "for not extending financial help to him." Diana – feeling helpless – could only cry at night and sob in between takes of Encantadia where she spends hours and hours at work.

Her father obviously has this notion that Diana is really raking it in. Well, that may be true, but that’s a lot of hard work from her end – sleepless nights learning her lines and long hours of waiting for the actual take.

And for all that hard work, Diana doesn’t necessarily enjoy her paycheck a hundred percent. A large of it goes to withholding tax and value added tax (automatically deducted from the pay slip of film/TV personalities). As a movie-TV star, she also has other necessary expenses – clothes, accessories, cosmetics, gas, salary and food for her small staff. And then, of course, she has also has to provide for her mother, sister, stepfather and stepsister. The list of expenses is endless – and she works like a horse to meet all financial obligations.

Now that her father is threatening to scrape mud to sling at her, instead of being able to focus her mind at work, Diana gets distracted and often breaks into tears. There is no rest for her and certainly no peace – no thanks to a father who wants his daughter to be his ticket to easy street. Instead of being her protector, this father who never provided for her, has even become her aggressor.

Poor Diana. We can only weep at her sad story.