Belonging to one of showbiz’s famed acting clans, and with years of experience as an actress (and countless awards), you’d think there was nothing more you could teach Cherie Gil about acting.
But Cherie — who plays Liza Soberano’s Italian mother in Dolce Amore, a new primetime teleserye featuring Liza and Enrique Gil (Cherie was in New York and had just come from visiting her parents in California when she got the call for this show) — says that even she had a few things to learn when she started taping for the show. It took their director Cathy Garcia-Molina to point them out. When it came to playing the kontrabida, for instance, direk Cathy had to rein her in during certain scenes. Cherie, one of the screen’s iconic kontrabidas (she originated that famous “You’re nothing but a second-rate, trying-hard copycat!” line from Bituing Walang Ningning) found herself on the learning end this time, and it was a new experience for her. Cherie had to unlearn certain habits, and discovered that one could play a strict mother in a way that didn’t involve loud voices, raised eyebrows or the usual bitchy one-liners.
She had to keep an open mind to do that — and as the taping went on, Cherie realized that something wonderful was happening.
“Yon ang maganda kay Cathy dito, kasi nga ang tendency, because I wear hats and all these taray clothes, ‘yung tayo (the way she would stand) ganito, but Cathy makes sure she brings me down with my bad habits na playing kontrabida,” says Cherie. “In acting kasi, there is always a tendency to do certain things for a reason, so she makes me alalay. I play a strict mother, not naman a kontrabida because there’s really no villain in this story, but a strict mother. I play the role of Lucciana Marquesa, and we own a very big telecommunications company in Italy.”
Direk Cathy also helped Cherie with her line delivery. Because most of her lines in Dolce Amore are in Italian, it required some effort. Cherie, formerly married to violinist Roni Rogoff (she has two children by him) lived in Venice, Italy for three years. She learned to speak Italian, but says her kids were more fluent in it than she was. So taping her scenes in the show was like learning the language all over again. “That was in 2000, so matagal-tagal ko din hindi na-practice,” she reveals. “Plus, I grew up with Spanish. Phonetically, it’s similar though, so sa ears it’s kind of easy to pick up. And I lived in Italy, in Venice, for a while, for like three years. My kids spoke it (Italian) fluently. But it really helps when you’re there, and you live there, and you hear it a lot.”
She got by with the help not just of direk Cathy, and daily practice sessions with Liza while waiting for their turn on the set. They would get up early, drive to the set, then while waiting, throw their Italian dialogue back and forth. Co-star Ruben Maria Soriquez, an actor and director who is half-Filipino and half-Italian, also helped. Says Cherie: “Ruben helped us a lot with the grammar, because the grammar is not easy. So because of all that, practicing, nakakaano naman ako.”
But that wasn’t the only challenge she faced during the seven days they shot in Italy.
“Ang mas mahirap doon, ‘yung directive ni Cathy when she told me, during our second day of taping, that she actually wanted me to speak some English kasi ‘pag Italian lagi, baka ma-subtitle o ma-dub pa kayo. So kailangan English. Okay fine. Pero ang gusto ko, ang English mo, the way Ruben speaks. I said, ‘What?’ Yung English-Italian? That’s even harder! So parang nakakailang, to sound like that, because I’m sure the viewers wouldn’t hear me speak that way, nor have I ever heard myself speak that way. Mahirap mag-accent. It’s been a real challenge. And I’m excited to grit my teeth on this naman. Maiba naman.”
Cherie is excited to be working again with Enrique (they were last seen together playing mother and son in Muling Buksan ang Puso) and for the first time with Liza in Dolce Amore. Each new show is a new learning opportunity for her, and the success she’s had with her career shows that the truly good actors are the ones that never stop learning.