Rita Daniela not expecting a best actress award for her MMFF movie 'Huling Ulan sa Tag-Araw'
MANILA, Philippines — Rita Daniela’s blazing red outfit at the preview and press conference of her upcoming Metro Manila Filmfest movie, "Huling Ulan sa Tag-Araw", matched her fierce performance as a prostitute who gets her epiphany when she meets a seminarian (Ken Chan).
The Kapuso actress, campy in one scene and dramatic in the next, was so moving. Members of the press asked her to react to predictions that she’ll bag a best actress award come judgment day.
A flustered but calm Rita replied in Filipino, “In life as in love, I don’t expect anything. I’ll just get disappointed if I do. The fact that the feedback is good is enough.”
But she’s not ruling out a possible big win weeks from now. She’s leaving her career destiny to God.
“I will embrace the award if the Lord feels I’m ready for it,” she states.
Ken, the other half of the love team, thinks Rita is ripe for the recognition. In fact, he has been helping her rehearse her thank you speech in the dressing room. He got a bottle, handed it to Rita, and played make believe they were in the awards night.
Both got so carried away, RitKen shed tears in the dressing room.
Their rapport is such that Rita doesn’t take all the credit for her outstanding performance. She admitted that the comfort level between her and Ken is so high, she couldn’t have portrayed Luisa with so much feeling with a different leading man.
“I was about to bid showbiz good-bye,” she recalls. “So I prayed that the Lord give me the right person. That’s Ken.”
Ken returns the compliment by telling Rita, “It’s not me, it’s you. I just tell her not to get swell-headed.”
Their director, Louie Ignacio, saw the spark right from the start. This self-admitted RitKen fan wanted to magnify the chemistry, that was then confined to the small screen. So he cast Rita and Ken as lead stars of "Huling Ulan sa Tag-Araw".
Putting her full trust in her creative team, producer Harlene Bautista of Heaven’s Best Entertainment pushed through with the shooting at the height of the pandemic because “the production crew was waiting for work and the audience can’t wait.”
The film, which was shot from eight to nine days in Pagsanjan, Laguna, took almost two years before it finally got the chance to be shown on the big screen because of the pandemic.
Now that it's one of the eight official entries to the Metro Filmfest, Ken thinks everything happened in “God’s time. “
Huling Ulan sa Tag-Araw also stars Lotlot de Leon and Richard Yap.
RELATED: Ken Chan, Rita Daniela to star in their first film together
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