After five long years, Claudine Barretto is officially back in the soap opera scene via TV5’s latest offering Bakit Manipis ang Ulap?
“Yes! It feels good to be doing a soap once again. This is a grand project in which I’m sharing the frame with Diether Ocampo, Meg Imperial and Mr. Cesar Montano. What a great cast, right? Add to that the critically-acclaimed Mr. Joel Lamangan as our director. It’s just the perfect comeback vehicle for me,” she says.
The soap’s title sounds familiar.
“Actually, this is the boob tube remake of the Danny Zialcita classic ‘80s movie which starred Janice de Belen, Tommy Abuel and Chanda Romero among others. It’s a touching story of love, acceptance, sacrifice and forgiveness. For sure, the viewers will love it!”
Claudine is simply overwhelmed by the reception she is receiving of late from the fans, entertainment press, network execs and friends with her television comeback.
“It’s very encouraging! They are the ones who appear to be more excited for me and I’m just so grateful for their undying love and support despite my hiatus.”
Speaking of her five-year absence in acting, the award-winning star reveals it helped her find normalcy in her life again.
“Definitely, I will not trade those five years for anything else. It gave me time to fix a lot of things in the major areas in my life, especially the domestic part. My routine then was home, school, kids. Those times brought back balance in my existence, away from the fast-paced life in the ‘biz.”
Many hope that her comeback will be for good.
“That’s for sure! As I’ve mentioned earlier, my life is a lot better now. It’s more in place, so to speak. For one, all’s well in our family. At least now, I can work full blast without worrying about my children since I can leave them with my kin. Everything’s fine and I’m happy and grateful with such development,” ends Claudine.
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Finally, Julia Clarete sheds light on the real reason of her sudden disappearance from the top-rating noontime show Eat Bulaga as one of its co-hosts.
“Honestly, it was a tough decision to make,” she states. “I’ve been with the program for ten years already, so you can just imagine the friendships I’ve built and all our bonding moments together. It’s hard but I’ve got to make a choice!”
Love life is the reason why she arrived at such decision.
“My boyfriend and I are hitting our fifth year together so we thought that maybe, we can already move on. Take things to a higher level… start building a life together. At this point, I want to focus on my personal state, something which I can’t do if I have a daily show like EB.
“I’m sorry to all EB supporters if I wasn’t able to say goodbye. Everything happened so fast. I will be based in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia from now on so I cannot do EB anymore. Of course, my exit was a clean one. I talked to the management regarding my situation and they wished me luck.”
The talented host-singer-actress nixes the rumor that she’s in an interesting stage that’s why she left the program.
“As in pregnant? For the record, no! I would also like to clarify the issue that I have friction with my EB co-hosts and it’s also one reason why I left. Of course not, in fact I will surely miss them as I trek my new path,” says Julia.