Glut of child discoveries results in frustration

XYRIEL Manabat

The current TV trend favoring child performers has its virtues and advantages, but it has also generated a host of worrisome crinkles and wrinkles that need to be addressed.

They include slick, phony and porma performances, too adult and “knowing” dialogue, and too many tisoy and tisay charmers who don’t look at all like the real Filipino kids who watch their shows, thus making empathy unlikely.

It’s a good thing that TV drama series like “Ningning,” “Princess in the Palace” and “Ang Probinsyano” are now proving that they don’t have to go into all that, while still being able to sustain popularity. And that Pinoy-looking (non-tisoy) young performers like Simon Pineda, John Steven de Guzman and Ryzza Mae Dizon are feistily hitting the spot with viewers—something that should have happened a long time ago!

Despite these gains, however, other problems persist—not the least of which is that there are simply too many child stars around—even as new ones are being lauded all the time!

RYZZA Mae Dizon

The glut isn’t just a poor use of resources; it’s also exceedingly frustrating for many of the juvenile talents involved! Some of them savor stardom for just a short time before they become too old for kid roles, which end up going to newer and younger comers (who all too quickly end up as overaged has-beens, as well!).

The culprit here is the fact that there are so many child-centered drama series being produced, each top-billing its own young talents—who often aren’t able to get follow-up shows or films to remain viable lead stars.

This is a far cry from the childhood years of Aiza Seguerra and Niño Muhlach, who had much less stellar competition and made one film after another, ending up as big stars even as children. Today, the most visible stars are Ryzza Mae, Jana Agoncillo, Marco Masa and Alonzo Muhlach, but they make movies only occasionally.

Fact is, this state of “situational attrition” has unfortunate consequences for child stars who are now deemed “too old” to keep playing juvenile characters. Their ranks are increasing every TV-film season—Jillian Ward, Xyriel Manabat, Zaijian Jaranilla, Yogo Singh—and even Ryzza Mae is looking rather too big and “old” to remain popular as a child talent much longer.

ZAIJIAN Jaranilla

Our point is that the best child talents should start their performing careers really young (Niño, Aiza and Snooky Serna were only 3 or 4 years young when they made it big, and they made scores of films before their awkward tween years caught up with them).

For her part, Ryzza has starred in only a few movies, while Jana, Marco and other popular juvenile stars have made the key career transition from TV to the big screen even more infrequently—if at all.

So, producers should be more organized and coordinated when building up new child talents. Don’t “discover” so many of them—and, when one of them clicks “stellarly” with the viewing public, quickly take advantage of that perhaps unexpected verdict and efficiently whip up a big TV or movie project to smartly follow up on that “sudden” success!