Benjamin Alves was initially reluctant to portray Arnel Cowley, the late actress Isabel Granada’s husband, for a TV drama.
While in Qatar, Granada suffered from a brain aneurysm and fell into a coma. She was 41 when she died on Nov. 4.
Cowley is her second husband whom she married in 2015.
The 28-year-old Alves shared in an interview with Philippine Entertainment Portal that he prayed on the decision to star in the TV show “Wagas”, which would feature the couple’s love story.
He admitted that he and actress Kim Rodriguez, who played Granada, realized “how sensitive the subject is.”
“So hindi lang ito trabaho para sa akin and kay Kim,” he said. (So for me and Kim, this is not just work.)
He felt reassured when he found out the story would be told from Cowley’s perspective and that the widower was interviewed for his side of their love story.
He asked Cowley, “What keeps you going?”
The businessman’s response was that he “just wants to honor his wife.”
Since her passing, Cowley has remembered his wife through pictures on Instagram on a near-daily basis.
“He wants to make sure that ’yong pangalan ni Isabel Granada lives on, and it’s done about the right way,” said Alves in the report. “Nando’n si Sir Arnel the whole time, which shows how strong he is. It was really brave of him to come to the set and you know, actually even this whole time, you know it’s been what, a month.”
He said Cowley was emotional during the shoot, which depicted their story since their childhood.
The feature aired last Dec. 16, 2017 on GMA. Niña V. Guno/JB
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