How ‘incredibly lucky’ Alden avoids getting starstruck by Bea before launch of their screen tandem

Bea Alonzo (left) and Alden Richards

Alden Richards isn’t one to get easily starstruck. In his 12 years in the biz, only a handful of people, he said, managed to leave him feeling that way. One of them was Bea Alonzo.

And now that he’s living his dream of headlining a television series with the actress, Alden admitted that it can be hard setting aside the fanboy in him when shooting their scenes for the upcoming Philippine adaptation of the Korean drama series “Start-Up.”

“It was hard … There’s still the fan in me, but I don’t show it too much to Bea because things could get awkward; the scenes could become more difficult than they should be. I just have to remind myself of my character; I’m not Alden, the fan. After the scene, I go to the director and say, ‘So that’s how it feels sharing the screen with your idol!’” he told the Inquirer in a video conference.

Alden considers himself incredibly lucky to be chosen as Bea’s leading man in her first primetime series as a Kapuso actress. “A few years after our first meeting, I was given the opportunity to work with her in [an acting project]. It’s a different experience,” related Alden, who first teamed up with Bea in 2020 for a product endorsement.

“As I go along in show biz, the Lord continues to make my dreams come true,” he added. “I’m honored to be selected out of the many possible leading men here in the network. I’m happy. And I hope Bea is just as happy to have me as her leading man … I can see that she has been enjoying work so far.”

‘Welcoming committee’

Alden believes that “Start-Up PH” is the right platform to launch their screen tandem. Building chemistry, he said, wasn’t an issue. “It helped that I had already spent time with her behind the cameras for our endorsements … I got to know her better. So we didn’t have a hard time developing our chemistry,” he said.

As a homegrown GMA 7 talent, Alden felt it was his responsibility to make Bea feel at home in her new network. “That’s why she calls me her ‘welcoming committee.’ She has just transferred here, while I’ve been here since the start of my career, so I know everyone,” he said.

Released on Netflix in 2020, “Start-Up” is set in the cutthroat, Silicon Valley-esque world of fledgling tech companies, where four young entrepreneurs, Nam Do-san (Nam Joo-hyuk), Han Ji-pyeong (Kim Seon-ho), Won In-jae (Kang Han-na) and Seo Dal-mi (Bae Suzy) work their way up.

Aside from giving the audience a peek into the intricacies and challenges that come with establishing a company, the love triangle among Dal-mi, Do-san and Ji-pyeong was a key ingredient to the show’s worldwide success. In the Philippine version, Alden plays Do-san’s counterpart named Tristan. Bea, on the other hand, plays Dani, or Dal-mi in the original.

Unlike Louie—Alden’s character in his previous soap, “The World Between Us”—Tristan is already “masungit” from the get-go. “While he seems cold, slivers of kindness still come out. He’s not a bad person. He just has problems with expressing himself. He had to deal with challenges as a child. He’s not showy, so he often gets misunderstood,” Alden related. “I enjoyed being masungit—just onscreen, though!”

Richards as Tristan

Digging deeper

The local adaptation—directed by Dominic Zapata and Jerry Lopez-Sineneng—will expand Tristan’s backstory. “What I loved in this version is that the creatives dug into the character deeper. Details that were shown only in passing were given more emphasis. That gives more context to Tristan’s actions,” he said, adding that his role was just as challenging as his previous ones.

“I don’t want to think that there’s an easy role. You have to work hard to make every character different from your past performances,” he said. “There’s a conscious effort to evolve from my previous roles, from the character’s small movements to the way I look.”

The 30-year-old actor has never been in better shape. And he owes that to the lifestyle changes he made last year. “I had to change the mentality that I have to physically prepare for a project that I know is coming. Now that I have made some changes, I no longer have to cram,” related Alden, who took it upon himself to workout more often, eat a healthier diet and get enough sleep. “There’s no pressure anymore because that’s how I live my life now.”

For Alden, one of the biggest challenges of doing an adaptation is meeting the expectation of the existing fans. “It’s tough because there’s already a benchmark. There’s already a finished product, which was very successful. Of course we want our version to be at par with the original. So we’re putting in extra effort; we can’t settle,” he said.

That’s why he’s thankful to be surrounded by like-minded coworkers who put their heart into their craft. “What I appreciate about the whole production is that we share a vision. Our inputs on how to make things better are valued. There are no small roles. Everyone comes to the set prepared. It’s great to work with people who are as passionate as I am,” he said. INQ