LOS ANGELES—“I call him dad and he calls me anak,” Charice said with a hearty laugh over the phone. She was talking about Reggie Lee, who plays her father in the movie they’re filming in Boston, “Here Comes the Boom.” She sounded cheerful on the other line.
“THIS is my first big movie,” says Charice of “Here Comes the Boom.”
“Ah, daddy Reggie!” Charice exclaimed when we first mentioned the Filipino actor in our recent one-on-one phone chat. Over the years, we’ve profiled the Filipino-American actor who appeared in such films as “Life As We Know It,” “Drag Me to Hell,” the second and third “Pirates of the Caribbean” movies and various TV shows.
Reggie and Charice join Salma Hayek, Kevin James and Henry “The Fonz” Winkler in the comedy-action directed by Frank Coraci, whose credits include “The Wedding Singer” and Kevin’s coming “Zookeeper.”
When we asked Charice if her character is Filipino as originally written in the script by Kevin, Allan Loeb and Rock Reuben, she answered, “No, when they gave me the script, my character was supposed to be a Vietnamese. When I got the role, and they found out that I’m Filipino, they changed it. It was so sweet of them.”
Malia the brainiac
It’s not every day that a Hollywood movie features Filipino father and daughter roles. In fact, Reggie told us in an e-mail interview that “this is the first Filipino character I’ve ever played!” That’s a striking statement since he has been acting in Hollywood since the mid-1990s.
“SHE is an amazing, positive person,” Reggie Lee says of costar Charice.
“My character’s name is Malia (which she pronounced Ma-lah-ya) de la Cruz,” Charice said. “I am Kevin’s student. I’m part of the school’s music program. I play the piano. Kevin plays a high school biology teacher who sidelines as a martial arts fighter to save our music program. Malia is like a brainiac. She loves music and biology. She’s one of the people who supports Kevin.”
“This is my first big movie,” gushed Charice, whose career has grown by leaps and bounds since we first met her on the set of “Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Squeakquel” where she made a cameo appearance.
She’s thrilled to have a Filipino co-star, especially one who shares the Pinoys’ passion for texting. The 18-year-old singer-actress said that as she got ready to have dinner with Reggie in Boston, he texted her: “Hintayin mo ako, ha.” She chuckled, obviously relishing having a fellow actor who speaks Tagalog. “He is nice,” she said. Kevin and Henry joined them in the dinner.
‘Fun experience’
Saying that filming “… Boom” has been “a fun experience” so far, Charice is looking forward to get back on the set in May. “I can’t wait to go back and do more scenes,” she said. “Kevin, Salma Hayek and Henry Winkler are really nice. That is what I like about doing a movie.”
On working with Henry, a TV legend because of his leather-clad character, Fonzie, in the “Happy Days” series, Charice commented: “Before I went to the set, I researched about everybody. I spent hours watching ‘Happy Days’ on YouTube. When I went to the set and Henry was there, I was about to tell him about how much I love The Fonz. He said, ‘I know you. I saw you on ‘Oprah’ and you’re amazing.’ He is so sweet. I was like, ‘Oh my God, I’m a fan.’ And he was like, ‘Oh, you’re so cute!’”
When we talked last Monday, Charice disclosed that she was scheduled to record another song the following day for a future episode of “Glee.” She returned to the hit series last Tuesday. As for her character Sunshine Corazon’s future in the show, she said: “Right now, I have no idea. I don’t even know what’s going to happen to my character. They just give the script and the song at the last minute.”
She talked about almost failing to meet fellow Pinoy Darren Criss on the “Glee” set. “I didn’t see him and I was about to leave,” she explained. A good mimic, Charice imitated Darren’s voice as she recounted the actor telling her: “Charice! Oh, I have to hug you. I am half-Filipino and I am very proud of you. When I went back to the Philippines, everybody was always talking about you.”
She continued: “Darren and I had pictures together and I posted them on Twitter.”
Charice admitted that one Fil-Am she has yet to meet is Grammy winner Bruno Mars who wrote and produced her new single, “Before It Explodes.” “This is funny but I haven’t met him,” she admitted. “We did the song without seeing each other. I sang the song and he produced it. I would love to meet him.”
Young father
We first found out from Reggie that he is playing Charice’s dad when we asked him about his Mr. De la Cruz character. “Believe it or not, I’m playing Charice’s father!” the young-looking Reggie wrote back. “The director, Frank Coraci, hired me without an audition. So I’m grateful that he trusted me to create the character, even though they thought I was too young to play the part. They ended up graying some of my hair for the shoot. My character is definitely a man with very strong familial beliefs and is quite against the interests of his daughter. But he comes around.”
Reggie offered another believe-it-or-not bit: “Charice and I don’t have any scenes together! There was a scene with us at the end in an earlier draft (of the script) but they found it better for the story if we were in two different places.”
But Reggie said that he and Charice got to know each other at the dinner. “She is an amazing, positive person,” he commented. “I feel more like a protective kuya to her than a father. I had not met her before this movie but now, we keep in touch. I go back to Boston beginning of May to finish shooting. Hopefully, I will spend a bit more time with her then.”
Asked for an update of his busy career, Reggie happily obliged. In “Grimm,” a TV pilot that he shot for NBC with “the amazing Sean Hayes,” he portrays Sergeant Wu, a colleague of the main character played by David Giuntoli. “It’s a wonderful script by the writers of ‘Angel’ and ‘Buffy the Vampire Slayer,’ David Greenwalt and Jim Kouf. I love the story of my character. I’m keeping my fingers crossed so the series gets picked up!”
Fulfilling experience
“Safe” is one his movies coming out this year. “I play the adversary of Jason Statham’s character in this film,” he volunteered. “I had a very fulfilling experience playing this character because I was with a 10-year-old girl for much of the shoot.” Reggie said that he can’t reveal his character’s relationship to the girl, who is described on IMDb as a “young Chinese girl (who) has vital weapons of mass destruction science secrets.” He only said: “But my character takes care of her in the film. There’s a different emotional twist to the character that otherwise could have been run of the mill.”
Reggie admitted that he accepted a small role offered by the directors of “Crazy, Stupid, Love,” Glenn Ficara and John Requa, “because it involved a scene with Julianne Moore, Steve Carrell, Ryan Gosling, Emma Stone and Kevin Bacon. You couldn’t go wrong with that.”
He also appears in “Fanboy,” a short film that is the directorial debut of Sam Raimi’s wife, Gillian Greene, “because I just dig them both so much!”
On the animated TV series “American Dad!”, he voices a character “with Sandra Oh playing my wife. That’s fun. That happens periodically through the year.”
We’ll write more extensively about Charice in a later column.
Happy Easter, dear readers!
E-mail the columnist at rvnepales_5585@yahoo.com.