Lovi Poe: Doing love scenes not a sexy thing

Lovi Poe

I’ll never get used to doing love scenes, even if I do them a million times,” declared Lovi Poe, despite having starred in numerous movies that required her to bare skin.

Lovi will be seen doing steamy bed scenes once again—this time, with Tom Rodriguez in Joel Lamangan’s “The Significant Other,” which will be shown in cinemas on Feb. 21.

“People ask how I feel when I’m doing it; I say it’s really not a very sexy thing. Everyone is there in the room, watching. You also have to mind a lot of things, like camera angles and blocking,” she explained.

Real gentleman

Lovi said it helped that she did her latest film project with Tom. “I feel comfortable with him because we first did a soap opera together. We spent six months playing husband and wife. And the fact that he’s a real gentleman. With him, you won’t feel that you’re being taken advantage of,” she said. “With Tom, whatever happens behind the cameras is part of how we make the scene interesting.”

While Lovi said it was important for her to feel the right emotions required for each scene, she pointed out that acting for her was “just a job.”

“What I do at work doesn’t get into my head,” Lovi said of the various love scenes she had done with different actors, “and he knows that.”

By “he,” the actress meant her French-Filipino boyfriend Chris Johnson, whom she said had always been “understanding and supportive of what I do.”

This Valentine’s Day, which also happens to be her birthday, Lovi said she would most likely be busy with work. “We didn’t make any plans. We’ll just have to see when we can celebrate,” Lovi said. “There’s no definite time for a vacation yet. I don’t think there’s a need to make up for anything. Work is work. I’m not saying that I won’t adjust for him. It’s all about compromise. For me, there’s no need to apologize for not having the time.”

Confrontation scene

Also working with Lovi in “The Significant Other” is Erich Gonzales, who recently sustained a cut in her finger while doing a confrontation scene with her.

Erich’s finger got caught in one of Lovi’s earrings while she was attempting to slap the latter. A video of the said scene went viral recently, prompting film producer Cineko Productions to release a statement. It pointed out that Lamangan decided to continue filming the scene “because it needed to be as intense as it was… We believe that the artists did just exactly what the scene had asked for in order to make it more realistic.”

Lovi stressed “there was no one to blame for what happened. The video that people saw did not tell the whole story.”

She claimed that she and Erich were “OK right after the scene. When it comes to confrontation scenes like that, it’s not unusual for actors to get carried away. That’s how it is. We owe it to our audience to make the movie as realistic as possible. If we fake it, the audience will not feel it.”