Ria Atayde more daring at 30

Ria Atayde

“I’m 30. I feel like it’s a great way to welcome my adulthood,” declared actress Ria Atayde, whose sexy photos created online buzz recently.

“How did I get to that decision? A big part of it is my ‘mama-ger’ Kathryn (Bernardo), who mounted the shoot. It’s so funny because for each layout the photographer, Cha (Charis Malico), would send some photos to Kath, who would keep saying, ‘More skin! More skin!’” recalled Ria, whose actual birthday is March 23.

“As for me, I was so game. I’m not saying that I’m at my fittest, but at this point, I feel that I’m at my happiest. Right now is a time that I really want to remember. When we were shooting, I was like, ‘More skin pa ba? OK!’ To me, it’s like a role. For that day, my role was a daring model,” she told Inquirer Entertainment in a recent virtual chat.

“It’s not like I would get into more daring roles from now on. If it’s worth being daring, yes I’d do it, but it would need convincing. It’s just that, when else would I be photographed like that?” she argued. “I actually did two [shoots]—one mounted by Kathryn and another one by my glam team as a gift to me.”

Family reactions

Asked what the reaction of her family was to the daring photos, Ria said, laughing: “My mom (Sylvia Sanchez) liked the photos. (Brother) Arjo, according to my younger sister Gela, asked, ‘Who’s that?’ My dad (Art Atayde), when I showed him some of the photos, said, ‘Why do you want to show everybody your panty?’”

Interestingly enough, Ria said she started getting serious about losing weight after her spine surgery in April 2021.

“I wasn’t allowed to work out. For the longest time, I hated myself for eating a lot. I now maintain a healthier relationship with food,” she explained. “I’d say that my unintentional weight loss had something to do with my back surgery. The heavier I am, the harder it is for my back to support itself.”

She said she still does “light workouts” with her physical therapist. “I do a lot of stretching, too. That’s the thing! I still eat rice every day. I used to be able to finish six to eight slices of pizza. Now, I’m OK with one or two. Pizza is my happy food,” she shared with Inquirer Entertainment.

“The mind-set that you’re trying to lose weight because you hate your body is so different from the one that you need to be healthy so you lose weight. Just that shift in mind-set changes the way you see things. Instead of doing it for the negative, do it for the positive. That’s what helped me,” she stressed.

When asked for her thoughts on being single at 30, Ria gave an interesting reply: “In our culture, a measure of success is whether or not you have a stable family. I love my life right now, that’s keeping me less pressured. It also helps that the people around me make me feel that being single is OK.”

Atayde

Ria then said she is “super open” to dating men. “Of course, who doesn’t want to be in a romantic relationship? It’s just that, right now, it’s not a priority,” she declared.

What is immediate for Ria is promoting her latest project, Carlo Enciso Catu’s drama series “Misis Piggy,” which will start streaming on iWantTFC on April 25.

Leading the cast of the series is Ria’s real-life mom, Sylvia Sanchez. “It’s about a single mother who raises three kids all by running a stall in the market called Misis Piggy. Her kids all end up being professionals to a certain extent. My character, the eldest daughter, is a nurse. There’s this friction of sorts between my character and my mom’s. My character had to step up to be the mom to her two younger siblings,” she explained.

On their dynamics on the set, Ria said it was good that her mom gave her the “space” she needed. “I thought she would be clingy but she really let me work as if we’re simply coactors. I felt like it was a very professional relationship,” Ria said.

“Missis Piggy,” a coproduction of iWantTFC, Dreamscape Entertainment, Epicmedia and Nathan Studios, also stars Ricky Davao, Elijah Canlas, and Iana Bernardez. INQ