Andrea Brillantes must still be in character as Luna when she turned up Sunday night at the special screening of the first three episodes of her latest ABS-CBN series Senior High in which she plays twins, one of whom is the thin-voiced but bubbly Luna (the other is Sky, the stern, silent and seemingly introverted one).
That night at Cinema 1 of Trinoma Mall in QC, Brillantes, 21, looked and sounded like she was 17 or 18, the typical age of Pinoys in senior high school. That night, she didn’t sound at all like a young adult who sleeps over at her boyfriend’s pad.
When Brillantes asserted that she broke up with hot young cager Ricci Rivero because she caught him with a naked girl in bed (Brillantes had a key to the pad), she neither admitted nor denied Rivero’s revelation at Boy Abunda’s Fast Talk on GMA7 that Brillantes had stayed overnight at his pad several times.
At the press conference after the special preview no journo or vlogger dared to ask about Brillantes’ soured affair with Rivero.
Bullying, mental health
Senior High tackles bullying, mental health issues, relationships between parents and their children, family values, drug use, etc. There may later be something on unwanted teen pregnancies, but there seems to be nothing about LGBTQIA relationships, judging from the three episodes the cast members themselves watched for the first time.
It’s very possible, of course, that some other issues would be introduced in the succeeding episodes.
Senior High started airing Monday night. In the series, one of the twins, played by Brillantes, would have a mysterious death: Did Luna commit suicide or was she pushed by someone from one of the floors of the school building?
Sky, who seems to be maladjusted and has no social-life coping skills, has to go it all by herself in a school that harbor bullies from rich and powerful families. In the second episode aired Tuesday night, Sky discovers that Luna had been subjected to so much bullying, but their single-parent mother (Angel Aquino) preferred not to complain to school authorities knowing how wealthy and powerful the bullies’ parents are.
The stubborn Sky will persist on investigating the real cause of her twin sister’s death, and she will find an ally in the school’s longtime security guard, Manang Lydia (Sylvia Sanchez).
Sky has a personality closer to Brillantes, being independent and individualistic in real life. The actor even has a sense of humor in dealing with her bashers. The latest issue against her is her declaration in a vlog that she is now unattached and willing to date actor Ina Raymundo’s stunningly handsome and outgoing son Jakob Poturnak. For this, some netizens have called Brillantes “malandi.”
Bigger cast
The creative team of Senior High is almost the same as that of the recently concluded series Dirty Linen. The directors are Onat Diaz and Andoy Ranay. Two actors of Senior High came straight from Dirty Linen: Aquino and Xyriel Manabat.
Senior High has a much bigger cast than Dirty Linen. Portraying the classmates of Luna and Sky are Kyle Echarri, Elijah Canlas, Zaijian Jaranilla, Xyriel Manabat, Daniela Stranner, Miggy Jimenez, Tommy Alejandrino, Gela Atayde and Juan Karlos (aka JK Labajo, the pop-rock singer).
The parents and other elders include Baron Geisler, Mon Confiado, Desiree Del Valle, Kean Cipriano, Ana Abad Santos, Gerald Madrid, Inka Magnaye, Angeli Bayani, Ryan Eigenmann, Rans Rifol, Rap Robes, Kakki Teodoro and Floyd Tena.
A Dreamscape Entertainment production, Senior High airs Monday to Friday, 9:30 p.m., on the Kapamilya Channel, Kapamilya Online Live, A2Z, TV5, iWantTFC and TFC.
Brillantes was last seen in an ABS-CBN series that aired mainly on iWantTFC, Drag You & Me, where she portrayed a young woman who had to disguise as a gay man so she could join a drag-queen competition and win the cash grand prize so her gay parents could reopen the family-run gay bar in a village.
The series began in June this year and ended first week of August. The show was taped in May, around the time she broke up with Rivero. That breakup prompted Brillantes to go on a grand vacation in Spain all by herself. Talk about being an empowered young woman.