Eula Caballero is ‘One of the Boys’

CEBU, Philippines - In the young career of TV5 princess Eula Caballero, she’s had the luck of acting alongside Philippine showbiz greats such as Nora Aunor, Maricel Soriano, Eddie Garcia, Lorna Tolentino and Christopher de Leon. This first quarter of 2014, the Cebuana actress gets another front row seat at Acting 101 care of industry veteran Joey de Leon whom she stars with in an upcoming Kapatid network sitcom.

The reality star search winner is front and center in “One of the Boys,” taking on the role of taxi driver Gabriella “Gabi” Silang who was raised by her father in a neighborhood car repair shop full of male workers.

“She is boyish in the way she talks and moves since she grew up surrounded by boys at home, but Gabi is a girl at heart. Sir Joey, who plays my father, has a disability and can’t work, so I became the family breadwinner,” shares Eula of her new TV assignment.

Getting along with a group of boys is nothing foreign to Eula. After all, she attended a high school for boys (University of San Carlos-North Campus) that was just beginning to go co-ed. In her class, she was among five girls, and the rest of the students were males.

“My role is basically tough inside, at the same time, her family is kalog despite all the struggles they go through. It’s titled ‘One of the Boys’ because the new group of guys in TV5 called Juan Direction is part of the show,” says the mainstay of the TV5 gag show “Tropa Mo Ko Unli.”

Working with Joey was described by Eula as not only fun, but literally a learning experience. The “Eat Bulaga” host’s spontaneity forces the 18-year-old to be constantly on her toes. “It makes you smart and spontaneous. It makes you an observer. Why? Because he doesn’t stick to the script. He throws back adlibs all the time, so if you’re in a scene with him and you just depend on the script, you’ll really be taken aback. That’s why you have to be really attentive and alert. Thankfully, it wasn’t very difficult for me to adjust since we also adlib a lot in ‘Lokomoko.’ In fact, we get scolded often for going overtime.”

“One of the Boys,” which is targeting a March debut, also includes in its cast BJ Forbes, Empoy Marquez, Nadine Samonte, James Salazar, Michael McDonnell, Daniel Marsh, Henry Edwards, Brian Wilson, Benjo Leoncio, and Charlie Sutcliffe.

Movie-wise, Eula has had three films under her belt (“Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow,” “Shake Rattle and Roll 14,” and “Raketeros”), the first of which gained her two acting nods from separate award-giving bodies. She has another Regal Films-distributed flick in the works, but can’t say for certain when it will get done.

She explains, “We’ve been doing the romantic-comedy ‘Ride To Love’ for two years now, and we have yet to wrap up filming. One reason for the delay is, our director Adolf Alix, Jr. is world-renowned, so he’s always abroad for film festivals. It’s also hard to gather the actors included in the film who come from different networks.”

Clad in tiny denim cut-offs during our interview, we point out her sexy look this instance — quite different from the teeny-bopper aspirant we first witnessed as she was then auditioning for “Star Factor.”

“Realistically, I’m no longer in the teeny-bopper category, since I’m already 18. Filipino audiences want more out of actors, and not just what they often see. So little by little, I start to level up and mature. I can’t always be the cute and shy type. But on the note of going sexy or posing for men’s magazines, definitely not yet,” says Eula, complimented once by one TV director as someone capable of taking on a similar career path as Angel Locsin.

Eula says that she often finds time to come home every now and then, either in their Guadalupe residence or her childhood place in Boljoon. Even with her numerous visits, she points out one thing she has yet to get used to in Cebu:“I felt sad seeing that Cebu now suffers from heavy traffic. When I was still studying at USC-NC, there was traffic, but it wasn’t bumper-to-bumper.” (FREEMAN)