A Kapatid right from the start

MANILA, Philippines - If ABS-CBN has its Star Magic and GMA has its Talent Center, TV5 won’t be left behind. It has Talent 5, which will groom its future stars on TV and the movies.

Manny V. Pangilinan’s network recently crowned its very first homegrown star and Talent 5 artist in a show extravaganza at Ynares Sports Arena Pasig. Eula Caballero from Cebu won P1-M tax-free cash, P1-M management contract with Talent 5, a four-year college scholarship with AMA Education System and a three-bedroom, two-storey house and lot from Moldex Realty.

Fifteen-year-old Eula doesn’t act like a giddy school girl. Nor does she have a thick Cebuana accent. And she can shed tears at the drop of a hat when she played a down-on-her-luck girl in a callback session of the just-concluded reality show Star Factor.

Something about growing up practically without a father (her dad has been working abroad for 30 years but he visits them now and then) must have given Eula wisdom beyond her years.

Reacting to criticisms about her, Eula says, “Thank you for the negative comments because they pushed me to try harder to reach my goals.”

Now, her goal as a good daughter is to ask her hardworking dad to go home and just tend to a business.

“I cried when I saw him after I guested in Willing Willie because I didn’t expect him at all,” recalls Eula. “My mom just told me he was already in the cab on his way to see me.”

Her goal as a TV 5 artist is just as challenging. Eula wants to live up to TV 5’s expectations of her to be its first big star. She wants to create a big splash, not just in comedies the network will line up for her and the Star Factor finalists (Christian Samson, Morisette Anon and Ritz Azul). Eula also wants to make you cry a river in primetime soaps.

TV 5 executive Perci Intalan has been observing Eula since Day One. He relates, “Eula is different from the rest of the pack. She is outspoken. Her answers are not showbiz. They are straight and to the point. Just like the other Star Factor finalists, we can talk to her as an adult.”

Eula has a well of emotions to draw from as a budding dramatic actress. She broke down during an audition for Star Factor because she and boyfriend of two years split up. Her family wanted her to focus on her studies first. Needless to say, she won the judges over, hands-down.

Even sans the experience she has now, Eula always wanted to hitch her wagon to a star. At four, she asked her mom how she can enter their TV set at home. When Eula’s mom joked that she can do that by going behind the TV set, the precocious tyke did just that. In school, Eula would make her classmates hate her guts simply by portraying a villain in amateur plays.

That’s why TV5 is pinning its hope on her that much.

“Eula will grow with the network,” Intalan predicts. “Direk Audie (Gemora, Talent5 head) and I have talked about how her projects will become more elaborate.”

Eula is as excited as a child on Christmas Eve.

 “I am overwhelmed but I’m happy that the network trusts me,” says Eula.

Just thinking of working with fellow Kapatid JC de Vera, her idol Arci Muñoz and other TV5 talents excites Eula no end.

Yes, she admits being more at ease in Cebuano and English.

So Eula is working on her Tagalog — the language of soaps, movies and other projects on the big and small screen. She reads as many Tagalog materials as she can lay her hands on and keeps an English-Tagalog dictionary handy.

“That’s why my Tagalog is weird,” states Eula. “Sobrang lalim and not conversational.”

TV5 won’t stop at Eula. Intalan talks of looking for other talents younger or older than Eula’s teenage batch via other talent searches.

“Meanwhile, we will not hold Star Factor searches yearly,” states Intalan. “We will wait for two years before conducting it again to give the first batch of talents a fair chance to shine.”

If not, he explains, these talents may suffer in the frenzy of all the things the network has in store for them.

That’s good news for those who, like Eula, not only have the talent, but the will to shine for all they’re worth.