JaDine team-up: It works!

With their growing popularity, there’s no doubt that James Reid and Nadine Lustre are clearly one of the top young loveteams in showbiz today. That fact is not lost on either of the two, who are both very grateful for the breaks they’ve been given.

“I always say, what we have is good. It works,” says James, who came into showbiz via the ABS-CBN reality show Pinoy Big Brother Teen Edition back in 2010. He had to wait for four years before his career took off and before the recognition he currently enjoys. 

Nadine, meanwhile, also had to wait for her big break and now that it’s paid off, wants to keep focused on the right path. She explains that’s why neither she nor James wants to mess things up by getting into a relationship right now, although their onscreen chemistry is very much evident in their scenes in Dreamscape Entertainment’s On the Wings of Love and in the two movies they did together, namely Diary ng Panget and Talk Back and You’re Dead. The two have also become a hot trending topic on social media. 

Although young and virtually new to mainstream showbiz, Nadine is aware of what her priorities and their priorities as a loveteam are. The career comes first. In fact, they’ve both been working so hard that even personal time has had to take the backseat. “We don’t want to complicate things. Whatever is happening to us now, we’ve been waiting for this for so long. So, we don’t want to have anything between us that can hinder or ruin what we have now.”

Even their co-stars have noticed the potential of James and Nadine. Cherry Pie Picache, who plays the role of Jack, the aunt of James’ character Clark in On the Wings of Love says the two have the same chemistry and versatility that William Martinez and Maricel Soriano had during their heyday. 

“They (James and Nadine) are a very nice loveteam and they work very hard. That’s the good thing about them. With James, meron pa siya yung sa character niya, yung suot niya, he practices his Tagalog, yung ganyan. Same with Nadine. They work hard. Another good thing about them, they’re also willing to learn. They’re sweet. I feel that their love team is still evolving, parang nung panahon ni Martin Nievera and Pops Fernandez, iba sa panahon ngayon. I think ang nakita kong difference ngayon kay James at Nadine is yung may honesty, they know their dreams as a loveteam, they know what they want, their dreams, the things that they’ve worked for, their feelings towards each other, they know it. There’s an honesty and a sincerity between them, and it’s nice to work in that kind of environment, they are both just being positive.”

James says that the longer they work together, the more comfortable they’ve become with each other. 

Initially, there was some awkwardness between them, especially when shooting scenes where they had to be in love, but that has slowly disappeared with every project that they took on. Now, in On the Wings of Love, it is obvious that their loveteam has peaked at the right time. “We’re already used to it,” laughs James, to which Nadine adds, “Yes po, marami na rin pong beses kasi nagawa (yung mga gano’ng eksena).”

On the Wings of Love, with its family-oriented story and plot thread about Overseas Filipino Workers (OFWs), is deeper and more serious theme-wise than anything JaDine has done before. But so far, and to their credit, the two have been able to pull themselves up and raise the bar for their performances. 

And no one could be happier about how things have turned out than the JaDine fans themselves. During a press conference shortly after the show began airing, Nadine talked about how the fans were reacting to their team-up. “Actually, I am excited, kasi marami pong topless scenes si James, du’n po sila excited,” she laughed, then immediately clarified what she meant. “Hindi, excited po sila kasi alam po nila na mas nag-level-up po kami dito, mas mature po ng konti. Mas excited po sila sa pag-level-up po namin at saka sa story din.”