Georgina Wilson & the sigh of the times
Evidently, the storm doesn’t hold a chance against Georgina Wilson. While the artery between Greenbelt 2 and the Residences at Greenbelt remains clogged up by cars and trucks and the usual automobile blubber Fridays are wont to have, and the sky continues to lash out at the smog-spewing congregation with a heavy downpour, all eyes are on Ms. Wilson.
As she walks down the walkway from the Belo clinic to the nearby Coffee Bean, a line of chauffeurs crane their heads as if on command — Georgina proving a worthy distraction to the headache Friday’s about to engender. It’s a cliché but walking down a street with Georgina tends to bring to mind the Roy Orbison song, Pretty Woman (“Walking down the street, pretty woman, one I’d like to meet...”).
Born Feb. 12, 1986, Georgina Wilson has had 25 years to get used to having eyes on her. As a six-year-old, the England-based tot’s visit to Manila served as a foreshadowing of her future: her aunt Rio Diaz organizing her own “Bring Your Niece to Work” day and having Georgina for a guest spot on Eat Bulaga. As a teenager, the Assumption College student found herself in trouble after a small appearance in Tim Yap’s column. “I was in Assumption and I wasn’t allowed to come out in the papers and stuff,” she says. “I got pa in trouble in school. Tim shot me at a party, the first time I met him. He pulled me aside and told me, ‘You’re gonna be a star,’” she grins. “I guess I followed the path he wanted me to take.” High school graduation eventually unleashed Georgina Wilson — the name and the beguiling countenance — on all sorts of media, those alluring eyes becoming a common sight in billboards and glossies.
Prime Time
In the last week of January, Georgina Wilson the Hurado debuted on ABS-CBN’s noontime variety show, Showtime. On the show, she says she was able to show different sides of her personality — with the ability to carry a tune the side most surprising. “It was nice because (most) people had never seen me, you know, alive,” she says. “They’d just see me in pictures. They thought I was just a Barbie doll… People were shocked I even knew Tagalog. I mean, come on, I read freakin’ Noli Me Tangere in Tagalog. I don’t want to be too ivory tower. I’m not a porcelain doll.” Her first day on Showtime, she was trending on Twitter.
It’s a long stretch from what was written about her in Rogue’s May 2009 issue. “Local A-list actresses can keep their ‘mass appeal’ for all she cares,” wrote Paolo Lorenzana. Two years later, the May 2011 issue of Maven magazine trumpeted her as the “makamasang socialite.” She says: “When I did Rogue… I was in the tabloids not for me, but for who I was dating and stuff… Now, they’re not asking me if he’s a good kisser or not. They’re asking me about me. It’s different.”
I guess it’s a more than fitting exposition for someone who refuses to let any tag define her. After liberating herself from being arm candy too formidable to ignore, she’s waged a bit of a war on the age-old “beauty and brains” tag, the one she’s been hearing since high school. “That’s been in so many articles already and it’s (gotten) so sickening… Like, okay, I’m not dumb, I get it. Let’s move on to something else,” she says, laughing.
She says she sometimes wonders if it’s because she’s weird. But it seems to be the sign of the times: a generation of young people who refuse to be boxed in — a generation of “slashers.” “Maybe it’s not just enough to be one thing anymore. You have to be so many things…. I feel like in this world where everybody’s beautiful and everybody’s smart, you have to find an edge for yourself.”
The edge is something Georgina Wilson has been privy to all her life. Growing up competitive, she excelled in school and most anything she did. “I’m really competitive so I know exactly how to win, how to get good grades in school,” she says. She admits her friends don’t want to play games with her anymore. “They’re like, ‘George, you’re gonna go crazy again.’ Like Taboo, I lost my s*** playing Taboo ‘cause they were cheating and I knew I was gonna win… That’s just the way I am.”
The High And Low
Today, she finds herself in a pretty lucrative moment. Finding her niche “for endorsing anything high-end,” she’s got big-name endorsements lined up — American Express, Cadbury, and today’s Belo Medical Group among them. She’s also been selected, along with Channel [V]’s Cliff Cole, to anchor one of the first local shows to go regional on Star World. The Source is an E! News-type show with her playing Giuliani DePandi-Rancic to Cliff Cole’s Steve Kmetko. Straddling the line between high-end and mass appeal, she’s hitting her stride.
“I don’t think I ever consciously tried to portray a sweet image, but I think I was always very careful about what I said. With age, I guess you just feel much more comfortable with who you are… Now, I’m okay to let them know that I can be bitchy, that I can be very motherly, that I can be sensitive.”
One wonders if she’s going to be able to pull it off; if, perhaps, mass appeal will come with a massive price for a personality as compelling as Georgina’s. But perhaps the answer lies, again, in the chauffeurs — mine, to be more specific.
Scrambling around the house to look for the magazine back issues I pulled out as research for this profile, the family driver ends up confessing he has them, that he and the rest of the household help couldn’t help but leaf through the magazines with Georgina on the cover.
It seems, at least as far as my household is concerned, the “makamasang socialite” has, as usual, gotten what she wanted.
