My night with Owen Wilson

So did Owen Wilson really come to Manila to pursue one of our own? Friday when the news on social media broke with a photo of Wilson arriving at the airport via Rappler, a slew of Owen sightings bombarded personal message groups and the question on everyone’s mouths was “Why is Owen Wilson here?” 

If he was shooting a movie, then everybody would have known about it since these things need permits and everything done in advance, so that possibility was ruled out. Last week, Zoolander was still showing in cinemas so the excitement was even more felt.

Rumor mills were all agog over an alleged romance with a Filipina socialite. 

The name on everybody’s Viber and Whatsapp group was Wendy Puyat, designer and entrepreneur, who has her own swimsuit line Por do Sol, distributed all over the world, and not an accessories designer as falsely written in another paper. When news broke about their alleged romance, this writer was on the phone with Wendy. “Why is everybody saying you’re with Owen Wilson?” I asked her.

“We are just good friends,” Wendy said in all sincerity, nary a trace of showbiz flair in her answer. The real proof that Owen didn’t come to Manila to visit her was...well, Wendy wasn’t in Manila when Owen went here to visit. She was not in the country. 

“Heard so much about Manila from my good friend who lives in Maui, because his father lives in the Philippines, so I decided to come here to see it for myself,” said Owen while at a skybox in Valkyrie, looking over Manila’s nightlife denizens last Friday night. “Heard that Manila is lots of fun — now I know.” 

Owen explores Manila 

Owen met some of Manila’s movers that Friday night which started at Spanish restaurant Las Flores and then moved to Bank Bar at the Fort, before he proceeded to Revel at the Palace then to the skybox of Valkyrie at the Palace. He went home at 3 a.m. because he wanted to have a full day of sports at Manila Polo Club on Saturday.

Though no pictures were taken that night (we suspect that he wasn’t comfortable, so no one asked, as respect for his privacy), Owen kept on checking on everyone. “He was really nice and he really took the time to talk to everyone in the room. He kept asking if we were okay,” said top ramp model Val Delos Santos, who was one of the guests that night. 

Other guests that Friday night out included a former supermodel, a top public relations executive, a club owner and a fashion designer. 

Owen spent the next day at the Manila Polo Club, where he played tennis with real estate developer Duane Santos, a personal friend of his. “He is a top notch athlete — a very good swimmer and a very competitive tennis player,” said Duane after his one-on-one game with Owen (“I grew up in a family of three boys and we were always competing.”) that afternoon. 

Owen is currently in Hong Kong where he is set to attend Art Basel as part of Hong Kong’s Art Week. 

Hansel has left the building. 

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