The good, the bad, and the love team
There is no trying to hide it: Filipinos have an attachment to their favorite stars and those they act alongside.
Your grandparents are most likely fans of Susan Roces and Fernando Poe Jr., and your parents probably felt kilig over Sharon Cuneta and Gabby Concepcion. You can also ask your older cousins or siblings about the iconic duo Claudine Barretto and Rico Yan.
These pairs all left a mark on Philippine showbiz, and their success is still being replicated with newer onscreen couples like Donny Pangilinan and Belle Mariano as DonBelle, or Francine Diaz and Kyle Echarri as KyCine.
Love teams do lead to good things. DonBelle is the prime example: both Pangilinan and Mariano have been in the industry long before they got paired, but it was only after He’s Into Her, their first show together, that they received the highest recognition they’d gotten so far in their careers.
Mariano even became the first Filipina to be awarded at the Seoul International Drama Awards because of her role in their Wattpad book-turned-series.
The love team skyrocketed to fame almost immediately even while He’s Into Her was ongoing. Their first movie as the leads were Love is Color Blind, which became the highest-grossing local movie for 2021. Their latest project An Inconvenient Love earned over P15 million just days after its initial release.
That said, even with the enduring relevance of love teams, the popularity and fan craze are a double-edged sword.
James Reid from the beloved love team JaDine recently recounted in the American podcast “Dumbfounded” how love teams affected his career. He wanted to pursue a music career but was pushed to start acting instead, eventually getting paired with Nadine Lustre, his onscreen and former off-screen partner.
His interviewer went out to call it an “arranged show business marriage.” When asked how someone could stop or end it, Reid answered, “You can’t. Once they ‘ship’ you and there are fans behind, it’s unstoppable. There’s nothing you can do about it.”
Reid’s statement is a great contrast to how it was in the early 2000s, when Bea Alonzo and John Lloyd Cruz cemented their place as one of the biggest love teams in the country. Unlike today’s love teams, Alonzo and Cruz’s pairing didn’t stop them from exploring other roles, with other actors as their co-stars. This earned them more versatility, leading to great chemistry not just with each other but with many other actors in their many other projects.
Sure, no one will ever forget Alonzo and Cruz as One More Chance’s Popoy and Basha. But beyond their pairing, Cruz delivered an equally iconic performance with Sarah Geronimo as Miggy Montenegro and Laida Magtalas in the A Very Special Love trilogy. There was also the undeniable charm of Alonzo and Dingdong Dantes as our favorite best friends-to-lovers in She’s the One.
Sadly, today’s movies and shows are plagued with repetitive tandems, especially for Gen Z actors. Issues about being chained to a love team are already apparent with pairings as young as Kyle Echarri and Francine Diaz.
The other half. #KGGoldSquad pic.twitter.com/q99mGYO75e
— Kyle Echarri (@kyle_echarri) May 22, 2019
During his time in the Pinoy Big Brother house as a celebrity housemate, Echarri expressed resentment towards some fans who, he felt, forcefully placed him to only be with his onscreen partner. At the time, contact with any other female artist could incite attacks from some KyCine fans. He shared how frustrated he felt working inside his love team and how he views it strictly as work, as per their management’s orders.
It can be dehumanizing to only ever be seen as half of a pair.
The Kapuso star Gabbi Garcia has said that she’d rather rise to stardom on her own without being tied to a specific partner to gain more fame. Though Garcia had released projects with her off-screen-also-showbiz boyfriend Khalil Ramos, she is still open to being partnered up with anyone in the industry as long as her career and experience may grow along with it.
Liza Soberano of LizQuen, one of the most famous love teams of this generation, recently admitted on her YouTube channel how limiting it felt to stay under her former management. “Since I was 16, I had only really worked side by side with one main co-star, with the same production company, rotating around the same three directors,” she shared.
“During all those years, I was never really asked for my input, my thoughts, my ideas.” She ended the vlog by reintroducing herself as Hope Soberano, the version of her that’s finally living for herself.
The current media landscape shouldn’t see celebrities as merely “tools” to build the “next big thing.” Bea Alonzo and John Lloyd Cruz have proven that you can be in one of the most famous love teams in the Philippines while also giving stellar performances alongside other amazing actors—let us give the new generation of actors the opportunity to follow suit.
