Blink, and you may miss Dolly de Leon in the new series ‘Dirty Linen’
I have a feeling that Dolly de Leon will eventually reappear as a ghost character in the Kapamilya network’s newest major series Dirty Linen where she portrays a murdered maid in a wealthy family’s house.
De Leon is the country’s most famous actor these days given her historic nominations at the Golden Globes and other foreign award-giving bodies. (John Arcilla had his time in the last quarter of 2021 when he won best actor at the 78th Venice International Film Festival, the first Filipino and Southeast Asian to do so.)
Dirty Linen premieres at 9:30 p.m. on 23 January and De Leon’s character is found dead in one of the show’s first-week episodes. (I was among the handful of press guys invited to a special preview of the first-week episodes at The Block at SM in North Edsa a few nights ago.)
De Leon’s character (Olivia) happens to have a stubborn daughter, Alexa, with a deep longing for justice for her mother’s alleged mysterious escape from the mansion where she was working, after being accused of carting off the matriarch’s most valuable jewelry.
The daughter grows up (portrayed luminously by Janine Gutierrez while the character’s young version is the vibrant Erika Clemente) and, despite her stunning looks, manages to be hired as a domestic in the very same household where her mother vanished. The Fierro family, headed by a smart, religious, but conscience-bereft matriarch (Tessie Tomas, acting her best), live in a villa with a grandiose, labyrinth-like front yard garden.
De Leon’s character is physically alive only for a few minutes. Among her fellow househelp is Ruby Ruiz, another much-admired indie actor. A grown-up Alexa conspires with the children of the other househelp to get back at the Fierro family.
What if De Leon wins as best supporting actress in any of the internationally noted film awards she is nominated in? She missed it at the Golden Globes of the Hollywood Foreign Press Association, but any time now she can win in one of the other awards for her well-nuanced performance in Ruben Ostlund’s Triangle of Sadness. And if she does win, wouldn’t ABS-CBN be compelled to show off more of her brand of acting as soon as possible? If De Leon is in town, it might not be difficult to mount flashback scenes between her and her young daughter. Or scenes in which the grown-up daughter imagines life with her mother.
But then, there may in fact be such scenes in the later episodes of Dirty Linen that have been taped but were not shown in the preview.
Actually, there is a lot of unquestionably impressive, perhaps even award-winning, acting in Dirty Linen. No one was a bad actor in the episodes we previewed. The cast includes the 2019 Venice Film Festival best actor John Arcilla as the Fierro family’s eldest child. The somehow underrated but always credible and memorable actor Janice de Belen plays Arcilla’s vicious wife. Angel Aquino plays the matriarch’s lessloved offspring who she is married to Epy Quizon.
First team-up
Favorite Kapamilya actor Zanjoe Marudo (he was never jobless at the network even at the height of the pandemic) is also in the cast as a son of Arcilla and De Belen, with young star Francine Diaz as his baby sister. Diaz is teamed up for the first time with Seth Fedelin, who used to be in a love team with Andrea Brillantes.
Fedelin is with the conspiring bunch of revenge-seekers against the Fierros. Marudo is meant to be Gutierrez’s love interest in the story. It’s their first team-up.
Also an avenger in Dirty Linen is Christian Bables in a rare portrayal of a heterosexual guy. The bunch of avengers is headed by a character portrayed by Joel Torre.
Arnold Reyes is most moving as Olivia’s wheelchair-bound husband who is more helpless than his daughter in trying to unearth the fate of Olivia.
Soliman Cruz, another internationally acclaimed actor, has a “special participation” in the series.
Those who love to hate will most likely sit up five nights a week to hate on the Fierros, a family that seems to be beyond redemption. The Fierros don’t blink while watching violence being inflicted on others.
Andoy Ranay and Onat Diaz, both old hands at helming well-followed Kapamilya drama shows, direct Dirty Linen, which has two main scriptwriters.
Meanwhile, De Leon, who seems to be in the US as of this writing, is set to appear in an upcoming comedy opposite Jason Schwartzman, where she plays his character’s evil stepmom.
According to ABS-CBN, the movie will start filming in March. De Leon will fly to the United States to work on the project and then come back to the Philippines — also for work.
She has a number of local projects lined up as well, from a film called Keys to the
Heart to two Cinemalaya entries, Iti Mapukpukaw and Duyan ng Magiting.