Have the years changed Raymond Bagatsing?
It has been quite a while since we last saw or spoke with
Bagatsing. Our last memory was that of his wedding to Lara Fabregas at romantic Sonya’s Garden where, like every woman in love, Lara had ignored all warning that a whirlwind courtship could only end disastrously.
We were now facing each other at Little Tokyo Japanese village restaurant where Raymond or Rama reminded us we had brought him and Lara for dinner long ago. The place had not changed much from the intimate gathering of outdoor and indoor Japanese eateries, except that now the waitresses were in a flurry to have pictures taken with Raymond to which he graciously agreed.
Rama had always been a child of many teleseryes mostly on GMA 7 since the ’90s until today, with a four-year absence spent in the US waiting for his green card. Everyone by now is familiar with the green card brouhaha, with his marriage to Cora Pastrana blown out of proportions, which the waitresses at Little Tokyo couldn’t care less about.
Some of Raymond’s memorable teleseryes were Mula sa
Puso in 1997 to 1999 with Claudine Barretto, Rico Yan, Diether Ocampo and Kung Mawawala
Ka with Sunshine Dizon and Cogie Domingo in 2001 to 2003. He also did Narito ang Puso Ko, GMA 7’s 2003 landmark produc- tion co-directed by Gina Alajar and first-timer Eric Quizon, wherein he co-starred with Ariel Rivera, Dina Bonnevie, Carmina Villarroel and Jolina Magdangal. Raymond won the Best Supporting Actor award from the Enpress’ Golden Screen Awards in 2004.
On his return to the Philippines, he was quickly offered Time of My
Life and Amaya by GMA 7, followed by the current afternoon prime soap The Good Daughter where Raymond plays a successful businessman torn between a wicked first love Alicia Mayer and the ghost of a second love Glydel Mercado whose daughter Kylie Padilla is “the good daughter.” The leads are Kylie and Rocco Nacino, son of Alicia, whose love story would include Max Collins, Kylie’s supposed best friend. In this convoluted setting, Alicia’s daughter LJ Reyes is her similarly evil confidante, while Alicia and Raymond’s daughter Angeli Nicole holds the key to a secret that could turn their world upside down.
We are drawn to the serye and Raymond’s role having good looks and business acumen, but apparent gullibility when it comes to women. It takes a skillful actor to deliver this humdrum part convincingly. During the 2011 Cinemanila Film Festival, Raymond joined Ronnie Lazaro and Edwin Nombre in Benito Bautista’s
Boundary, a story inspired by true stories of taxi drivers in Manila. It is an outstanding film of crime and treachery where the audience can’t decide on who is the criminal and who is the victim.
If there is anything that a difficult life in America during economic difficulties must have taught Rama, it would be a lesson in humility. We shared perceptions people had of his being weird, unapproachable and
mayabang, questions on his sexual orientation and he was straightforward but polite in his answers. He tells us he still does yoga and meditation (accounting for the weirdness in the past), is opening a restaurant in Quezon City with a friend to augment earnings, is thinking of starting a school of mentoring and is still determined to make it in Hollywood.
He points out his advantages like being acceptable in looks as European, South American and Asian; able to speak French, Spanish, Italian, English with the facility for accents. We suddenly recall a German crime series shot in the Philippines way back in 1996 titled Klinik unter Palmen which had Raymond as the only Filipino in the cast. The interesting thing is that he was not playing a Pinoy but a character called Krankenpfleger Rajah.