Post by LJ on Apr 8, 2006 2:05:45 GMT 5.5
Meet the big 4 of Pinoy Big Brother Celebrity Edition
KEANNA REEVES:Too good to be true
For Pinoy Big Brother celebrity housemate Keanna Reeves, winning the top spot in the reality TV show last Saturday was “too good to be true.”
“Now I know what too good to be true means,” said the former bold starlet, who exposed an alleged sex scandal in the Senate in 2004.
Keanna, 36, bested three other housemates after garnering 571,607 votes or 44.2 percent of total votes received from viewers of the top-rating show aired over ABS-CBN.
She won P1 million, a condominium unit, an appliance showcase, and computers.
“This is what I’ve been waiting for,” Keanna said, referring to showbiz career opportunities that await every PBB housemate, especially the big winner.
“I’m looking forward to more work now,” she said “Becoming a housemate was the best decision I have made in my whole life.”
Keanna had auditioned to become a housemate in Pinoy Big Brother Celebrity Edition with the help of Boy Abunda, who now runs her career.
“I thought that becoming a housemate would boost my career in showbiz,” she admitted. “I wanted the public to know the real me.”
Shortly after the Senate sex scandal, Keanna was cast in two forgettable movies—the sexy comedy Shut up…I-memorize Mo Na Lang Yan, with Pacquito Diaz, and a bold movie that was never finished.
She drifted to night club acts and was about to go to Japan as a performer last January when Pinoy Big Brother Celebrity Edition opened for auditions.
JOHN PRATS:This is surreal
Surreal was how John Prats described his exit as second top housemate from Pinoy Big Brother Celebrity Edition last Saturday.
“I’m still not my normal self,” said John, a day after he touched base with reality.
John landed on second spot next to big winner Keanna Reeves with 372,198 votes or 28 percent of total votes.
For 58 days, John was holed up inside the PBB house with 13 other housemates without contact with the outside world.
“We didn’t know that there were two coup threats while we were inside the house,” he said. “We knew about the Leyte tragedy, but only a few details of it, and because we packed relief boxes for the victims. We were totally cut off from the world.”
Entering the real world again would pose as a challenge to John, who went straight to a photo shoot the morning after the show’s grand finale.
“Everybody was congratulating me,” he said, “but I felt so out of touch with everything. I was talking to my best friend Luis Manzano and he said I seemed to have changed. I feel that I’m back in school, learning how to be me again in the real world.
“But the psychologist said this was normal.”
Still, John is happy for the experience.
“If not for PBB, I wouldn’t have made new friends,” he said, referring to the housemates.
He admitted that he still has to talk to Nancy Castiglione, with whom he shared a special relationship before entering the PBB house last Feb. 5.
“I don’t know where we are right now,” he admitted. “We still have not talked. I’m taking things slowly.”
BIANCA GONZALEz:Facing the consequences
I am ready to face the consequences,” declared housemate Bianca Gonzalez, whose on cam “love affair” with fellow housemate Zanjoe Marudo in Pinoy Big Brother Celebrity Edition had apparently changed her public image and jeopardized her relationship with a TV director.
Bianca was on third place with 245,594 votes (19 percent of total votes).
“They showed as hugging, but they edited out what happened before we hugged,” she said, referring to her tender moments with Zanjoe, who had admitted during the show that he had a crush on her.
She admitted that scenes like this one had upset her boyfriend, Lino Cayetano.
“We have already talked, and he said some things had upset even his family,” she said. “We still have to talk about it again. We’re hoping to solve our problems.”
Bianca described her relationship with Zanjoe as a very deep friendship, developed over the weeks that they had spent together cloistered inside the PBB house and facing every task and challenge that Big Bro had posed on them.
“After this thing with Zanjoe came about, everything that we did together inside the house already had a tinge of malice,” she said. “People looked at us differently even if we were just performing tasks together or washing the plates together.”
But the experience and the “exposure” to controversy had made her a better person, Bianca said.
“I don’t regret being in the show,” she said, “but I do have hinanakit about what happened with me in the show.”
The experience, she said, was still worth while.
“I got to know the real me,” she admitted. “I was able to show to people the real me. People who know me would not have questioned my actions. It’s the people who don’t really know me who thought differently about me. In the long run, I have to cope with the real me, and I’m still okay.”
ZANJOE MARUDO:Ready for showbiz
A day before he entered the PBB house as a housemate, Bench model Zanjoe Marudo had said that he wanted to be an actor. Emerging from the house 58 days later, Zanjoe still hasn’t changed his mind.
“I still want to be an actor,” he said. “I’m looking forward to becoming one. I also want to do hosting, other things. I’ll probably not model anymore.”
Intrigues do not faze him, he added.
“It’s part of the game,” Zanjoe insisted. “I’m sure I can handle that part of the job, too.”
Zanjoe was talking from experience inside Big Bro’s house, where he hooked up with Bianca Gonzales in what would be the current talk of the town coupling of two celebrity housemates.
He explained: “What we have is a deep friendship. I respect her. I respect that she has someone special. But we became best friends inside the house.”
He described the PBB experience as extraordinary even as he admitted that he became a housemate to have a stepping stone in showbiz.
If he survived PBB, Zanjoe thinks he would survive showbiz.
“I’m ready for whatever comes with a career in showbiz,” he declared.
He has done acting workshops and is confident that he can be a good actor.
“I see myself as another Richard Gomez,” he confided. “I hope to become what he has become—a good actor, a sportsman, a family man.”
But in his heart, Zanjoe would always be a PBB housemate.
He came in fourth place with 103,422 votes or 8 percent of total votes.