Talk of tinseltown nowadays is Maine Mendoza, the other half of the so-called AlDub love team (Alden Richards and Mendoza’s Yaya Dub), who easily won audiences with her wacky antics when their love team was still new and refreshing. To many, Mendoza is this generation’s funny girl.
It’s a fact fame was not served to Mendoza on a silver platter right away. She suffered many rejections before she was given that big break by the producers of Eat Bulaga, the longest-running local noontime show. More than a year after her tandem with Alden Richards was heralded as a phenomenon, the interest in the simple lass from Bulacan is no longer as intense as it used to be. Still and all, she continues to command choice projects and win multimillion-peso endorsement deals.
At the moment, Mendoza finds herself in the center of a maelstrom following a wildly whispered-about “romantic liaison” with GMA artist-comedian Sef Cadayona, now almost 28, and almost a decade in show business, after being part of the network’s star-search show StarStruck back in 2009.
The rumored budding romance was, of course, met by strong opposition from hardcore fans of her love team with Richards. The bashing that Mendoza and Cadayona got was so vicious that it prompted the former to deactivate her Twitter account. Mendoza appealed for calm and peace, instead of hate and snark, but for someone whose career got a jump start from her viral videos, she should be the first one to know that out-of-this-world, hard-to-stomach bashing is one of the pitfalls (no, make that dangers) of social media, that platform that allows people, whether celebrities, common folk, even those with criminal minds, to overshare the minutest details of their personal lives for others to bask and feast on.
These days, fans have become like highly skilled sleuths who, in the case of the presumed l’affaire, were able to trace that one of the entries in Mendoza’s Instagram (IG) stories where she was enjoying a videoke session with two costars from her just-concluded TV series, was held in nowhere else but Cadayona’s house.
The discovery sent loyal AlDub fans into beast mode, lashing out mercilessly, eventually eliciting a reaction from Mendoza, who reportedly wrote something like, “Kailangan ba may pinagtatanggol?” as rebuttal.
Defenders of Mendoza among the local entertainment press were quick to point out that fans should not dictate on their idols, especially on matters of the heart. One feels that Mendoza’s career advisers should have reminded her that in the face of violent opposition from her own multitude of fans, she should have exercised discretion rather than defiance. Less is always more. Had the star not posted that IG story, there would have been no clue at all as to whether something was really going on between her and Cadayona.
As of his latest pronouncements, Cadayona has categorically denied that there is anything going on between him and Mendoza except “friendship”.
Big blessings come with big responsibilities. Stardom is so fleeting and, in Mendoza’s case, still rather too fragile. And since not everyone can be catapulted to showbiz stardom, the ones who are lucky have to take care of it, nurture it and study their moves, especially the major ones.
Stars are not like ordinary mortals who can commit blunders in the name of love every so often. The stakes are definitely higher for celebrities. They have more to lose because for every misstep that a star commits, an army of newbies is waiting in the wings to take over their place.
It will, perhaps, do Maine Mendoza good to revisit the histories of several celebrities and learn a lesson or two.
True love is patient and inspires you to be the best version of yourself and not to defy the world instead. True love should also be wise and smart, and never impulsive, for immediate intense passion can lead us into wrong directions. And if the lesser star knows the value of giving way for the beloved to have her time to shine while the opportunities are there, then maybe, just maybe, his patience will pay off someday. That is, if the lesser star has no other agenda.
Love and peace.