SINGAPORE – Years after she left the Philippines to pursue other opportunities in Singapore, Carla Dunareanu – also known as Carla D – is set to be back on the small screen this September.

Carla previously starred in The Kitchen Musical with the Philippines’ own Karylle and Christian Bautista (whom she dated). She then moved to the Philippines, where she was a radio DJ on Magic 89.9, hosted events, and acted in movies like The Bride and The Lover opposite Jennylyn Mercado and Lovi Poe.

Today, Carla is working with many more big names in Asia, as she’s set to star in HBO’s SeNT, HBO Asia’s first original comedy series. In the show, Carla works with YouTube funnyman Haresh Tilani, who will be making his TV debut, and actor, host, and model, Alan Wong.

Haresh will be playing Jay Bunani, an office worker who destresses by drafting angry emails to his colleagues. One day, he accidentally sends out his drafts folder, incurring the wrath of his colleagues and turning him into a viral meme for all the wrong reasons.

In Singapore a few weeks before SeNT‘s premiere, Carla dished about the challenges of acting on the show, working with director Alaric Tay, and auditioning opposite Alan.

When your director is an actor

Alaric has directed and produced a number of short films, but he’s best known for being an actor, regularly appearing in the Singaporean satirical TV series The Noose, and starring in HBO Asia’s Serangoon Road (2013).

This turned out to be an advantage on set, as Carla struggled player her character on SeNT, Zoey Wong. Zoey is Max’s (Alan Wong) wife, and Max is Jay Bunani’s best friend. While the characters Max and Jay are get to have fun and are funny, Zoey is, in Carla’s words, a bit of a wet blanket.

“I remember having moments when I would go to Alaric and I would say, ‘I don’t like her, I don’t like her, and I find it so difficult to play her. Help me,'” said Zoe. “And he’d sit down and he goes okay, let’s talk about it, let’s figure a way how you can fall in love with her and embody her, because you need to be truthful to the character, you need to love your character no matter what kind of horrible decisions they make.”

Alaric, she said, was an actor first before a director, and so he understood the psyche of an actor and understood when they couldn’t connect with the character they were portraying.

“Because people make horrible decisions everyday. But if you find the reason and the root of why they make them, then at least there’s honesty behind it. And if there’s honesty, there’s conviction. And you need that when playing a character, you can’t just be like a this is a facade of a character that i’m playing and have it just be a stereotype,” Carla said.

Being a ‘wife’

Carla isn’t married, but Zoe is, and her husband Max is a little more happy-go-lucky than his serious wife. Aside from Jay’s email predicament, Max and Zoe’s marital struggles play a part in SeNT‘s plot.

For Carla, playing a married woman was difficult. “I’m not married. Obviously, the responsiblities that come with marriage are something that you wouldn’t know until you’re in the situation. So acting it, you can only guess so much, you can only ask so many questions from people who are married,” she said.

In a marriage, added Carla, there may be a sense of security, loyalty, and trust that isn’t there in a boyfriend-girlfriend relationship, which could come with an “out clause.”

“So trying to play a character that is very much in the deep of it requires imagination and requires research. And of course talking to your co-actor, figuring what your dynamics would be as a couple, what kind of relationship we have… and we had to make it honest and truthful.”

Old friends

It’s a good thing then, that Carla was friends with her onscreen husband long before they started shooting SeNT.

Carla even auditioned with Alan, though reading with him was a surprise at the time. “I see Alaric and I’m like, ‘Oh my goodness, hi!’ And I see Haresh and he’s like ‘Okay, he’s gonna play Jake Bunani and I’m like, ‘Okay, wow, hi,’ and then from the back I hear ‘Carla D!’

“And I’m like, ‘I know that voice!’ And I turn around and this joker’s standing there going like, ‘Hello,’ and I run and I hug him and I ask what are you doing here and he goes, ‘I’m reading as your husband.’ And I was just like, ‘Oh of course you are.’ And that was it.”

There was chemistry from the first read, said Carla, because they already knew each other. She added: “It’s nice when you’re friends with someone and you get to work with each other because there’s no pressure and it becomes play, and when you make a mistake you can laugh about it and go, oops, sorry, my bad let’s try it again.”

Angry emails?

With so much going on – Carla’s career started at the young age of 11 – Carla is bound to stressed out. Does she draft angry emails like Jay Bunani too?

“I run,” said Carla on how she deals when everything gets to be too much. “I feel like running really helps me. I don’t know if it’s just the surge of oxygen that gets into me like, ‘Whoo! I have a clear head.’

“But it’s also –  I used to do the talking [to other people] thing a lot but then I realized that it sometimes confused me even more, because you get a lot of different advice from people who may not know the situation as much as you, so I realized that I needed to put myself in a place where I could reach the answer on my own as opposed to being navigated by someone who may or may not have my best interests at heart. So I find running really helps because it gives me a lot of clarity.”

Want to catch Carla on HBO’s SeNT? The series will premiere two back-to-back episodes on Sunday, September 17 at 9 pm. Two new episodes will air every subsequent Sunday. – Rappler.com