Friday, 13 April 2012 03:45
DOHA: The main cast of upcoming Philippine TV drama series, filmed mostly in Doha, met their excited Filipino fans at the premiere special advance screening at the Doha Sheraton Hotel last night.
The cast composed of popular Filipino movie and TV stars Shaina Magdayao, Jake Cuenca and Bangs Garcia together with director Lino Cayetano went out of their way amid their busy schedule back home to personally greet their fans at the premiere.
Two Filipina Overseas Filipino Workers (OFWs), Jelai Andres and Ecai, were tapped as local talent to play roles in the drama series. "Kung Ako'y Iiwan Mo (If You Leave Me)", is a story about the travails of OFWs that takes Filipino televiewers back home and across the world on a dramatic journey across three generations.
The afternoon soap opera which will start regular airing on April 16 will try to melt the hearts of fans especially the hundreds of thousands of OFWs as the TV series will capture their very own real stories and the struggles they face from their work, friendship they developed, homesickness and even infidelity on their relationships.
It took the entire cast more than a month to shoot several interesting scenes of the TV series in Doha. Actor Cuenca and actresses Magdayao and Garcia have to immerse with lowly Filipino workers inside the labour camps to get the real feel about the drama of the story.
Other interesting scenes were also filmed at shopping malls and tourist spots in Qatar. As a special gesture to their Doha fans, the producer ABS-CBN -- The Filipino Channel -- will play several episodes during the two hour premier screening of the much anticipated TV series.
Director Cayetano said the drama series have been carefully crafted and thoroughly researched by the production team before the script was written and later filmed in Doha, Dubai and back home. For his part, Cuenca said he even took more time to mingle with construction workers who were tapped as part of the crowd cast during off camera to get the psyche of the true-to-life experiences as OFWs.
© The Peninsula 2012
