In a first-person essay that came out today (October 24, 2021) in the CBC/Radio-Canada website, 26-year-old Filipina-Canadian actress Hera Nalam relates that she would get complements from people all the time on how good her English is for a newcomer in Winnipeg: “[Yet] after being in Canada for 10 years now, I still feel unsure how to take comments like that. English was part of the school curriculum back in the Philippines, but I remember being considered a snob for speaking it fairly fluently. Isn’t that weird?"
PHOTO CREDIT: REIN CABALQUINTO CBC/RADIO-CANADAHera Nalam, interdisciplinary Filipina-Canadian artist-actress in Winnipeg
Hera, who decided to pursue a career in the arts in Canada where Asians are underrepresented, today dabbles in songwriting and modeling but is mainly an actress. Before, when family members would get to know that she’s pursuing an acting career, they used to dismissively tell her: "But when will you be on Netflix?"
Then in 2019 Hera says the universe sent a wonderful gift her way: “I was very happy to land a lead role in the rom-com movie
I Propose We Never See Each Other Again After Tonight, which was filmed in Winnipeg and shown across Canada.”
She felt that getting the film’s lead role was a big deal because the majority of the cast was Filipino: “It was so refreshing to see people who shared the same culture as I did on set. It felt like old times in Cebu (my hometown), when every weekend there was a party.”
Read “Stuck in the middle: Filipina-Canadian actress explores sense of displacement after coming to Canada” in the CBC/Radio-Canada website now!
