Reintroducing KaladKaren, as herself

KaladKaren had a shoot the next day with a 7 a.m. calltime, but she didn’t let that stop her from celebrating. “Sabi ko, ‘I don’t care kahit mapuyat ako or kahit mag-shoot ako ng may hangover. This is not going to happen again,’” she tells me.  “I have to make the most out of it. And you have to embrace the moment. ’Yun na ’yun eh.”

What she says is not born out of modesty—though she is humble and gracious about her win—but out of necessity. There’s a practicality, an acknowledgement of the fight that trans people have to take for a seat at the table. “Being queer in mainstream media is one thing, but being a transgender person sa mainstream media is a different thing [entirely]. Wala [akong] masyadong nakikitang transgender woman nung lumalaki ako,” she later tells me.

But things are changing, and for the better. “And then I think around 2010s, parang nagkaroon ng trans revolution. Parang ganun, biglang naglabasan ang mga transgender women—and that revolution empowered women like me.”

Newscaster dreams

KaladKaren may not have had many trans role models to look up to as a child, but what she had in spades were newscasters. First were Loren Legarda and Mel Tiangco. When she was a little older, Vicky Morales and Karen Davila—of course—came on the scene. I ask what drew her to them.

“Iba kasi ang tingin natin sa newscaster,” she answers. “Di ba tayong mga Pinoy, there’s some sense of credibility, integrity pag nagbabalita ka sa Pilipinas?” It might just be an ordinary job in other countries, but it’s different here, she muses. “In the Philippines, ang mga news personalities, meron silang parang sense of honor. Parang pag nagbabalita ka, ibang level na tao ka.”

She was also particularly drawn to it from a storytelling perspective. “Malaking bagay sa akin ’yung telling a story. Di ba pag newscaster ka or documentarist ka, you’re a storyteller. Ako, ang hilig kong mag-kwento.” She recounts how her mother and her aunts would catch her as a child playing-acting like a reporter, performing newscasts in front of a camera. That would later progress to her joining extemporaneous speaking contests, performing declamation pieces, and taking part in plays. “I’ve always found happiness in public speaking,” she shares.

It’s not surprising to hear all of this. KaladKaren has the countenance of a newscaster. It’s one of the first things I notice at our shoot, the poise with which she carries herself. She has the presence of someone who has been trained and honed for years to speak deliberately to the camera. One could argue that this is her persona at play—and it’s not not that—a natural byproduct of impersonating a newscaster for so long. But I don’t think that’s it. It’s not an impersonation, it’s organic. When we try to untangle the differences between KaladKaren and Jervi, she reflects that her eloquence and articulateness comes from the latter. “Ganito rin talaga ako magsalita kahit sa mga kaibigan ko.”

Jervi and KaladKaren

“You know, Jervi is really different from KaladKaren,” she tells me. With KaladKaren, “meron siyang pino-portray na persona na kagalang-galang, na powerful, na confident.” That’s not quite what she’s like in her day-to-day life. “Very few people know that I’m really shy. Parang pag kami-kami lang ng kaibigan ko, I’m the quiet one,” she shares.

Later, she and the photographer, Joseph Pascual, start talking about the psychology behind artists taking on alter egos. It’s not just an avenue for them to entertain themselves and the audience. Famously, Beyoncé herself created an alter ego she named “Sasha Fierce” that she embodied for her performances. Sasha Fierce was more sensual and outspoken, a separate entity from her actual reticent self. She said in 2008, “I have someone else that takes over when it’s time for me to work and when I’m on stage, this alter ego that I’ve created that kind of protects me and who I really am.”

It’s a way to protect yourself, Karen echoes back. It’s also a way to do things that you maybe normally wouldn’t. “I can do things because I’m KaladKaren, not Jervi,” she says. In many ways, it resembles drag—after profiling and producing shoots with many drag queens, I can say that many of the most larger-than-life queens will quietly note that they are actually quite timid out of drag.

I ask her if she’s ever thought about rebranding, of taking off the KaladKaren mantle and going by herself. It isn’t something you can just do willy-nilly. “The most difficult thing in show business is changing your name or rebranding yourself. It takes a lot of time, it takes a lot of effort,” she stresses.

She’s been able to grow beyond her persona through her acting, she says. Some aren’t so lucky. “Maraming mga impersonator na hindi na nakawala sa character atsaka sa tao na ini-impersonate nila. ’Yun ang mahirap pag naging impersonator ka because people will always think na, ‘Ah, siya ’yung nag-iimpersonate kay Ma’am Karen.’”