Thirteen years ago, the then robust Lifestyle staff (there used to be so many of us!) trooped over to the San Juan home of Imelda Marcos to do an interview with the former first lady.
Playtime, as those interviews were called, was saved for personalities big enough to warrant the entire team asking them questions. And no matter which side of history you’re on, Imelda was, without a doubt, Playtime-worthy.
Now retired Lifestyle writer Constantino (Tino) Tejero would write in the intro to the interview: “Younger staffers, some not even born during her glory days, eagerly joined Playtime to see this living legend up close and personal.”
Not me. I didn’t want to go. I told then Lifestyle editor Thelma Sioson San Juan as much. She would end up convincing me otherwise, with the promise that the staff would have a nice lunch at Spiral in Sofitel after the interview. (What can I say? That Cheese Room had power over me.) The buffet at Spiral would be the light at the end of the tunnel.
A colleague and I were the last ones to arrive on the morning of the interview. Our plans to slip in quietly were dashed as the household staff scrambled to find chairs for us, and Imelda, in her trademark butterfly sleeves and coiffed hair, stopped her conversation with the Lifestyle team to make sure our seats matched the ones they were sitting on. I got flashbacks to everything I’ve seen and read and heard about her preoccupation with aesthetics.
The interview would go on and on and on, each question setting her off on lengthy monologues, with quotes like “I see beauty everywhere, even in garbage” and “I have no wrinkles because I have no problems” and “The presidency is destiny.”
She talked about her husband, God, 1,000 energy vs. 1 million energy, Chairman Mao, how much she loved the bargains at 168 Mall in Divisoria and how she could no longer afford to go to Rustan’s.
Four long hours
Topics ranged from light—her shoes (only 200 and not 3,000, she claimed), her beauty regimen, her grandchildren—to serious—Ninoy, the Film Center deaths, the cases against her and her family, her political career, greed, each one filtered through her version of the truth. The interview felt like it would never end.
Eventually, it did, four long hours later. We inched our way to the gate. Freedom was so close, I remember thinking.
But six words shattered my dreams of Spiral: “Nagpahanda po ng tanghalian si Madam.”
We filed into the dining room and sat at a long table, Tino to my left, Ma’am Thelma to my right.
Tino would later write that wine was served at lunch—”an Italian red labeled Imelda Marcos wine.” I have no recollection of that, I was too fixated on the food. I stared at the noodles and the sweet and sour pork that had been served on beautiful plates, thinking, “These look familiar.”
I took one bite and a lightbulb went off in my head. “North Park! Imelda Marcos is serving us North Park for lunch.”
Lunch turned into an extension of the interview, the tape recorders were switched on again. At this point, there were already over four hours of recording that needed to be transcribed. I glanced at the editorial production assistants, wondering which of them would end up with the unenviable task.
Imelda was talking about how her children had given her gold credit cards but that she didn’t use them, when the door to the dining room swung open. All heads turned to the doorway to see my driver Delta standing there, illuminated by the afternoon light. I don’t know who was more shocked, me or him.
Later, I would find out that he had entered the house upon the invitation of photographer Jim Guiao Punzalan and ended up at the wrong door.
“Sino siya? Papasukin, pakainin,” Imelda said, sweeping her arm to welcome him.
The conversation continued, with Delta eating his noodles, fried rice, and pork while grinning and staring at Imelda, seemingly dazed by her star power.
Over a decade later, the day he crashed our interview with Imelda remains one of his favorite stories to tell.
Yellow filling
Dessert was served—pastries piled on an elegant platter. Ma’am Thelma cut into one, releasing the yellow filling that was hiding inside. She put a bite in her mouth and chewed delicately. “What is this?” she whispered to me. “Apricot?”
“Ma’am,” I whispered back, “Peach Mango Pie po.”
Yes, for dessert at Imelda Marcos’ house, we had Jollibee’s Peach Mango Pie.
Lunch was over but our visit was not. Imelda gave us a tour of the house—including a massive room lined with murals and full of documents that she claimed would prove their innocence.
Once again, we tried inching our way to the gate. But Imelda wasn’t done with us yet. Suddenly, she had a stick in her hand and her household staff had produced a tarp—her visual aid—as she lectured us about her “mystical” solutions to the country’s problems.
In the Playtime piece, Tino wrote that “the visitors felt limp from the long hours of interview” and “the visitors felt like a bunch of wilting asparagus.” It’s true. At that point, I felt so worn down that I was ready to resign to my fate of being held hostage by the former first lady.
But we were set free after 3 p.m., and we spilled out of the house, breathing a collective sigh of relief. Before we were let go, she handed us books about her or written by her, I don’t remember anymore. What I remember is trying to hand them to my grandmother, a voracious reader, who wrinkled her nose in refusal and said to me, “Aanhin ko yan?”
