Fans of Thai stars Gulf Kanawut, Mario Maurer, and Nonkul Chanon are in for a treat this holiday season as TNT will be holding their first TNT Kilig Fest Christmas Special! The online event, which will be happening this December 28, will be streaming exclusively for TNT and Smart subscribers at 7PM via the GigaPlay app.
Hosted by MTV Asia VJ Utt, the TNT Kilig Fest will be giving fans the opportunity to meet Gulf, Mario, and Nonkul and get to know them even better through exclusive performances, interviews, games, and 1-on-1 Q&As. This event, according to Jane J. Basas, SVP and Head of Consumer Wireless Business at Smart, is their way to gift customers “a healthy dose of ‘saya’ and ‘kilig,’ just in time for the holidays.
The upcoming event comes after the huge success of TNTCON 2021 back in May, which celebrates the launch of their campaign with Filipino TNT ambassadors Sue Ramirez and Sarah Geronimo.
Just ahead of the online fan event, we got the chance to join other members of the PH press in a virtual roundtable interview where they talked about TNT Kilig Fest, their holiday plans, and more! Read on below for the highlights of the interview:
What it’s like to be meeting Filipino fans again
Seven months after they met everyone for the first time, Gulf, Mario, and Nonkul are reuniting to bring in the kilig and the saya to Filipino fans just in time for the holidays. Asked about what it’s like to be joining this event, Nonkul was quick to say that the event feels like a reunion for them and for their fans. “We haven’t met in a while. When we miss someone and we finally get a chance to meet [them], of course, we have a happy time,” he said. “Because they give us happiness, we want to give them happiness, too.”
The same goes for Mario, who said that fans should expect to get a lot of kilig moments from the event and that they still should look forward to having a great time even if they are very far from everyone. While Gulf felt the same as the two other boys, he said that he still prefers to see their fans physically. Here’s to hoping that we get to meet them in person next year, right?
How they’re spending Christmas this year
A workaholic, Gulf said that he’ll be spending Christmas this year working, while Mario and Nonkul will both be celebrating the holidays with their families. Mario said that since he wasn’t able to spend a lot of time with his Mom, he’ll be going on a holiday with her. “I will be with my mom at home because lately I’ve been shooting and I have not had much time with her. I will spend time with her and go on a holiday to the sea with friends and family,” he explained.
Nonkul, on the other hand, will be going to a province in Thailand. “I will go to the sea in Surat [Thani] with my family. Unfortunately, that place doesn’t have internet or phone signal, so I hope we can survive.”
Doing Christmas movies in the future
Since all three of them have starred in films and dramas of different genres, it’s only natural that they’re asked if they’ll ever be willing to star in a Christmas-themed movie. To this, Gulf said: “It would probably be like Home Alone. That would be the type of movie I’d want to [star in] for Christmas.”
Meanwhile, Nonkul, who’s also willing to do a Christmas movie as long as the plot is interesting, talked about why he thinks a Thai Christmas movie will be “sad” in a way. “I think the sad thing about it if we have a Christmas-themed movie in Thailand is that we’re not going to have any snow,” he said. “It’s going to be so hot!”
Working with Filipino stars
Another question they were asked during their session with the press is whether they’ll be open to working with other Filipino stars. Gulf answered he’s willing to work with “anyone in the Philippines,” while Nonkul and Mario are more specific as to who they want to star in a project with.
Mario, who starred alongside Erich Gonzales in Suddenly It’s Magic, said: “I’m really open to [work] with everyone, but if I were to choose one right now, I’d choose Sue Ramirez She’s a TNT [ambassador] like us, and she’s very beautiful and very talented. I would love to work with her.”
And then there’s Nonkul, who’d like to work with Marian Rivera. “I saw some of her work and I really like her acting, but she’s quite the senior. She’s a veteran.” Then he added, “For TNT, if you have any work for us, of course, we will happily do it!”
What they learned in 2021
With everything that’s been going on in the last 2 years, we asked the three Thai stars if there’s anything they learned this year. To this, Mario said that one thing he learned was how to “stay with himself” because of the pandemic especially since he had to stay at home a lot despite wanting to meet with friends and go to work. “You don’t know what’s going to happen, like this pandemic, so what we have to do is to take good care of ourselves, of our health, and all our loved ones, and adapt to the situation,” he explained.
The same goes for Nonkul, who learned how to adapt to the situation. Elaborating more on this, he said, “In this pandemic, everything is very uncertain. Any work you get can get canceled instantly, so you have to adapt to that, have a plan in advance, and not let that get into your mind.”
For Gulf, his learnings are more on his career and how to be better at it instead of his attitude towards the pandemic. “[I learned] the intricacies of working in this industry,” he started. “There are so many layers and components involved, so I learned a lot, being able to work a bit this past year.”
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TNT Kilig Fest Christmas Special is happening on December 28, 7PM. It will be exclusively available for Smart and TNT subscribers via the GigaPlay app. For more information regarding this online event, you may check out TNT’s official website, Facebook, and Twitter pages.
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