By Gay Ace Domingo

‘What we cherish most about working for Mother Lily were those days when we got a peek into her private life’

We worked at Regal Entertainment from around 2003 to 2009 as a publicist, writing press releases for the movies produced by the iconic company founded by Lily Yu Monteverde or Mother Lily as she is fondly called.

We met Mother Lily and her daughter Roselle when we were an assistant editor of Summit Media’s glossy entertainment magazine, YES!, when the YES! team produced a special feature in time for Regal’s anniversary. The cover had Mother and Miss Roselle surrounded by her Regal babies such as Richard Gomez, Maricel Soriano, Dina Bonnevie, and Aiza Seguerra (now Ice Seguerra). I remember Mother brought her own designer St. John dresses for the pictorial. She got glammed up, which was a fresh change from her black pants-and-white polo shirt workday wear.

From then on, we would interview either Mother or Miss Roselle for articles about Regal’s movies.

When we left YES! in 2003, we received a call from Ms Roselle because they needed a writer to chronicle the pictorial and behind-the-scenes shoot of the cast of “Mano Po 2” in Shanghai. Good thing we could go because we had a passport. That trip to Shanghai would be the first time we would go out of the country and it was thanks to Mother Lily. The trip was hectic but fun. No one else but Mother Lily could have assembled a huge contingent composed of big stars like Judy Ann Santos, Christopher de Leon, ZsaZsa Padilla, Lorna Tolentino, Richard Gutierrez, Alessandra de Rossi, Carmina Villarroel, Jay Manalo, and Susan Roces, with more than a dozen entertainment journalists and broadcasters, not to mention makeup artists, production designers, movie production staff headed by director Erik Matti, plus photographer Xander Angeles and his team.

We were so many that the airline upgraded all of us to business class.

“Mano Po 2” hadn’t started principal photography yet, but it was already generating buzz because of that trip that was well covered by media (and also because there was a controversy about Dina being suddenly dropped for the role given to Lorna). That was how Mother Lily promoted her movies: grand, unique, and in advance. She liked to say that the way a movie is promoted is more important than the concept of the film itself.

There were times she would call me with a title in mind, telling me that we should write the film press release based on the title she thought of. We were also working for ABS-CBN Publishing then. My officemate, Aiza Marie, asked if it was really Mother Lily of Regal Films calling me. When we said “yes,” Marie said she found it odd that a busy woman like Mother Lily would make the calls herself instead of a secretary.

Mother Lily embodied the hands-on entrepreneur role to a T. She made her own calls, supervised the promotions of her projects, actively met with her producers and directors to discuss the progress of the movies, organized press conferences. For a time she had a tiangge at her hotel in Quezon City, the Imperial Palace Suites. One of the most vivid memories we have of Mother Lily was of her arranging her “paninda” (kitchen ware, novelty items) at the bazaar like she wasn’t one of the biggest movie moguls of the Philippines.

Writer Dennis Ladaw described Mother Lily as a “producer who doesn’t take her own press release seriously.” Mother Lily liked to hype up her movies so that these would get attention and support. But she would be the first to expose her flaws, like how her white polo shirt had holes, or that the pearl earrings she wore were fake and were just bought from Greenhills. And these she said with a hearty laugh (more of a “hagikgik.”)

What we cherish most about working for Mother Lily were those days when we got a peek into her private life: like the time we accompanied her to her hairdresser Bhoy Navarrete, and the dinners we had at her home in Greenhills. She was actually quiet and reflective when she wasn’t in her producer mode.

When we got busier with freelance work, we couldn’t accommodate writing publicity materials for Regal anymore. But we would still bump into Mother Lily at showbiz events and she would remember we had a preschool like her. We appreciated that she remembered that detail about us. On days we looked relaxed, Mother Lily would tell me, “Blooming ka. Are you in love?” Ninety-time percent of the time she asked that, she was correct.

When Mother Lily’s name is mentioned, people will likely think of her as a strict, loud, larger-than-life movie producer. To us, she will forever be a gentle, perceptive, down-to-earth and no-nonsense lady. We feel honored and lucky to have worked with the one and only Mother Lily Monteverde.