Do we like Lea Salonga?
Our score: 8 out of 10. Years of public support for trans rights and marriage equality and no harmful words found, though the record on the planet and the good-person side is thinner.
Lea Salonga is a Tony Award winner who came out of Manila and ended up with the 2,855th star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. She is the first Filipina to get one. At the ceremony outside the Pantages Theatre she cracked that she had stepped on plenty of famous people on that street and now people get to step on her.
The big hope in her speech was about whoever comes next. She said she hopes a young Filipino kid will see her name and think they can get there too. That is the theme of her whole career: she came up with few role models and is now making herself one.
On the harm test she is about as clean as it gets. In October 2018 she posted a quote card reading that trans rights are human rights, and she wondered on Twitter whether she would see same-sex marriage legalised in the Philippines in her lifetime. When a commenter objected she said she was speaking in secular terms only. Plenty of celebrities go quiet on this stuff, and she didn't.
We went looking for the usual slide into grievance and conspiracy theories, and for anything on climate or vaccines. The sources we could open turned up nothing of the kind. Her recent work is a DreamWorks animation, Forgotten Island, where she voices the villain, the Dreaded Manananggal, alongside H.E.R., Liza Soberano and Dave Franco. That is a mainstream family film rooted in Filipino folklore, not a worrying co-star list.
The newest bit of drama is small and very online. In late August she unfollowed BTS members RM and J-Hope after fans criticised the pair for going to an Usher and Chris Brown concert. She said on Threads that it was about her own wellbeing and not meant to be punitive, and that she is still grateful to the band. You can read that as a boundary or as a bit of a pile-on, but it's hardly a scandal.
The good stuff is mostly the career-long kind. She was nominated for the Manila International Film Festival honour that preceded the star, and she has spent decades flying the Filipino flag on the biggest stages in the world. We found no court cases, fines or credible allegations against her, and no sign she is a nightmare to work with. That's honestly the short list on the bad side.