Do we like Marian Rivera?
Our score: 7 out of 10. Decent record, a long charity history and no harmful words found, but little on record about her views on the issues that matter to us.
Marian Rivera is one of the Philippines' biggest TV and film stars. Her latest trophy is the 2025 FAMAS Best Actress award for the film Balota, where she played Teacher Emmy. Accepting it, she called it a great honour and hoped Filipinos would keep backing local movies. Fair warning: the sources we could open were thin on her early years, so this is more current affairs than life story.
The recent drama is a rumour that has followed her for years: that she once padlocked another actress in a room. It has been called a showbiz urban legend, and the story has never been put on the record in detail. Asked straight out on Gandang Gabi Vice on 25 October, she said “Never,” and said she and the other person had made peace years ago, after a meeting on her old show. She said she had stayed quiet because people had already made up their minds.
Earlier this year a viral blind item about an unnamed celebrity power couple was linked online to her and her husband, actor Dingdong Dantes. She denied the link through a columnist, reportedly with a light-hearted shrug, and noted that these rumours tend to resurface each January. It's gossip, not reporting, and she has brushed it off.
On the harm check, we found nothing nasty. No remarks about LGBTQ+ people, women, migrants, vaccines or the climate turned up, and no slide into conspiracy theories. Her recent work includes a new film with Dantes, titled Remember, and nothing about her collaborators raised a flag. The honest gap is that she hasn't said much publicly on LGBTQ+ issues either way, so this is a pass on absence of harm, not a rainbow-flag endorsement.
So, would we support her? Yes. The only black mark is an old rumour she has denied, while the other side of the ledger is years of charity and a reputation for forgiving people rather than feuding. We'd happily see her on the family page, and we'd like to hear her say something about LGBTQ+ folks one day.