Liza Soberano shared that she received messages from the account of her idol, actor AJ Perez, even after his death. She also shared how she became close to his family.
In an almost 12-minute vlog called One Down hosted by Tessa Albea, the Lisa Frankenstein star revealed that the late actor was the reason why she created an X account as a gesture of remembrance and respect towards someone she admired from afar.
“I was a huge fan of AJ Perez ’cause I have watched him in this one teleserye called Sabel. And it was very unfortunate that he passed away,” Liza told Tessa, who revealed that she is a cousin of AJ.
“And that was the reason why I created my Twitter because I wanted to have some sort of memory of him, so I followed him,” she added.
In case you didn’t know, AJ Perez was a prominent ABS-CBN’s Star Magic actor during his time. He portrayed one of the lead characters in the 2009 miniseries Your Song Presents: Underage. He played his first leading role in the primetime television series Sabel in 2010. It was on midnight of April 17, 2011 when he died at the age of 18 due to a vehicular accident in Moncada, Tarlac.
Meanwhile, the actress said she began getting messages from the late actor’s account following his passing. Liza first felt uneasy and found it odd that she was getting notifications from a dead person.
“It was strange because I started receiving messages from him after he had passed away and first, I was scared of, like, checking it because I was like, ‘what’s going on?'” Liza shared.
When she finally looked through the messages, she discovered they were from AJ’s relatives.
“And then eventually, I came to it, and then I checked the message. It was messages from his family, but it was always very scary when I would receive notifications from AJ Perez,” she said.
Liza continued, “But, yeah, I became friends with his younger brother, Gelo, and his family. Eventually, I was introduced to them.”
A heartrending coincidence
More than the idea that she created her X account for the late actor, Liza also shared that on the day AJ had an accident, she passed by the area where his car crashed. According to her, she came from Pangasinan to the venue where she was supposed to audition for the first time. She saw the actor’s car, but initially, she had no idea it was him.
“The day he passed away, I was on my way ’cause I lived in Pangasinan at that time and I actually passed by his accident and that was the day that I auditioned for the first time ever to be like an artista,” Liza recalled.
“It was crazy. And I didn’t know it was him. There’s an ABS-CBN van, and it was, like, smashed,” she continued.
Liza was informed that AJ had passed away in a vehicle accident by her road manager at the time. The actress sobbed and expressed her desire to attend his wake after learning of the tragic news, but her relatives told her that the actor doesn’t even know him.
“I get to my VTR, and then my road manager at the time, he was like, ‘namatay si AJ Perez.’ I was like, ‘No! He can’t be dead, it’s not real!’ And then I started crying and I was like, ‘I wanna go to his wake.’ And then my family was like, ‘he doesn’t know you,” the 26-year-old actress said.
She continued that she didn’t get to go to the wake because she “wasn’t invited” and that she only “inserted [herself] into the family.”
Liza, now a successful actress, stars in her first Hollywood film where she plays the role of Taffy, a cheerleader with a soft spot for her socially awkward stepsister Lisa Swallows in the coming-of-age love story, Lisa Frankenstein.
