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ZELDA WILLIAMS wants to make friends with her monsters

- AUDREY CARPIO

ON HER LAST NIGHT IN MANILA, ZELDA WILLIAMS WITNESSED THE GLITTERY EXTRAVAGANZA THAT IS O BAR. She had heard about the legendary drag scene of the Philippines, and if there was one thing she did not want to miss on her first trip to the country, it was a drag show. Her good friend Liza Soberano arranged everything, and even though they both spent the entire day at photo shoots, they made sure not to sleep this night out.

The energy and theatricality of the performances at O Bar revived everyone’s spirits. “She was definitely in her element!” Soberano says of the evening, describing how Williams was put on the spot, being called on stage to be serenaded by one of the opening acts. “Despite her stage fright, she was so game, and it was so fun to just watch her let loose.”

This was a kind of payback for Williams taking Soberano to see her first burlesque show at a bar in Los Angeles. The two friends, on the surface, couldn’t be more different; Zelda is outspoken and LA-hardened while Liza is gentle and admittedly more conservative. But the two have developed a deep bond, along with Liza’s co-stars Kathryn Newton and Cole Sprouse, throughout the filming of the ’80s teen zom-com Lisa Frankenstein, Zelda’s riotous feature film debut.

Zelda, daughter of the late Robin Williams and Marsha Garces, was in Manila not to promote the film, which hit the theaters months earlier in February, but to see what pieces of herself she could find in this country. Her grandfather, Pantaleon Garces, was a Boholano who moved to the United States in 1929 where he served in the US Navy. After the war, he earned a living working in kitchens, eventually settling with his Finnish wife Ina Mattila in San Francisco, where Marsha was born. The veteran lived up to the age of 92, so Zelda and her younger brother Cody got to spend their formative years partaking of their grandfather’s cooking, which developed in Zelda a lifelong passion for lumpia.