Liza Soberano On Bringing Her Success To America In ‘Lisa Frankenstein’

Liza Soberano is staking her claim as as a new star on the rise in horror/rom-com Lisa Frankenstein.

Soberano, who plays Lisa’s (Kathryn Newton) older step-sister Taffy, talked to Shadow and Act Managing Editor Trey Mangum about her career trajectory. Although she’s a relative newcomer to the American industry and was born in America, she is a celebrity in the Philippines, working for years from a child star to an adult. As she embarks on defining her American career, Soberano said that she’s finding power in being a “rookie” once again.

“I like to say I have all these years of experience and minutes on screen, right? And despite that, I’m still very hungry to learn and to expand and grow as an artist and everything,” she said. “It’s exciting because now that I’m moving on to another market and really trying to expand and build a career out here, it’s like I’m becoming a rookie all over again.

“This time like I’m not coming in as scared because I do have all these years of experiences. This time I’m a little bit more mature now, so I know what is important and unimportant in this industry,” she continued. “It’s refreshing because like now that I’m a rookie, I can afford to make mistakes because I can just explore like in, in terms of like my acting choices and everything. There’s no pressure to be perfect or to do things a certain way. But at the same time it’s like, because I’m a rookie, with all this experience now, I feel kind of more relaxed going into it and I can just really soak in the experience and have fun and take all the good with me and just be very chill about everything.”

Her role in Lisa Frankenstein has everything she wanted in a dream role.

“Coming from a personal perspective, it’s the perfect film for me because when I did decide to try to build a career out here in Hollywood, there were certain like things on my bucket list or wish list that I wanted to portray or play, and the first thing being I wanted to be in a horror comedy, horror slash comedy genre film,” she said. “Another one would’ve been I wanted to still portray high school students because I wanted to have more longevity in my career. And I said…if I were to do like a horror movie, I want there to bit of romance in it because I didn’t wanna alienate the fan base that I have existing in the Philippines. [Lisa] Frankenstein...had all of my dreams…and so I was like, ‘This is perfect for me.'”

“[F]rom like, I guess like a business or career move perspective, I think that Lisa Frankenstein is the perfect film to debut in because it’s such a lighthearted, fun film that is just meant to lean in on the eighties nostalgia [and] tell a fun story about a girl who is struggling in life and finds love in the most un-ordinary type of love,” she continued. “And so I thought that was so fun because I feel like you can’t really rip this film apart and take it too seriously in terms of like all the decisions and choices that the characters make. And I think that’s what cinema is supposed to be about. It’s about entertaining, it’s supposed to be about being inspired by these outrageous stories and everything. [A]lthough yeah, we do have the responsibility to like send out good messages to our audiences and make sure that our audiences learn good life lessons from the film, it’s also about entertaining them and just telling fun stories.”

She also said how playing Taffy lets her draw from her own personal experiences as an oldest child.

“I personally enjoyed portraying Taffy because I’m an older sister myself. I have 10 younger siblings, and I feel like I haven’t actually had the opportunity to portray like a sister character that is close to who I am in real life,” she said. “I like to say this all the time–I feel like I was put in this world to be an older sister ’cause I genuinely love my siblings so much. And so when I had the opportunity to portray Lisa’s step-sister, it felt like I was just being myself almost, but obviously in this fantastical point of view, right?”

Lisa Frankenstein is now playing in theaters.