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Back to work

THE FIRST time she stepped back into the ABS-CBN studios to resume her duties as host of Kapamilya Deal or No Deal, Kris Aquino felt a warm feeling enveloping her, and she couldn’t help but smile. The glow on her face was noticed not just by her staff...

but by the viewers, who commented on how happy she looked. “It really felt so good to be back,” says Kris, who since then has started her morning show, Boy & Kris, and is also hosting Be Bench: The Search for the Next Bench Model. Kris is also expected to start taping for her new lifestyle show, entitled Weekends With Kris, this month.

Kris is just getting back into the swing of things. The first time she set foot on the KDOND set, she was both nervous and anxious. “I thought I’d forget my spiels, because I’d just given birth and had general anaesthesia,” says Kris. “But as soon as I faced the cameras, the feeling came rushing back. The flow was still there, and the rhythm still felt the same. It was like I’d never been away [from television].”

The movies, however, are another matter altogether. Kris says she’d promised that there would be “no shooting [of movies] till Baby James is one year old”. So far, she has managed to stick to her promise.

Although she has had to give up a lot and make numerous sacrifices to have her baby, Kris says she has no regrets. This is what she wanted; this is the kind of life she envisioned for herself. And this is surely making her mother, former President Cory Aquino, very happy. The former President has always wanted a quiet life for her youngest daughter who has seen her share of controversy, and then some.

When Kris gave up hosting The Buzz, it wasn’t just her mother who was happy. Other friends, like Susan Roces, wife of the late Fernando Poe Jr., were happy too. “She would tell me that if I distanced myself from a show like The Buzz, which is primarily showbiz gossip, it wouldn’t mean giving up a show; it would mean giving my family a chance to live a quiet life, and that I should see it that way,” says Kris.

Kris, who’s been in the business for more than 15 years, says that as one gets older, priorities change. That made it easy for her to accept the changes that marriage and motherhood brought. “They say that when you’re in your 20s, that’s the time to prove something, to prove yourself and what you can do. When you’re in your 30’s, that’s the time to start a family, because you’ve supposedly acquired the maturity that will enable you to put this little person above yourself.”