Below is an excerpt from MEGA’s cover story, where Maureen Wroblewitz talks about fighting her fears and getting through the darkest days of her life
Maureen treats the digital space as a loudhailer: “I like having a digital space, like the metaverse, for artists to explore new ideas, visions, and to have another creative outlet. Living in a digital world, where a lot of people have access to the internet, you can easily create art online and make a decent profit from it. I also like the idea of having another platform where you can raise awareness and start fundraising for important causes by simply sharing and selling digital art.”
Earrings and rings by Feel Gold
While her new discoveries make her feel alive, today, nothing rouses her more than a long-awaited dream: bringing a character to life through acting. Lighting up on the mention of the topic, Maureen says acting is where she feels again the passion. “I don’t have it [the passion] as much when I do modeling or hosting,” she reveals. “But I feel it when I do acting. Being able to bring a character to life is an artistry.”
She had recently worked on an international film, called Take Me to Banaue, directed by Filipino-American Danny Aguilar. The movie, a romantic comedy, brings two cultures together as an American man named Hank (played by Brandon Melo) and a Filipina named Grace (played by Maureen) fall in love. The movie is slated to come out at the end of the year. Before that, Maureen had also shot another film that has yet to come out.
Acting has become personal to the beauty queen: “Sometimes, you need to relate the character to something that happened in your life. What I like about acting is that you get to learn to heal from your own trauma.”
On the other end of this genre, Maureen’s cinematic dream is to star in an action film. “I wanna be a badass!” she laughs.
Earrings by Feel Gold
AN AWAKENED SPIRITUALITY
“I don’t think I’ll ever get used to it,” Maureen answers when we ask about being in the public eye. She describes herself as an ambivert, who gets extroverted mostly when she’s in front of the camera. “Sometimes it’s fine, other times, it’s harder.”
When the pandemic happened she was left with her thoughts, and her mind went into an overdrive. Who was she? What did she really want? There was so much unknown. It was then that she realized, all the emotions and thoughts that she swept under the rug— because life happened so fast—were beginning to resurface.
Like she had the room to herself, she began to set free her memories: “I felt so depressed. And I didn’t know what to do. All this baggage, I was taking them with me, and I didn’t know how to release them. I guess I didn’t have enough time to heal. And with every new obstacle that came in, I just stacked them on each other. I was in a very, very difficult situation in my life.”
Her ordeal, she tells us, started at a young age, when she began exhibiting signs of an eating disorder, which, she says, turned into body dysmorphia (a mental health condition where one incessantly finds flaws in his or her body). “It was very weird to me,” she pauses, as if pondering deeply about what to say next. “I guess now, also, having expectations, being in the spotlight, a lot of eyes on you, being judged for weight gain, weight loss. People will notice. And it has definitely affected my self-esteem and the way that I see my body.”
When she was 11, her mother passed away. A year later, the family had to move from Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, to Germany, where she never felt like she fit in. Eventually, her father remarried. “It was just not having the right people, and then, there were a lot of thoughts when it came to my mental health,” she says. “I didn’t want to live anymore.”
As she grew up, she tried to pursue her dreams, thinking that if they came true, her pain would simply disappear. “They don’t vanish,” she shares, hoping people would learn from her journey. “You need to heal from everything, deal with your baggage, face them. You can’t keep ignoring them. And so, that’s what I learned, to be grateful for them, to heal from them.”
While she still experiences feeling insecure about her body, she has slowly learned how to look in the mirror and remember that her body “is a temple.” She says:
“Be grateful for what your body does to you. It’s not the way you look, but the way you feel.”
Maureen Wroblewitz
In those dark days, Maureen sought professional help, and is now on the quest to empower people to speak about their mental health struggles, if they could. “I feel so free now,” she exclaims. “I learned that everything that happened in my life has just shaped me into the person that I am today. Those baggage made me stronger than I thought I was capable of.”
Read more about how Maureen Wroblewitz is living this new phase of her life in MEGA’s May 2022 issue now available on Readly, Magzter, Press Reader and Zinio.
Earrings by Jacatel
Photography DOOKIE DUCAY
Creative direction NICOLE ALMERO
Fashion direction RYUJI SHIOMITSU
Beauty direction MIA CASTRO
Styling MIGUEL QUILANG, BEA GUERRERO and JOAQUIN RODRIGO (NEW COLLECTIVE STYLE) Makeup GERY PENASO
Hair JA FELICIANO
Production design ROCKET DESIGN STUDIO
3D design and animation GARRY CORTEZ
Nails EXTRAORDINAIL
Shoot coordination KZ FRACNISCO and MJ ALMERO
Shot on location SIREN STUDIOS
