Actress Luna Maya is undoubtedly one of the biggest names in Indonesian showbiz, but her career will forever be haunted by that sex tape scandal.
In a tell-all interview with fellow celeb Denny Sumargo that was posted on YouTube yesterday, Luna opened up about her struggles with mental health after a sex tape with then-boyfriend, rockstar Ariel, was leaked in 2010.
“I experienced post-power syndrome. That’s when you have power, and suddenly you don’t. You feel like a somebody, and then you’re a nobody, and that was a struggle; it’s a mental illness,” Luna said in the video.
“People praise you, and then they stop the praise and they scorn you.”
The 38-year-old added that it took her two years to find inner peace and pick herself up again.
“In life, there are only two choices: you’re either in the bottom or on top. Being in the bottom was not a choice for me. I don’t like to give up,” she said.
As job offers dried up in the immediate aftermath of the scandal, Luna said she thought about quitting showbiz. But she managed to revive her career in the following years, culminating in, among others, a widely celebrated starring role in horror movie Suzzanna: Buried Alive (2018). The movie is a remake 1981 film Sundelbolong starring Indonesia’s OG scream queen Suzzana.
In mid-2010, by far the biggest news in Indonesia was the celebrity sex tape scandal involving musician Ariel, Luna and actress Cut Tari. Leaked videos of the rockstar getting intimate with each of the celebrities caused a moral panic in the conservative country, ultimately leading to the musician becoming the first charged under Indonesia’s then recently passed pornography law (though he was eventually convicted under UU ITE, the Law on Electronic Transactions and Information) and sentenced to 3.5 years in jail.
In 2018, it was reported that both Luna and Cut Tari were technically still pornography suspects, though all signs indicated that police investigation into the eight-year-old case had stalled. Since then, there have been no reports that their suspect status has been legally revoked.
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