Julia Barretto is ignoring the online mob who have accused her of stealing Gerald Anderson from his ex-partner, fellow ABS-CBN actress Bea Alonzo.
In an interview with photographer BJ Pascual earlier this week, Barretto said she had been “crucified,” but she had learned to “just keep going.”
“The older I’m getting, I’m slowly starting to realize how important it is to compartmentalize: what matters and what doesn’t matter,” Barretto said.
“Sometimes, when it’s the opinion from people who don’t have a significant role in your life, who really don’t matter to you, who you don’t even know, I’m never gonna be affected by it. You don’t know me, I don’t know you, we can’t judge each other. It’s just not possible,” the 24-year-old actress said.
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She added that all that matters to her are the opinions of her family, friends, and “the people who are close to me, the ones who really know me.”
As someone who started in the industry at a young age, and as a member of a showbiz clan who has had its fair share of intrigues, she had learned that “people will always have something to say.”
“Even if you have done something good, they will say something. There are people who are like that,” she said in Filipino and English.
No matter how toxic her critics get, she prefers to treat them with respect. She believes that their harsh language is just a reflection of their personal issues.
“I won’t pay back bad for bad…Fight a good fight of faith, like what is written in the Bible,” she said.
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“I’m always hoping for the best for them every time I reply…For you to be talking to me this way, you must be going through something. If you’re at peace, if you’re happy, you’ll not talk to anybody that way,” she said.
“I look at it like, maybe they’re not okay, maybe there’s something they want to improve in their lives or change in their life which they couldn’t change. I just don’t want to judge also, because I know what it’s like to be judged,” she said.
Anderson allegedly dumped Alonzo in favor of Baretto, whom he had met on the set of the movie Between Maybes in 2019. In an interview streamed last week, Anderson admitted that he was seeing Barretto after years of online speculations, but parried allegations that he ghosted on Alonzo. He also described his relationship with his ex-partner as “toxic.”
Alonzo, meanwhile, did not directly address her ex-boyfriend’s comments, but posted a cryptic statement saying that time “is the ultimate truth-teller.”
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