JAKARTA - Amanda Rawles is poor across the entertainment industry through acting. Each role, for him, is a learning process. Amanda grew up along with the roles she played.
Starting his career from the world of soap operas, his name is increasingly known after he plunged into the big screen. One of the things that brought Amanda Rawles' career up was the Dear Nathan trilogy. Adapted from a book by Erisca Febriani, Amanda plays Salma, a new student at Garuda High School.
Dear Nathan tells the story of Salma and Nathan (Jefri Nichol)'s journey from school to adulthood and starting college education. Needless to say, their story will end with Dear Nathan: Thank You Salma.
“Here, the difference is that Salma is much more mature, moving into the college phase, more mature, you can also say that she is wiser than before. Then here she is more daring to express her feelings, her heart is with Nathan and is much more confident (confident) than the first time," answered Amanda Rawles regarding Salma.
Amanda admits, Salma has become a part of her life. Not just a character, but the figure of Salma is embedded in the choices and perspectives of the woman who was born on August 25.
“I'm really happy to get a role where I can grow with the character. When Salma was in high school, I was also still in high school, Salma, who is Hello Salma, had mental health problems. I also went through the same phase and the third one entered college and I also just entered college," said Amanda while talking to VOI virtually some time ago.
"Surely there are many characters of Salma whose source is Amanda herself, the character that I applied to Salma and vice versa. For example, in Thank You Salma, Salma is really idealistic, so the more you come here, the more idealistic you look," said Amanda.
Same with actor Jefri Nichol who is his co-star. Amanda said the Dear Nathan trilogy was not the only project that brought her and Nichol together, but a sense of joy was always present between the two of them when they played the roles of Nathan and Salma.
"Actually, I always like shooting with Jefri like that. Even though we have played many films, our chemistry in Thank You Salma is very different. The chemistry is much more developed, maybe because we've known each other for a long time, it's comfortable, so it's really easy to make discussions about our characters," said Amanda.
This 21-year-old woman had experienced difficulties because she had to maintain Salma's character, which is identical to being friendly and cheerful. Moreover, the story of Dear Nathan: Thank You Salma was released a little far from being vulnerable during the second and third films.
"Actually, it's a challenge for me because here, the players who can maintain consistency of character are the players themselves because the directors are different, so it was a challenge," Amanda explained.
The longer she stays with Salma's character, Amanda feels she is starting to understand what are the strengths and weaknesses of a Salma. "There are a lot of shortcomings from Salma. He also has a high ego, quite stubborn, sometimes he always feels right and judges that the main thing is to come with me, I am right," said Amanda Rawles firmly.
Anti-Sexual Harassment Campaign
Dear Nathan: Thank You Salma presents a new issue, sexual violence in the educational environment. Nathan and Salma face problems when Nathan's best friend, Zanna (Indah Permatasari) is sexually assaulted.
“I think it's very interesting and I'm really happy to be able to be the message from what you want to convey and the issue of sexual harassment often occurs especially in the educational environment. It's rarely brought up by films, especially teen romance films that are very realistic, but also wrapped in a very thick romance, "said Amanda.
The discussion process was carried out between the players and the team so that Amanda also learned something new from the Dear Nathan production process. He also just found out that incidents like this have developed a lot in educational institutions but there has been no massive handling.
"In my opinion, sexual violence used to be for example being raped, I thought it was just like that, even though it's not like that even in relationships, sexual violence exists, that's why I only understand now that anything that happens without consent is considered sexual violence," he said.
Amanda also has a message that sexual violence is not the victim's fault. As long as it is not consent, then the act is sexual violence.
In addition to being active in acting, Amanda Rawles started studying Communication Studies in Australia in the midst of a pandemic. According to her, education is an obligation because she feels that knowledge will be useful for her life, both as a human being and as an actress.
"In my opinion, I don't want to go to college, not because I'll be financially old or not. It's like we're learning how to really think critically, and that's very useful in my current job,” answered Amanda.
What he learns sometimes he applies in his career, namely when dissecting the scenario of a role. He also learned to do research and develop it in the characters he plays.
Currently, Amanda is still undergoing the online lecture process. Previously, he had gone to Australia to focus on studying even though it was done online. “That's why I had time to go to Australia even though it was online so I could really focus. I didn't work first, but focused on my college assignments, but usually, I'm still filming, I have to do that," he said.
Now, Amanda Rawles is in Jakarta to shoot and do promotions. He expressed his enthusiasm because he had not promoted for a long time and met audiences at the cinema.
“Usually it's just online, online movies, but this time it's actually from the cinema. I really miss seeing the audience's reviews and their enthusiasm," said Amanda.
Closing the interview session, Amanda hopes that the Indonesian film industry will continue to grow and be colorful. The number of local films showing in cinemas can be used as ammunition for the community to support local films.
The English, Chinese, Japanese, Arabic, and French versions are automatically generated by the AI. So there may still be inaccuracies in translating, please always see Indonesian as our main language. (system supported by DigitalSiber.id)
