Above It All

 Nicholas Saputra’s boyish good looks broke a lot of hearts in his debut movie Ada Apa Dengan Cinta? After keeping things interesting in his film choices, he is now on the small screen hosting a weekly movie show on Channel [V]. He tells Bruce Emond about playing the fame game his way.

At the end of a long day of media meet and greets, Nicholas Saputra could be forgiven for being less than enthused about interview number 15. It must be pretty tedious grinning and bearing it through the standard roster of questions, even if the setting is the comfortable refuge of a hotel lounge high above Jakarta.

If anything, though, the actor is a picture of guarded affability for the last interview of the day. After a firm handshake upon introduction (“I’m Nicholas”) and a wary once-over, he gradually lets down his guard a bit.

“I don’t mind interviews. I like to promote my films, talk about my work, but not if it goes into my private life,”  says Nicholas, who is known as Nico to friends and colleagues.

He is cool, but not cold: while there are occasional glances to the PR reps in another area of the room, he smiles often and gives measured, thoughtful answers about his career and his new role as a host of a movie segment on Channel [V].

Still, it’s hard to shake his rap as a difficult interview. That lingering reputation seems based on one incident at the beginning of his career, when he reportedly reduced a hapless reporter to tears (it has been dredged up and seized upon in the recent batch of profiles in Singapore and Malaysia announcing his new hosting job).

He appears bemused by the incident’s long life; in his telling, it’s all much ado about nothing.  “The crying girl ...” he sighs. “That was another thing, it wasn’t my fault. I did what I was supposed to do.”

From this interview and a follow-up telephone conversation, as well as comments of those who have worked with him, it’s clear he is a stickler about being a professional. He answers SMS (no given with many stars), makes time to answer more questions, “does what I am supposed to,” as he says, as an actor and public figure. But in celebrity-obsessed Indonesia today, keeping the media at a comfortable distance and refusing to engage in ingratiating pow-wows with the powerful infotainment media sometimes invites criticism that he is aloof, even arrogant. 

“The thing I cannot take is the ethical thing,” says Nicholas about the gossip scribes. “I’d better avoid them; they want to get the side of me that they want, it’s only one side. I’m just  an object to them.”

He shrugs and shifts a bit in his seat when the subject of labels comes up. Be it heart-throb or teen idol or simply film star, he prefers to leave those ultimately restrictive definitions to other people to think about.

They came with the territory when the then 18-year-old made his movie debut in Ada Apa Dengan Cinta?(What’s Up With Cinta?)  in 2002. With his wavy locks and pouty lips, he was perfect as the brooding loner Rangga who is the object of desire of Cinta (Dian Sastro).

The film was a smash hit. Along with the children’s musical Petualangan Sherina (Sherina’s Adventure), another vehicle from Mira Lesmana’s Miles Productions, it is credited with leading the local film industry out of the creative wasteland of the 1990s (on a less positive front, the film’s success also spawned a legion of inferior formulaic teen romances that dominate prime-time TV and today’s movie scene).

It could be said that fame came looking for Nicholas, or that he stumbled upon it. The only son of a Javanese mother and German father, he was discovered by model  agents on Bandung’s famed Cihampelas street when he was in the city for a baseball tournament. The offer to play Rangga came almost simultaneously. 

He was just a regular Indonesian teenager, he says, even if he was of mixed parentage. He offers that maybe his experience as the only child of a transnational marriage was different from children from families where the foreign parent’s cultural background predominates.

“My father was always very respectful of my mother’s culture. He would always say, ‘We’re in Indonesia, so we should do things the Indonesian way’,” he says of his father, who died in April 2007. “Sometimes I can feel myself going one way or the other, but I am Indonesian, I don’t have any identity issues.” 

He calls his family unit a close-knit “triangle”, where each of them looked out for each other. Although Nicholas now shuttles back and forth between Kuala Lumpur, Singapore and Jakarta, he still stays with his mother when he is in town. Part of the triangle is gone with his father’s death, but he is still protective of his mom; he politely declined a request to find out her opinion of his career.

“I think she would mind,” he said. “It would bring back memories of my father.”

That normal background helped him after the success of Ada Apa Dengan Cinta?, when he and Dian became overnight sensations; many 20-somethings nostalgically identify it as their favorite coming-of-age movie.

He terms the sudden immersion in the world of celebrity “traumatic”.

“I think at that time I was shocked; it was like a big wave,” says Nicholas, who turns 24 in February. “But now I can control and read the situation, just like a surfer, you follow the waves. At that time, as a newcomer, the wave was too big.”

Fame does bring benefits, he says. For one, he travels the world as his movies make the rounds of film festivals, meeting interesting people, learning about different cultures and, so important for an actor, networking.

The down side for him is the loss of privacy.

“I can’t just walk down the street anymore, there will be a reaction. But I just try to avoid those [situations].”

He could have cashed in on his looks right after Ada Apa Dengan Cinta? through the easy money of TV soaps, but he says it would have got in the way of his studies (he fulfilled a promise to his father and graduated with a degree in architecture from the University of Indonesia). Instead, he sat back and chose the film roles he wanted to do.

There was Biola Tak Berdawai (The Stringless Violin), a serious art-house movie; the rollicking, endearing Janji Joni (Joni’s Promise) about a film reel delivery man racing against the clock in Jakarta; and perhaps his strongest test, as the ill-fated student activist Soe Hok Gie in the biopic Gie (interestingly, in an early profile in Kompas daily in 2002, he had mentioned Gie as one of his favorite “heavy” authors).  

He proved the “he’s-just-another-pretty-face” faction wrong by holding his own in the roles (he also was strong in the 2007 road movie 3 Hari Untuk Selamanya). There is something refreshing and natural about his acting, unlike the mannered styles of those who start in the business early, or make a calculated decision to pursue a showbiz career.

He says he is proud of all his roles.

“I can’t pick one as a favorite, that would be like being asked to choose among your children. I like them all, for different reasons.”

So it might seem a risky decision for the actor to step away from a rising acting career for a cable hosting job. He sees the one-year contract on The Ticket’s “Screentime” segment as an opportunity to raise his profile in Southeast Asia and network in the film industry, and also improve his knowledge of the world of movies.

Nicholas admits he was stricken by nerves on his first day before the cameras.

“But I’ve been practicing my language and it’s become an ordinary thing, I’m more confident ... As for my career, I’ve always been able to manage my time well when making movies so I don’t see this as having any effect.”

Joko Anwar, who directed him in Janji Joni, supports the move.  

“It’s really the perfect job for him, because he is such a film buff. And I know from working with him that he’s a good presence on a set, he keeps everybody happy and he does his homework for his roles.”   

STAR, which broadcasts Channel [V], had been looking for  an Indonesian host for several years with no success before it tested Nicholas.

“There is no drama with Nicholas, he’s so easy to work with, and that is so important with talent,” Nini Jusof, associated vice president of distribution and marketing for STAR Southeast Asia, says as Nicholas wanders off for a smoke in another part of the room.

“You may be popular, you may be talented but if you’re not disciplined ... he is all three.”

She remembers his first assignment was to interview the stars of the U.S. hit show Heroes during a stopover in Singapore. Nicholas arrived in Singapore early in the morning, studied up on his interview subjects and, with only a couple of hours’ sleep, was ready for his mid-day call.  No drama.

Nini points out that he already has a name in Southeast Asia; he is increasingly recognized on the street in Singapore.

Which, of course, leads to that self-consciously deliberate question for any Indonesian performer about one day “going international”. Nicholas says he is not a man to make plans, “because if they are not realized, then I’ll be disappointed”.

He would not rule out staying with the show, “if I enjoy it and they want to continue”.

“I just follow the stream,” he says.

As in go with flow?

“I’ll just go with the free flow,” he says with a laugh.

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