Being unafraid to be different is also about making space for people who see a little bit of themselves in you. For Sassa Gurl, that’s something she’s been doing for quite some time now—simply by being herself.
Before the polished sets, film roles, music releases, and millions of followers, there was an Android phone, a malfunctioning ring light, and a persona that refused to become more palatable just to fit in. There was humor, “kanal” energy, childhood nostalgia, Jejemon culture, and an instinct to turn everyday Filipino experiences into something people could laugh about.
What began as a way of being herself eventually became a way for other people to see themselves, too.
But visibility, for Sassa, is not the destination.
The starting point
Before becoming the popular “kanal” internet personality, Sassa Gurl’s path into the industry was anything but straightforward. After studying Communication at Far Eastern University, she found an audience during the pandemic through TikTok, where her comedic takes on school life, childhood nostalgia, and “Jejemon” culture resonated with millions. Today, she has over 8 million followers.
But Sassa never allowed herself to be confined to the internet persona that made her famous. From The Entitled, Balota, Bar Boys: After School, and Shake, Rattle & Roll: Evil Origins to Drag Den Philippines and music releases like “Lagot!” and “Maria Hiwaga,” she has steadily expanded her place in the entertainment industry.
Her trajectory reflects a shift from simply performing as herself to inhabiting stories beyond her own. Most recently, she starred in and produced Multwoh (Patay Na Patay Sa ’Yo) alongside Joao Constancia, an official entry at the 2026 CinePanalo Puregold Film Festival, where she also earned a Best Actress nomination.
For Sassa, visibility is no longer the finish line. Her journey from viral Filipino humor to queer stories on the big screen asks a bigger question: once you’ve earned a seat at the table, what do you do with the space you’ve created?
Because somewhere, there is still a young queer kid looking up—and imagining that they can take that space, too.
What’s the next step?
For Sassa, the next step is clear. Being seen was never supposed to be the finish line. For Sassa Gurl, the next step is making sure queer people have the freedom, power, and space to tell their own stories.
“The next step is to build the community, a community that demands fundamental rights,” she said.
It is a deceptively simple answer to a complicated question. Representation cannot stop at visibility when the people being represented are still fighting for the freedom to exist, create, love, and participate on their own terms.
“Ang dami na natin na parang valid na tayo, normalized na tayo at some point,” she says. “What we need is something that will legitimize us and ’yun ’yung mga batas na poprotekta sa atin.”
And perhaps that is the distinction worth making: being represented is not the same as having agency.
“”Everyone has representation na ngayon. What we want is to integrate the voice and the fight of our community into the media. Marami kasing restrictions on representation and on how we present ourselves—kung ano ’yung laban natin. I think that’s the change that we want to emulate in the messages we give next time: mas matapang na ’yung mga mensahe natin, kasi alam na naman ng mga tao. Alam na nila kung sino tayo.”
For her, representation is more than what we see, it is the right to freedom, express, and create. That is how Sassa Gurl’s way of representation pushes the envelope. To integrate the cost of queer community to the media, that’s the change she wanted to emulate.
“Ang dami na natin na parang valid na tayo, normalized na tayo at some point. What we need is something that will legitimize us, and ’yun ’yung mga batas na poprotekta sa atin. The rights that would give us what we really need—to recognize us, our existence.”
Sassa's representation goes beyond filling the void left behind by the community; it's about reclaiming it. It's the ability to make decisions within that space, the space to speak for themselves, the space to create and do things on their own terms, the space to participate in the construction of the stories that make up them.
Representation is meaningful when queer people are the ones who are telling stories, or making them, or producing them, or performing them, and who determine which stories should be told.
To Seek a Bigger Screen
From the phone screen to the silver screen, Sassa Gurl has learned that the frame can only get bigger.
What began with an Android phone, a malfunctioning ring light, and a personality too “kanal” to be neatly contained eventually became something much larger: millions of viewers, a growing body of work, and a place in Philippine film where she could finally ask a different question—not Can I be seen?, but What can I say now that I am?
“Making films makes me excited na malaman ’yung story ng ibang tao. I always respected the truth of the story and the truth of the character. Alam mo yun, one of the process na nai-enjoy ko yun kasi I get to build a universe and I get to build a story. And yun, I think it's part of the job and I'm always happy to do it,” she said.
It is perhaps the most revealing thing she can say about becoming an actor.
For someone whose public persona is so immediately recognizable, acting requires the opposite of recognition. It asks Sassa to disappear.
And perhaps that is what the next chapter of her career is really about: not proving that she can represent herself, but discovering how many other stories she can carry. The larger screen gives her room to do that. It also gives her room to take risks.
Her recent lead role in Multwoh (Patay Na Patay Sa ’Yo) sits precisely in that tension.
“It tells a story of queer love na hindi masyadong pinopondohan ng kahit sinong studio, and we took a risk na i-kwento ’yung ganitong story.”
An all-queer production led by a trans woman, the film is a queer love story made by people who understand that love from the inside. Sassa is not only in front of the camera; she is part of the producing team, part of the collective work that made the story possible.
That distinction matters.
For years, queer stories have been welcomed into mainstream culture through carefully measured openings—small enough to be palatable, familiar enough to be profitable, safe enough to be approved.
Multwoh (Patay Na Patay Sa ’Yo) asks for something else. It allows queer people to exist in the story without having to make their queerness the tragedy of the story. At its center is still something familiar: people falling in love, making mistakes, finding humor in difficult situations, and trying to make sense of one another.
That familiarity is important precisely because queer stories do not always get to be ordinary. They are often expected to explain themselves—to carry a lesson, a struggle, or a statement about identity before they are allowed to simply be stories.
Multwoh makes room for something lighter without making it any less meaningful.
“And comedy is survival, you know? Bilang community with a lot of shared struggles, lagi tayong, lagi natin pagtatawanan yung existence natin, yung nangyayari sa atin. And I think napakahalaga na ikwento ang komedya sa paraan na it talks about survival in a way na, alam mo yun, ano siya eh, parang... Parang inaano natin, ginagamit natin siya to give an exposition na usually itatago natin yung gusto nating sabihin with comedy. And that's very special. That's why, alam mo yun, ako, very big sa akin ang comedy,” she said.
For Sassa, comedy has always been more than just a way to make people laugh. It has become a language she knows how to use—to make difficult things easier to talk about, to turn discomfort into something people can sit with, and sometimes, to say something serious without making it feel like a lecture.
“And ginagamit ko din talaga siya to, alam mo yun, to... Basta ginagamit ko siya always. At yun na yung naging parang bangko ko to… expose my talent and skills. And dito rin sa Multwoh, komedya din siya. And importante yung paggamit namin ng komedya dito kasi nga, it's survival in a way.”
For Sassa, then, comedy is not a departure from the more serious parts of the story. It is part of how the story gets told in the first place. It is a way of making space for difficult conversations without stripping them of the humor, absurdity, and humanity that often come with real life.
And perhaps that is what makes Multwoh (Patay Na Patay Sa ’Yo) feel particularly close to the kind of artist Sassa has always been: funny first, but never without something underneath.
When Representation Becomes Culture
For Sassa, representation does not seem to be the point of the work by itself. It is simply what happens when people are given the chance to tell their own stories, in their own language, without having to make themselves smaller first.
The significance becomes clearer in the people who get to see themselves on screen.
“I didn't have that luxury na makikita ko yung sarili kong nagmamahal,” she says. “So parang... Pag may R13 kasi kami, so parang makita to ng 13 years old at ma-validate niya yung feeling niya na ma-realize niya, oh my God, this is normal. Normal palang magmahal. Normal pala yung sa tulad ko na magmahal.”
What Sassa is talking about is something more basic than visibility. It is the experience of having a reference point.
To grow up without seeing people like yourself fall in love can make even the most ordinary feelings seem unfamiliar. There is no image to point to, no story that quietly tells you that what you are feeling has existed before you. A film cannot solve all of that, but it can offer a small piece of recognition: someone else has felt this, too.
And for a young queer person watching a story like Multwoh, that recognition does not necessarily have to come in the form of a grand revelation. Sometimes, it can simply be the relief of seeing a queer character experience something as ordinary as love and realizing that there is nothing inherently unusual about wanting it.
“And that's a big thing. It's a big thing for us.”
It is also why she sees Multwoh as something that extends beyond the film itself. There is the money, the recognition, the career opportunities—but there is also the possibility of leaving something behind.
“More than anything, more than the perang makukuha namin dito… recognition na makukuha namin dito. It's the literature and history na gusto namin makapag-contribute sa change ng sinema ng pelikulang Pilipino.”
There is something particularly fitting about Sassa thinking about her work this way. Her career began with the kind of content that was easy to dismiss: a phone camera, a chaotic personality, jokes that sounded like they came straight from a group chat. But over time, that language became part of how people knew her. What once existed outside the polished idea of entertainment eventually found its way into bigger rooms.
Now, she is bringing that same sensibility with her.
Not necessarily to make every story about being queer, but to make room for queer people to simply have stories—to fall in love, be ridiculous, survive, fail, dream, and exist without having to explain their humanity first.
And maybe that is where representation becomes culture: when seeing people like yourself stops feeling like an exception and starts becoming part of the everyday.
Sassa knows there is no guarantee that Multwoh will suddenly change Philippine cinema. She is not even looking that far ahead.
“At when we look back 10 years from now, na alam mo yun, nilaban namin yung ganitong klaseng sining. And no matter what, matuloy man, magkaroon man ang kasunod or not. And we tried and we risked it. So, yun, tinapangan namin.”
There is no grand declaration in that. Just the decision to try.
To make the film. To tell the story. To take the risk.
And for someone who once learned to build a world through a phone screen, perhaps that is the most natural next step: making the frame bigger, while making sure there is more room for others to see themselves in it.
METROSCENE MAG | SEPTEMBER 2026 COVER: NEXT IN LINE
Producer, Creative/Art Director & Editor-in-Chief: Elwyn Baccay (@markelwyn)
Photography by Josh Castro (@ajoshcastro)
Makeup by Irish Mendiola (@irishmendiolaaa_),
Hair by Mharhea Banting (@workwithmhar)
Fashion Direction & Styling by Gen Real (@genreal__) assisted by Jasper Añonuevo (@jasperuevo), Lynus Martin (@lynuss) and Cha Fronteras (@chafronteras)
Video Director, Cinematographer & Editor: Gene Francis C. Sayson (@g.f.sayson)
Gaffer: Jessal Cruz (@jessalcruz)
Co-Producer: Avin Dela Cruz (@avindelacruz_)
Set Design by Elwyn Baccay and Niña Cruz (@cruzynina)
Shot at Sikret Studio (@sikret.studio)
Written By Joshua Sazon and Elwyn Baccay
Join the community of Young, Empowered, and Creative! Like, Follow, Subscribe to metroscenemag.com and our socials Facebook, X, and Instagram.
.png)
