A customer of Fiamma Bar on Jupiter Street in Makati City told PEP that a confrontation occurred between Kapuso stars Richard Gutierrez and Aljur Abrenica last October 17, at the high-end watering hole.
This was supposed to have happened on the same night that the new GMA Network Studios on Jamboree St., Quezon City, was inaugurated. Many of the stars, still dressed to the nines, had gone out to celebrate after the event.
Richard is known as GMA-7's Primetime King, while Aljur is StarStruck Batch 4 Ultimate Hunk winner. In other words, Richard is a certified big star and Aljur is a promising male lead.
The non-showbiz customer, who refuses to be named, reported that he saw Richard Gutierrez having a nice time with friends.
Sometime later, the customer saw Aljur Abrenica enter the bar escorting young actress Jewel Mische, the StarStruck Batch 4 Ultimate Sweetheart and also a GMA-7 talent.
The next thing he saw, according to the stunned customer, was Richard having an altercation with Aljur. He said he distinctly saw Richard giving Aljur's head a short, quick slap. In the words of the customer, "Tinapik ni Richard si Aljur sa ulo!"
Aljur reportedly turned around, faced Richard, and demanded to know, "Ano ang problema mo?" Richard reportedly shot back, "Ikaw, ano ang problema mo?"
The PEP source said that, fortunately, nothing more untoward happened. Cooler heads reportedly intervened at just the right time.
Another source, who was also at Fiamma bar, claimed that Jewel was not with Aljur. The source, however, corroborated the story about the tiff between Richard and Aljur.
PEP asked all three parties, on separate occasions, to comment on the incident. Clearly, everyone wanted the incident buried and forgotten.
When Aljur was asked, he refused to answer. Jewel refused to take calls on her cellphone (its number is known to her reporter-friends). Richard, at his mother Annabelle Rama's birthday party last Saturday evening, said, "No comment," then walked away.
Meantime, a handler at the GMA Artist Center, which manages Aljur and Jewel, gave the side of Aljur but refused to be quoted. Two showbiz reporters who heard about the incident also backed off the story. As a result, PEP became more curious: where did the Richard-Aljur tiff come from?
RICHARD-JEWEL. Our research showed that Jewel Mische is at the center of this tiff. Since the days of Kamandag—a fantaserye which had Richard and Jewel as a love team—rumors had already circulated that the two became more than an onscreen team. According to reports, they had become a quiet, but real, item.
Both Richard and Jewel have totally denied the story. Even at the recent inauguration of GMA Network Studios, Jewel flatly said, "For the record, hindi naging kami ni Chard." Richard, for his part, has remained non-committal and vague, but admitted going out with Jewel. The young actor also said that Jewel was the "closest" girl to him while they were still doing Kamandag.
But making the story plausible were reports that kept linking Richard only to Jewel, when the handsome 24-year-old star also had the beautiful Maxene Magalona as a romantic interest in the same fantaserye. And way after Kamandag was taken off the air, talk persisted that Richard and Jewel were seeing each other romantically.
Richard has never been an easy man to pin down on his romantic intentions. There were two other stars who started being linked to him: Heart Evangelista and KC Concepcion. These two are such big names—Heart starred with him in the big-budget GMA-7 action-adventures series Codename: Asero, and KC was his leading lady in the blockbuster Star Cinema movie For the First Time—that the press eventually paid no more attention to the Richard-Jewel romance rumors.
Showbiz insiders now say that, in fact, the Richard-Jewel romance has been an on-and-off story in Richard's life. They add that, indeed, the two were first attracted to each other when they were doing Kamandag, which brought them together at least three times a week, and that since then, Jewel would be seen in places where Richard was, such as his condo, his tapings, his movie sets.
Unfortunately, the insiders say, nobody seems to want Jewel for Richard. Their network is said to be pushing other leading ladies for their prize talent; his family has not been heard to say they want her for Richard, whereas his mother and manager Annabelle Rama has been quoted as saying she liked KC; and even members of Richard's camp say that the tandem won't go far with the fans.
The rumors persist anyway that Jewel is more infatuated with Richard than he is with her. But showbiz veterans argue that if Richard really wanted Jewel out of his life, then he could have done so a long time ago. After all, he has his family, his manager, bodyguard, driver, and camp followers to create the environment he is comfortable with. Therefore, these showbiz veterans speculate, Richard must also be attracted to Jewel to make this "on-and-off relationship" last up to this time.
As for the Fiamma bar incident between Richard and Aljur, there is strong buzz that it was triggered when Jewel asked Aljur to escort her that night, and had done so with the idea of making Richard jealous. The buzz also says that Aljur, in this scenario, was completely clueless.