Channel 3 runs out of actresses
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Ask Araya “Chompoo” Hargett if she’s the biggest star on the Channel 3 prime-time soap operas and she’ll decline to comment. In fact, she’s the biggest star on Channel 3, period.
Chompoo will star in at least four soap series this year, which isn’t bad at all considering that her contract with Channel 3 has expired.
Of course a fresh deal is already in the works. “I have to go and sign another three-year contract,” she told reporters, who then asked why not five years? More modesty ensued: She’s not that young anymore!
Chompoo will play a luk thung singer in “Tomyam Lam Sing”, premiering on January 10. While you’re watching that yarn play out, she’ll begin filming “Num Baan Rai”. Then work starts later in February on “Rak Khun Tao Fah”.
A four series produced by former actress Chariya Anfone will keep Chompoo onscreen after that – and we’re still only up to March!
New kid on set
Nirut “Ning” Sirichanya, recently cast as the ruler of Toung-oo in the fifth and final episode of the King Naresuan movie extravaganza, has worked with director MC Chatrichalerm “Than Mui” Yukol before.
That was four decades ago.
“I appeared in ‘Sao Krua Fah’, which was shot in Chiang Mai,” Ning recalls, “and Than Mui was a cameraman for his dad, His Royal Highness Prince Anusorn Mongkolkarn.
“But I never thought I’d get a chance to be part of his Naresuan epic.”
Ning loves the cheery atmosphere on the set, although he’s finding his role a challenge, especially the dialogue. “Even the dialogue between the commoners is hard, let alone the royal vocabulary!”
Still, Ning is impressed with how smoothly the production is going, which he credits to solid research and well-organised pre-production.
Of course it helps that Than Mui and his crew have been making the Naresuan pictures now for, what, a century? The saga is almost at an end, though: Theatres are booked for the final episode’s premiere in April.
