Yuki Kato is an Indonesian celebrity with 8.3 million followers on Instagram. She plays Alissa in the Viu Original series Pretty Little Liars. In the original version, Alissa is the mysterious “A.”
Yuki admitted that before Viu contacted her, she had not watched Pretty Little Liars.
Pretty Little Liars, a Warner Bros. production which aired for seven seasons from 2010 to 2017, is based on a book of the same title by Sara Shepard.
The series tackles themes of friendship, female empowerment, body positivity and the consequences of cyberbullying. “Of all these themes, the audience would probably most relate to cyberbullying,” said Yuki. One of the things Yuki likes about her character is the way she dresses. Although showing a lot of skin is not the actress’ style, she likes how confident Alissa is in doing so.
Caitlin Halderman, who plays Ema, said that what she and her Pretty Little Liars character have in common is having been in a relationship with someone of a different religion.
Shindy Huang plays Aria in the show and the actress said she relates to her character because she also likes literature, and loves reading and writing.
The second season of the Indonesian adaptation of Pretty Little Liars premieres this month on PCCW’s pan-regional OTT video streaming service Viu in its original language and a Filipino dub. The Indonesian adaptation of the Warner Bros. series is a Viu Original production. The winner of the Asian Academy Creative Awards and Content Asia Awards for the first season, Viu’s Pretty Little Liars adaptation is set in the fictional town of Amerta, exclusively created in Bali.
The series follows the lives of four female students whose clique falls apart when their leader, Alissa (Yuki Kato), mysteriously went missing. The Liars find themselves reunited when they suddenly begin to receive creepy messages from a mysterious figure known as “A”, who threatens to expose their darkest secrets.
In season two, Hanna (Anya Geraldine), Ema (Halderman), Sabrina (Vanessa Thomas) and Aria (Huang) try to uncover who was behind the accident that happened with Hanna in the first season, and the main big question mark remains: Is A actually dead or still alive?
The series is directed by Emil Heradi and produced by Visinema Pictures’ Angga Sasongko. In addition to the main ensemble, it brings a number of seasoned big cast members, such as Wulan Guritno, Tarra Budiman and Irgi Fahrezi, alongside new castmates like Bastian Steel, Bio One and Fandy Christian.
Emil Heradi is best known for his movie Night Bus, which won six awards in the 2017 Indonesian Film Festival Awards. “When we do collaborations like this, we look forward to putting social issues in front of the audience and enable conversations that happen around them,” said Varun Mehta country manager of Viu Indonesia, said at an online press launch with Indonesian and Philippine media.
“There is a lot of conversation happening around [depression among young adults] as well. So, cyberbullying and bullying in school is the reason why this kind of depression creeps in.”
Yuki Kato, Caitlin Halderman and Shindy Huang talked to the Philippine media in a separate interview days later.
Season 2 of Pretty Little Liars is now available on Viu. Episodes dubbed in Filipino are accessible at bit.ly/3MoXfnD. The Viu app is available for free on the App Store and Google Play.