The Platform is a dystopian sci-fi horror Netflix original from Spain, a recent Top 10 pick in our own Netflix chart coinciding with the first few days of our quarantine.
The audience interest is understandable, considering that at the core of The Platform is a grim view of inequality—it’s set in a vertical prison, much like Dante’s Hell, where food (in abundance) for prisoners is prepared by a kitchen staff from up above the building and delivered down via ‘platform’ to the lowest rung of the prison. Naturally, the people at the topmost part of the prison gets first dibs on good food. Because greed is human nature, those at the bottom rung get spoiled leftovers to nothing.
The mind reels throughout the film, but that is not all that got us glued to watching The Platform—it’s also one of the rogue characters in the film, Miharu.
Miharu is played by Alexandra Masangkay. It wasn’t until the end credits that we realized she was Filipina.
It was safe to assume she was Pinay from the get-go, her surname alone gives it away. It’s a pre-colonial surname and one of Andres Bonifacio’s advisers in the Katipunan was a man named Guillermo Masangkay (he is G. Masangkay Street in Tondo). A bit of Googling and looking her up on Instagram confirmed it—she is Filipina and proud of it!