Pachara Chirathivat (a.k.a. Peach Pachara) may not be a household name in the Philippine entertainment scene—at least not yet, but the 30-year-old Thai actor has carved a niche for himself as a multifaceted artist. He is an actor, an entrepreneur, a musician, and a photographer. His most recent project, The Believers, is streaming on Netflix.
Amid his busy schedule, we talk some more to Peach about the importance of questioning the system and thinking critically, his own views on religion, and his journey in the world of arts and business.
Amid his busy schedule, we talk some more to Peach about the importance of questioning the system and thinking critically, his own views on religion, and his journey in the world of arts and business.
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FunTranscript
00:00 I practice Buddhism as well.
00:03 Because I think every little bit of this and that is always good.
00:06 That's why I said all the religion is good,
00:08 because it wants you to become better.
00:10 I didn't plan to be an actor actually.
00:25 My sister actually, she got called to do auditioning for film.
00:30 Well, when I was young, so I had to go with her,
00:32 you know, because she went there after school.
00:35 So we share the same car, so I tag along.
00:39 I sit there and then she's doing auditioning,
00:41 and then somehow director was asking me like,
00:43 "Can you do the video too as well?"
00:44 And I was like, "Okay, why not?"
00:47 Right, since I'm here, so I did it badly.
00:50 I think I failed miserably.
00:53 Then I got a phone call, they were like,
00:55 "We have a role for you."
00:57 "Really? I'm pretty bad at it?"
01:01 You know, so, and he's like,
01:02 "Just come, just come and just try it out,
01:04 whether it's work or not."
01:05 And then here I am, 13 years later on,
01:09 still doing acting.
01:12 Well, it's actually a scene from a screenplay called "Succeed".
01:20 It's a comedy film about teenage musician.
01:24 It's a scene that the guy talked to the friend, I think.
01:28 I did remember the line, like, wrongly,
01:31 like everything was like out of place, you know,
01:33 but then it ended up that the character
01:35 was supposed to be like a loser guy as well.
01:38 So I think that it kind of worked out.
01:41 I got super lucky because all the cast
01:47 were pretty close to me.
01:50 Like the age wise, you know,
01:52 they're like around 16, 17, 18.
01:55 So it's a kind of like you go hang out
01:57 with your buddies at the film set.
01:59 So it's more like you're going to see friends
02:02 rather than working.
02:03 That helped me transition from, you know,
02:05 from just a student to doing the work.
02:08 You know, you don't feel like you kind of do the thing,
02:12 but you feel like you're playing with your friends
02:14 and they capture it and it worked.
02:18 With that, you know, you gain more experience as well
02:21 as you do more film.
02:22 And then I enrolled in a drama school,
02:25 you know, doing like full on acting school.
02:29 Well, normally I do, mostly I do film scoring.
02:37 That's my main music work.
02:39 So we start with having the script
02:42 and then we read everything.
02:45 And then we come up with a concept
02:47 of like what we want to tell in the film.
02:49 And then we work with director like,
02:50 okay, this is what we're going to be doing.
02:52 This is how we think the screen is.
02:54 And then, you know, it's a back and forth conversation
02:57 with directors.
02:57 And with that, it will dictate
03:00 how the instrumentation will go.
03:03 You know, for some of the film,
03:04 it's more very high conceptual.
03:06 So I kind of like synthesizers, you know,
03:09 modular synthesizers more than the classical ways
03:12 of doing music.
03:13 So it's actually depends on the concept,
03:15 but then we'll start with having a strong,
03:17 really strong concept first,
03:19 and then we'll go from there.
03:20 Once we've got the concept,
03:22 once we start doing some of the scenes in the film,
03:25 so we'll pick the key moments of the characters, right?
03:29 Like the downfall of the characters,
03:32 you know, the happy scene.
03:34 And then we'll try to write something up
03:39 with that as a template.
03:40 Then we'll check with directors again,
03:43 like this is how it is.
03:44 So he can put it into the editing process,
03:48 just try to put it as a backbone of the film
03:51 and the rest will adapt it according
03:54 to how the actors have been acting,
03:57 how is he doing well in that particular scene.
04:00 Do he needs a kind of like more supporting
04:03 from the scoring to help make his acting wise
04:08 more powerful?
04:12 Yeah, that's how the creative process works.
04:15 Started going to business school out of anger, actually.
04:24 My dad wanted me to be an engineer,
04:27 so I did the opposite thing without knowing what it is.
04:32 My friend, actually, my close friend,
04:37 who is co-founder of the company with me,
04:41 actually said like, "Yo, you should go to business school, man."
04:44 And I'm like, "All right, I'm going there as well."
04:47 So with that, it's a kind of,
04:52 quite a lucky thing for me that I gambled to go to there.
04:57 You know, like I learned a lot more of the concept
05:00 that it's very needed, you know, like the accounting,
05:05 or how the international trade works as well.
05:09 And with that, we found our company as a start.
05:13 So we do Potato Corner.
05:15 He actually the one who found the brand.
05:19 He flew here to do a debate for university.
05:22 And then he was like, he called me one day,
05:24 and was like, "Dude, check this out, like Potato Corner,
05:27 "man, that's a long queue here."
05:29 So I was like, "Okay."
05:32 And I booked a flight, and I just flew here,
05:35 you know, going to the malls.
05:37 I was like, "Okay, it should work for Thailand."
05:41 You know, like the product was like quite match,
05:44 you know, we like snack as well.
05:46 So that's how it all started.
05:49 And with that, one of our partners as well,
05:53 Nico, he was talking us into doing the beauty brand as well.
05:59 So we're like, "Yeah, that's kind of a thing
06:03 "that we want to bring Thai product here as well,
06:05 "because we're known as a manufacturing country
06:10 "for like pretty much the whole existence of Thailand."
06:15 You know, we do manufacturing car,
06:18 we're manufacturing everything,
06:21 but we never get to do branding.
06:22 We never get to sell our own product.
06:25 So with that, we start to build a beauty company,
06:33 a beauty brand, and then we'll bring it here,
06:36 just for people to try it out,
06:37 that, "Hey, we've made good product as well."
06:41 And then, you know, just to let the world know.
06:44 I just got a call from director during COVID,
06:54 during the lockdown period.
06:56 It was like, "I have this kind of..."
06:59 He just, he gave me a synopsis.
07:02 And I was really hooked in.
07:04 It's about Buddhism in Thailand and how corrupt it is.
07:08 You know, it's, I mean, the religion by itself
07:12 is not corrupted, but people who running it
07:15 are the one that corrupt.
07:16 And we want to tell the stories about these people,
07:20 you know, and we just want to make a film
07:23 about how to make things transparent,
07:27 because, you know, the director himself
07:29 is kind of very practitioner as well for Buddhism.
07:34 So he went to the temple, you know,
07:35 and he started raising a question,
07:37 how can we make it more transparent?
07:40 You know, how you donate money more transparent?
07:42 How can people raise the questions
07:45 that things should be as it is,
07:50 rather than being opaque?
07:52 So after having listened to that,
07:56 I was like, "Okay, let's do it."
07:58 Because it's really, really good intention as well.
08:01 So that's how the project start.
08:05 Kind of good learning curve for me as well,
08:07 because I see a lot of mechanics
08:08 that I never seen before in religion as well.
08:11 Like how people donate and they get tax deduction.
08:15 And then, so they add the zero
08:17 without actually paying for it.
08:20 And nobody's really looking to it.
08:22 You know, that's kind of mind blowing as well.
08:26 (upbeat music)
08:29 Well, according to the ID card, it's Buddhism.
08:34 You know, I went to become a monk as well.
08:36 But as of now, I kind of believe in all kinds of religion.
08:42 You know, I read the Bible as well.
08:45 I practice Buddhism as well.
08:48 So I kind of do all kinds of things.
08:51 Because I think like every little bits of this
08:53 and that is always good, you know.
08:55 Just like, that's what I said,
08:57 like all the religion is good,
08:59 because it wants you to become better.
09:01 So I start to learn like little this and that.
09:06 For example, I learned from Christian,
09:08 like how to be selfless, how to love other people better,
09:13 how to believe in something.
09:15 And in Buddhism, it's all about
09:18 how can you be self-aware of yourself,
09:23 how to be calmer.
09:26 Islam as well, it's a kind of very selfless ways
09:30 of looking at life as well.
09:31 So I learned a little bit of this and that,
09:34 and then combine it into my own thing.
09:38 (upbeat music)
09:42 (gentle music)
09:45 (audience applauding)