Liza Soberano on why she revealed her traumatic childhood, kept mum on breakup with Enrique Gil

She also penned a message to her younger self, "To four-year-old Hope, who's in the midst of a painful, upside down world, just trying to stay a child, thank you. Thank you for staying determined and strong, for choosing to keep pushing ahead, to build a beautiful life worth living."

The actress said that as a public figure, her responsibility is to "speak up on the things that matter, from a place that matters." She also cited data on how "as many as 100,000 Filipino children are exploited in prostitution and thousands more in forced labor" and how the Philippines is "one of the largest known sources of online sexual exploitation of children in the world."

"All of me dreads sharing the most intimate parts of my soul, just for people to judge and diminish my experiences," Soberano said.

"But if I don't speak up out of discomfort or fear, what chance [do] all the scared and voiceless women and children that are still in dangerous situations have? So it is a privilege and honor to be able to share my experiences so that even just one little girl out there can feel encouraged to speak up," she continued.

Soberano urged to fight against those who may try to guilt or shame you from speaking up.

"Cruel people will try to discredit your story, they'll say you are exaggerating or being self serving, don't mind them. Only weak people would respond to stories of pain with doubt and interrogation," she said.

She also warned about those who will try to "exploit" stories for "gossip and attention-seeking."

In the Aug. 14 episode of Can I Come In?, Soberano recounted how her biological mother Jacqueline had a "bad addiction" to crystal meth. Her biological father John, meanwhile, was arrested for trespassing into the home of a past girlfriend with whom he had a child.

Jacqueline's addiction then got worse while she was pregnant with Soberano's little brother. She was ultimately arrested along with her new boyfriend following a violent fight.

Soberano and her brother subsequently went into foster care, but things didn't get better as she said her foster parent Melissa began abusing her and treating her as the "family dog."

The episode marks the first time that Soberano went into so much detail about her childhood trauma publicly.

On why she kept quiet about her breakup with Enrique Gil

In the same podcast, Soberano also confirmed that she and Enrique Gil had broken up three years ago. The actress said that her former reel-to-reel partner asked her "not to say anything."

Boy Abunda, in the Aug. 18 episode of his show, revealed that Soberano had already confessed to him that she and Gil parted ways when he interviewed her back in March 2023.

At the time, the actress was hounded with controversy after she released her vlog about her new career moves. However, Abunda decided to omit the breakup detail from the original interview as Gil was not yet ready to disclose that fact to the public.

On why she decided to end their relationship, the Lisa Frankenstein star said, "Our values and the way we see life just [don't] align anymore. Because of the whole change that I went through last year, it was kind of hard for us to be there and support each other the same way that we used to be."

"So we decided that it was just easier to separate ways and kind of find ourselves first, kind of explore before we take it to the next level," she added.

Soberano shared that one of the most common questions she gets asked is when she and Gil are going to get married, to which she admitted that it came to a point where she didn't know if that's what she wanted anymore.

"When I had expressed that I was embarking on a solo journey, the thing that was being brought up amongst my fans the most was, 'What about Ken? So you're leaving Ken? Where's Ken?' And people forgot to support me for me without anybody else attached to me," she said.

The actress also bared that hiding their breakup from the public was hard because of their identity as a love team.

"Takot po ako. My whole family and his family, we're like one big family already. My friends are his friends. My whole world basically revolved around him from my career... and so, it's scary to come forward because it's such a big change in our life," she said.

"And you don't know how people are gonna take it. And so, I didn't want to come forward for a long time. But it came to a point where I wanted to start talking about it. But he wasn't comfortable with it either because that's just the type of person he is," she continued.

Soberano described Gil as a "very private" person, and so they decided not to talk about it until both of them were ready to come forward with it.

"He's very private. Everybody knows that about him. He doesn't post much on social media and that's okay. And so, out of respect for one another, we decided not to talk about it [until] both of us are ready to come forward with it."

Soberano and Gil's tandem, LizQuen, debuted in the teleserye Forevermore in 2014. They have been in a relationship for the past eight years, though they only went public about their status in 2019. 

Rumors that the two have split have been going around since May 2023, though they have repeatedly shut down the speculations in separate interviews.