#REWIND with Rachel Amanda: Lahir untuk Akting, dari “Candy” Sampai ke Berlinale

Recap

On Rewind, Rachel Amanda looks back on growing up as a child actor—and on learning to let go of the expectation that she must always be the “good, smart kid.”

She says her entertainment career began almost by accident. At about two and a half, she was brought to audition for a Bata shoe ad. While other children reportedly cried or ran to their mothers, Rachel calmly stared at the camera. Her amused verdict: she was “born for this.”

Her childhood stories are just as lively. She loved dressing up her sister, used a neighbor’s starfruit tree as pretend cooking ingredients, and once rode a four-wheeled bike that could only go straight. She also remembers singing into a fan and being warned not to put her hair near it.

Her best-known childhood role, Candy, came with plenty of tears. Rachel jokes that there were stretches of episodes where she seemed to cry nonstop. Sometimes she grew so fed up with Candy’s constant crying that she cried on set out of frustration. The ratings were good, though, which was apparently reason enough to keep the tears coming. A TV roadshow was when she first realized just how many people were watching her.

Rachel describes being fortunate that her family and managers protected her chance to have an ordinary childhood and prioritized school. She often went to class after overnight shoots and remembers regularly falling asleep until her strict but caring math teacher, Ms. Sofi, sent her to wash her face.

She also reflects on attending a Christian school as a Muslim, then moving to the much more diverse public high school SMAN 70. The changes helped her understand what it feels like to be in the minority. One childhood fasting story ends with her forgetting she was fasting, asking a friend for food, and only remembering after taking a bite.

Her education path was not straightforward. Rachel initially wanted to become a doctor, then tried public health before deciding it did not suit her. She chose psychology partly because she thought it could help her understand characters for film. Looking back, she says studying psychology taught her empathy and helped her understand people—including her family—without rushing to judge them.

The most emotional story comes from her attempt to study entertainment communication in Amsterdam. Rachel had long been seen as someone who always excelled, so failing the required online essays was a major blow. She and her husband had already traveled, found housing, and made plans, only to learn she could not start that semester. She recalls crying by a canal before breaking the news.

In time, the setback became liberating: it helped her stop measuring herself against the image of the perpetually successful “smart kid.”

That shift also connects to her acting career. Rachel says she has never relied on one named technique; she tries to understand the character and situation. She recalls once worrying that people in the industry saw her as too young-looking to play mature roles, but has since become more comfortable with the fact that filmmakers may imagine adulthood differently. For Monster Pabrik Rambut (Hair Factory Monster), she was grateful that director Edwin Eka Kurniawan challenged assumptions about which sibling should look older, casting her as the older sister to Lutesha.

Rachel describes the film’s production design as unusually immersive. The crew transformed the abandoned PFN building into a detailed hair-and-prosthetics factory, complete with factory floors, workers’ quarters, and small domestic touches. The realism impressed her, but a dark, unlit corridor still had her hurrying through it, even though nothing supernatural happened.

Edwin’s direction, she says, was similarly precise and unusual. Small choices, such as enlarging her pupils with contact lenses and thinning her eyebrows, helped make the characters feel subtly strange.

The film is Rachel’s first horror project in eight years. She appreciated that its monster was practical and physically present, rather than something she had to imagine. However, waiting for effects and rigs between takes made it challenging to maintain the same fear and emotion.

She also discusses the film’s underlying concern with overwork. Its story follows Ida, who returns to her family’s factory after her mother’s sudden death and begins questioning what really happened. Rachel says the film left her thinking about workers’ rights and the importance of solidarity, rather than treating exhaustion and poor conditions as normal.

The film premiered at the Berlinale, where Rachel experienced her first time in Berlin and a packed screening. She was surprised that audiences there also recognized overwork as a real issue, and recalls a viewer asking about the film’s distinctive visual look.

Personalities

• Rachel Amanda — Actor and guest.
• The Rewind host — Interviewer; not named in the subtitles.