Why Dustin Yu is fortune’s favorite

November 5 ------ There’s a Sanskrit word that means “fortune’s favorite,” and 24-year-old actor-entrepreneur Dustin Yu decided it had a nice ring to it when he was naming his resto-bar in San Juan City. He wasn’t after flash or trend. He just wanted something that captured his hopes — both for the intimate space he had built with close friends, and the customers who might walk through its doors.

“I named the place Eraya — ‘fortune’s favorite’ — because I believe that even if you go through a lot of problems and challenges, you can still get lucky.”

Dustin quietly marked Eraya’s first anniversary in October and thought of hosting a group of Entertainment editors and columnists to try the restaurant-bar’s delicious fusion menu before the long All Saints’ and All Souls’ holiday.

During the interview, however, it was clear that Dustin had so much more to celebrate besides the one-year success of his business. His showbiz career, after all, is currently on a pretty meteoric rise, achieving what many newcomers can only hope to accomplish, let alone sustain. He has built a visible and steadily growing presence in television and film in a short three years, while earning the complete trust of his management team and producers in the process. That last part may be the rarest accomplishment of all, especially now that he’s headlining the finale episode of the country’s most iconic and longest-running horror film franchise, “Shake, Rattle and Roll: Evil Origins,” Regal Entertainment’s official entry to this year’s Metro Manila Film Festival (MMFF).

“After PBB, SSR was the first project that came to me,” Dustin revealed, shaking his head as if he still couldn’t believe his luck. Still adjusting from his stint in the highly successful “Pinoy Big Brother Celebrity Collab Edition” in June, he recalled receiving word that he had been cast with no less than Richard Gutierrez and Ivana Alawi for the “2050” episode. His second time joining the franchise — the first was in “Shake, Rattle & Roll: Extreme” in 2023 and already a major coup — Dustin reflected, “This role is so different from the one I played before when I was just one of the zombies. This time, my role has heart.”

Source: manilatimes.net