Some people spend their whole lives trying to get into the room. Gigette Reyes has been in it for decades.

She was there in 1978, in a Lino Brocka film starring Dolphy. She was there through the golden age of Philippine teleseryes, from “Pangako Sa ‘Yo” to “Darna” to “Sana Maulit Muli” — shows that defined Filipino primetime for a generation. She was there on stage with PETA, where she first learned that acting was not about visibility but about truth. 

And she was there in Los Angeles, on the set of a Disney film, sharing scenes with Jamie Lee Curtis and Lindsay Lohan and delivering a “mano” moment that made Filipinos everywhere stop and smile.

Now she is Mami Tess in “Nurse the Dead,” the first scripted American series to center on Filipino health care workers. And if the arc of her career feels like a long time coming, she would probably tell you it was never about arriving.

“I never really wanted fame,” she said. “I just wanted to act.”

That clarity has carried her through a life that moved constantly between Manila and Los Angeles, shaped by family more than by career. She moved back to the Philippines in 1977, missing her siblings and drawn into theater by PETA. She returned to Los Angeles in 1985 when her parents’ health began to decline. Back to Manila in 1989. 

Back to Los Angeles in 1993. Back to Manila in 1997, this time as a single mother with a baby boy, determined to raise her son in the country she loved.

“I was able to support myself and my son primarily through acting jobs,” she said, “mostly supporting or bit parts, as well as more substantial and lead roles in theater.”

When her son told her at 12 that he wanted to go to college in the United States, she packed up again. In 2010, she landed in Los Angeles for the last time, at age 50, in the middle of a recession, with no recent employment history and no credit history to speak of. She sold insurance. She worked in the HVAC industry. She held a full-time office job for years because her son’s education depended on it.

She did all of this while quietly carrying the knowledge that she could act.

In 2016, when her son left for college, she signed up for an online casting platform on the side. Her first submission landed her a role in “Unlovable,” produced by the Duplass brothers, which went on to win the SXSW Gamechanger Special Jury Award. 

She still could not pursue acting full time. So she waited.

It was not until 2021, at age 62, that she finally went for it in earnest. She auditioned for a play at Skylight Theater in Hollywood, booked it and, while the production was still running, went through five rounds of auditions for a lead series regular role on a major network, getting as far as signing a contract before the role ultimately went to another actress.

“I was devastated,” she said, “but strangely, I felt hopeful, too. I thought, if I got that far, then it’s totally possible.”

n came “Freakier Friday.” A rush self-tape request arrived on a Saturday night, due the next day at 2 p.m. She submitted two versions. By Monday, she had the offer. By Tuesday, she was on set.

“Nurse the Dead” came just as unexpectedly. A text from two friends, a last-minute invitation to a table read she thought was merely developmental, and then the surprise of walking into a full audience, a buffet spread and a program with her face on it. She described the final chemistry test, down to two actresses vying for the role of Mami Tess, as a moment when she gave herself only a 5 percent chance of landing the part. She got the call a week later.

She connects with Mami Tess in the way only lived experience allows. Mami Tess is a single mother who pours herself into her work, who refuses to show weakness not out of pride but out of a desire not to burden anyone, and whose love for her child is the engine of everything she does.

“There’s a constant push and pull,” Reyes said. “And if you happen to find fulfillment and satisfaction in your work, that’s an additional feeling of guilt.”

The show was filmed inside an actual Los Angeles hospital, on wards that admitted the city’s first COVID-19 patients. The weight of that history was present, she said, but so was something else.

“It was a daily love fest despite the major challenges we faced during filming.”

What she hopes audiences take from it is simple and profound at once.

“As long as we’re still alive,” she said, “we can still love, laugh, care, protect and take care of each other as best we can.”

Asked what five decades in the profession have taught her, she does not reach for technique. She reaches for something harder to teach: Live fully. Stay open. Stay curious. Care about people. Then surrender the rest.

She started out painfully shy, using characters as shields to connect with the world. She said she is still that same woman.

Just no longer young.

And right where she has always been.