Lea Salonga took a trip down memory lane and recalled her experience starring in her first international stage musical Miss Saigon on West End when she was a teenager.

In a chat with her Request sa Radyo fellow headliner Dolly de Leon uploaded on the State of the Arts YouTube channel, Lea admitted that starring in an original production abroad at a young age felt intimidating initially.

"Given that it was an original production of something we had no idea if it was going to be a hit or not. It was frightening, it was intimidating, it was overwhelming, it was all of these things, and I was a kid," she recounted.

The singer credited her mother Ligaya and her co-stars in Miss Saigon for helping her navigate that stage in her life when she was still 18 years old.

"Thankfully there was a lot of us who went, thankfully my mom was also there to take some of the pressure off but here is this country that sending you off with well wishes and hopes for the best and you're over there in the other side of the world, kind of like flying blind a little bit. Is what we're doing working?" she recalled.

Lea also pointed out that she had a different path before joining the musical. She was taking a pre-medical course in college before she landed the role of Kim in Miss Saigon, so she had to keep up.

"I wasn't trained in the same way that let's say a lot of theater kids that went to college, with all the technique, with all the knowledge. I didn't have that. I was in college for something completely different so it was like, so I had to really depend on the director, thank goodness he was a genius, our producer, the creative forces behind the music and the lyrics. You just try and navigate this. It was nuts. It was a crazy time," she recounted.

When asked how she was able to navigate well that kind of stardom she experienced at such a young age, Lea shared: "I think it helps when the authority figures in your life never ever did the, 'Ang galing-galing mo,' because I've seen that happen to some of my contemporaries from childhood and that can mess you up because the real world is not that.

"And so I think because I wasn't treated with that kind of quote and quote admiration from that young age, my entry into the real world, it felt more normal because I knew that no one was going to indulge this 18-year-old and if I needed a stern talking too, I would get one even when I was over there," she added.

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Lea starred as Kim in Miss Saigon in London in 1989. She won the 1990 Laurence Olivier Award for Best Actress in a Musical following her performance.

In 1991, she again headlined the musical as Kim on Broadway and won several awards including the Drama Desk, Theatre World, and Outer Critics Circle awards. She also won a Tony Award for her performance.