THE FEARLESS MAGGIE WILSON—CONSUNJI

The host and interior designer talks about her design sensibilities, her travels, and the importance of taking risks

- ALYSSA LAPID

If you want to know what mantra host Maggie Wilson Consunji lives by, just take a look at her back. Tattooed in cursive along her spine are the words, “Feel the fear and do it anyway.”

She was fearless as a child. “My parents made sure that I was competitive,” she says, recalling how athletic she was as a kid, trying out swimming, tennis, and volleyball while living in Saudi Arabia. “I was fearless in making decisions so it was kind of practice for me.” She was fearless at 14, when she decided to stay in the Philippines to model after being scouted while on vacation, and in her every decision since.

Her life has been a series of bold steps and her daring has landed her multiple titles: Actress (Encantadia, Darna, and Beauty Queen, among others), beauty queen (Miss World Philippines 2017), MTV VJ, host (Philippines’ Next Top Model, Beached, AXN’s Project Go), and more recently, interior designer and businesswoman of the Acasa Group.

Perhaps the best representation of her dauntlessness can be found on the fifth season of The Amazing Race Asia, which Maggie joined in 2016 alongside fellow beauty queen Parul Shah. Her grit and courage allowed her to tackle the most physically-challenging and mentally-daunting tasks, including eating a plate of critters. “I had to eat a plate of exotic food like rats, bats, scorpions,” she recalls.