ICYMI: Joshua Garcia recently took to his Instagram stories to clarify that he is *not* dating Ria Atayde. He posted a screenshot of a *fake* Facebook account under his name that uploaded a ~sweet~ picture of him and Ria with the caption: "Ikaw ang aking liwanag."
"Hello!" he wrote. "This is not mine! I don't have [a] Facebook page! Thank you."
He also tagged Ria, asking her to take a look at it as well, plus his friend Kyle Echarri, who apparently warned him about the fake Facebook account in the first place.
Ria also reposted Joshua's story, warning people to not trust everything they see online. "Liwanag?! Bakit?! Hahaha. So funny, but also, another reminder to always check your sources. Hahahaha," she wrote.
The post on the fake Joshua Garcia page is still up as of this writing.
In October 2021, Ria was asked about her relationship with Joshua when she guested on the Cinema One show, Pop Cinema. Netizens started speculating about a budding romance between the two when the 24-year-old actor started joining the outings of the Nguya Squad, which includes Daniel Padilla and Kathryn Bernardo.
"We laugh about it," was Ria's easy response to the rumors. She said that she would even joke around and say, "Uy, rumored boyfriend, halika dito."
"We're friends and it's funny. Seryoso, joke ba 'to? Super, every time I see that I'm like… (laughs). 'Cause he's really like a younger brother," she explained.