The Little Nyonya does Survivor: Tampines?! *Exclusive videos!
MediaCorp TV
Text by Kwok Kar Peng
Editorial team: Lim Wen Ying
Joanne, Jeanette and Yuwu in a forsaken wilderness, Zzen with the fire torch and Joanne succumbing to crickets and worms for survival. The eastern suburb of Tampines, for one day, becomes almost synonymous with Fiji, Cook Islands and Gabon.
The sun blazes down, sandflies, millipedes and God’s other creepy crawlies are squirming over the parched ground and the nearest loo is the bush – of which there is an abundance here – next to me. Thank goodness water is scarce.
Above us, an aqua blue sky with fluffy white clouds. On the horizon, the towering HDBs of Tampines beckons.
Yes, I really mean the far eastern suburb. This forsaken patch of land is actually Tampines! Anyone wishing to get off the concrete jungle can just save their moolah from an air ticket and just hop on the bus to the Tampines Mountain Biking Trail at the intersection of Tampines Avenue 7 and 9.
And we, camera-toting reporters from six different medium, have festered here since 11am last Friday Oct 31, all to, and I quote from the media invite, “cover the biggest scene in The Little Nyonya where we heard live mice will be used and a wooden hut will be burnt down, and trapping the cast in it!”
Only that the ‘live mice’ has been changed at the last minute to crickets and two different kinds of equally gross worms. The change is of little comfort to Joanne Peh, whose character Yuzhu has been abandoned by her devil of a husband Robert Zhang at a dilapidated hut and forced to chomp down on live insects for survival. Mice or worms, it still freaks Joanne out.
“The director has a way of convincing female artistes to do something they are terrified of,” Joanne confided in us before filming. And indeed, she’s right! Because after just a few words to her by the director, Joanne laughed in resignation and proceeded with the ordeal. She shuddered, groaned, squirmed and even cried but the brave girl grabbed a handful of the crawlies, held them close to her mouth and completed a few takes of the scene. Bravo!
How did she find the whole process? Click HERE for videos!
In the midst of the heat and discomfort, Joanne was a joy to have around, despite her dry disheveled hair, stuck with dried leaves no less, and filthy, muddy self. She joked with us, pranced around in her ‘Best Halloween Costume Ever’ for the cameras, told us the latest movies she saw, and quivered when, in boredom, one reporter recounted ghostly experiences. Most definitely, one learns to amuse oneself when in the most dire situations.
Burn, burn, burn!!
Yueniang and Chen Xi, played by Jeanette Aw and Qi Yuwu, finds Yuzhu groveling for life in the hut but before they could rescue her out, they are locked inside by Robert Zhang (Zzen) who proceeds to torch them alive.
The blazing climax would only be a few minutes in the episode but in no exaggeration, the scene took more than three hours to film. The hut was set alight by the martial arts instructors and the fires put out countless times to allow the camera to capture multiple angles of the blaze, both from outside the hut, and inside the hut where Yuwu fights to break the door down.
Yuwu thankfully was unhurt during filming. “It was very crowded and lively inside with more than 10 people inside the hut,” he told us grinning. “Everyone was thinking up all sorts of different ways to set the hut on fire. I don’t particularly fear fire but I don’t like it either. And because we are filming, we have to create the impression that it’s a very dangerous environment and so I can’t help but be a bit scared sometimes, for example, there’ll be some air pressure when they light the fire up. But everyone is very cautious, which is why we are still filming now (after so long).”
And the ending would be??
“The ending is…” he drawled. “… We will wrap up filming, heheh.”
Catch The Little Nyonya when it debuts Nov 25, 2008 at 9pm on Channel 8! The drama also stars Eelyn Kok, Lin Meijiao, Li Yinzhu, Pierre Png, Darren Lim, Pan Lingling, Apple Hong and Andie Chen.
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