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Bryan Wong talks Gonna Make It

Greetings and salutations, fellow stargazers! This is your Showbiz Sista bringing you the rest of the good bits from her interview with Bryan Wong.

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Greetings and salutations, fellow stargazers! This is your Showbiz Sista bringing you the rest of the good bits from her interview with Bryan Wong.

As you know, Bryan has taken on his first dramatic role in seven years with the currently-airing Gonna Make It, in which he plays a hair stylist who shaves his head when he’s diagnosed with cancer.

In spite of being a staple face in variety hosting, acting, he says, is his first love. But thanks to factors beyond his control, he hasn’t acted in any dramas since 2007’s Honour And Passion.

“After that drama, for the next one year, I was asking to do drama quite adamantly,” he recounted. “In the third year I decided to stop asking altogether. And suddenly, after seven years, in February, my manager asked me, ‘There’s this role.’ I said, ‘Oh, yeah, that’ll be fun, why not?’ Then suddenly she tells me, ‘But you’ll have to shave.’ I said, ‘Shave? I don’t have a moustache.’”

And that’s how Bryan came to change his look completely. Read on to find out about his hairy adventures and the fitness challenge he’s accepted from Showbiz Sista!

Showbiz Sista: How did you feel when you shaved your head on camera?

Bryan: Minutes before I shot the scene, I was texting my two pals: ‘What did I sign up for? Am I really going to do this? Oh, no! Can I just go home?’

(After I shaved my head), when I saw myself, I almost smiled, and said, ‘Hey! It’s quite round! The top part is quite nice!’ Then I realised, ‘Oh, s***, we’re still rolling. Emo.’ And when the deed was done, I was just looking at myself, I said, ‘Hey, I can live with that’. I was pretty pleased. It’s not, like, some odd shape.

Showbiz Sista: You’ve said this is the first time you’ve gone bald. Have you really had the same hairstyle all these years?

Bryan: I have tried some other hairstyles, once in a long while. There was once I kept my hair long. I actually had a perm. At that time I was just trying to follow the likes of Korean stars – having long hair and dyeing it, with some highlights and stuff like that. I’d always wanted to wake up in the morning and look into the mirror and fluff up my hair – long hair makes your face smaller, because it covers your face. I’ve bleached my hair before, to platinum blonde and platinum grey. I’ve done it all. But eventually I think the formula that works best for me, or the one that looks most human, would be my safety helmet in black.

Showbiz Sista: You’ve said before that variety hosting is tiring because you have to be yourself.

Bryan: You know how you react to things; you know what your next train of thought will be. If I were to go on the street to interview a stranger, I know what I’m going to do. I know exactly what he’ll say, I know exactly how I’m going to react. I’m either going to go over the top or I’m going to dismiss this person at the back of my mind and say, ‘Okay, there’s no point going on because this is not going to work.’ I’ve had enough of me. There comes a stage when you just feel, ‘There’s just too much of me’. I don’t know, I think when I signed up to be an artiste, I didn’t really think I was going to get paid to be me.

Showbiz Sista: Do you mean you’d rather do drama full time?

Bryan: There should always be a balance. I know myself too well: If you were to throw me totally in drama, I might enjoy it for the first few projects. But then if things get a little bit the same, and the roles you’re given are the same, they just go by different names, then you start to think, ‘I would just love to go back to the streets’. No – that sounds wrong. I mean because in a lot of variety shows, they’re running around on the streets. I would like to do variety stuff. So I feel that there should always be a balance – a healthy dose.

Showbiz Sista: It sounds like you like having drama in your life. Are you a bit of a drama king?

Bryan: I am. I used to be more of a drama king way back in my 20s and my mid 30s. But I think I mellowed a lot after 35 or 36. I’m 42; next January I’ll be 43. Sometimes when I go to photoshoots and people say, ‘Okay, Bryan, smile!’ – that day when we were doing the photoshoot for iWeekly, they wanted me to give a megawatt smile. In my heart I was saying, ‘OMG, I’m freaking 42!’ I think if I were 20-something or 30-something, I could be utterly shameless. But now – age is not an issue but it is a burden. It’s a psychological burden.

Showbiz Sista: You lost a lot of weight for the role.

Bryan: I’ve made a pact with myself that I’m not going to put those extra fats back on. About two weeks or three weeks ago, for the very first time in my life, I signed up with a personal trainer. I decided that whatever I lost, I want to put back on in mass. In some muscles. It’s fun – it’s, like, the challenge that I set for myself. It’s going to be chest and bubble butt. There is this form that you have to fill in and one of the questions is, ‘What do you hope to achieve after your training session with us?’ And I looked at (the trainer) and said, ‘You can’t expect me to say t*** and a** right? Like, I want bubble buttocks and big pecs – huge pecs. I like big cups.’ He said, ‘Yeah, you can write it all down and when we see your results we can take this out and see whether you have reached your goals.’ And I thought that was completely hilarious. I kept it empty. Because I know too well. I’m not going to leave anything there in black and white. And also I want to give myself this escape plan. If I fail, I’ll be like, ‘Look, I wrote nothing’. I like challenges but there is always this chicken in you – you’re just, ‘What if?’

Showbiz Sista: So, in four months, how about coming back for a topless shoot?

Bryan: Let’s do April. Because we’re near the holiday season. And then Chinese New Year. I’ve been procrastinating for too long. This has been on the top of my wish list every year – my resolution – to achieve the bod that I want. Every year it’s the same story: I stick to it for three months and then give up. If not, when I’m almost there, somebody will tell me, ‘Please, lah, don’t do that, you look like a giant.’ (Gives his manager a significant look)

Bryan’s manager: He once really looked like a giant, you know. I think that was three years back. He could hardly close his arms. And his chest was like, wow! And his head was so small and his body was so big.

Bryan: I was such a Pamela Andersen then. I liked it, but is it suitable to be on screen? When I have partners like Kym Ng who barely reach up to my pecs without shoes? I could be breastfeeding her when she’s next to me. We can’t get too fat as well. But nowadays because it’s all flat screen, it’s okay to be a bit round

.

Bryan’s manager: Your head ah. Unless you stand beside Cavin Soh.

Bryan: I’m very happy hosting with him because he always makes me feel so good. Even on bad hair days.

Catch Gonna Make It on weeknights at 9pm on MediaCorp TV Channel 8. Showbiz Sista, signing out. Live long and pop corn!

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