Cheryl Wee and Daren Tan give love another shot in Mata Mata: A New Generation

SINGAPORE — In the first season of Mata Mata, Cheryl Wee and Daren Tan played star-crossed lovers from different sides of the track who did not end up together. Their story took a backseat in the second season, but in the upcoming third and final season, called Mata Mata: A New Generation, the two will resurface — as their original characters’ offspring.

A New Generation is set in the 1980s, two decades after their original characters were first seen. But why did they return for this new season? “A lot of people want to see Cheryl back together with (me),” quipped Tan. “That’s what the production (crew) are always telling me!”

This, of course, means the pair get another chance to fulfil destiny.

“I always believe that when viewers fall in love with a drama, it’s the characters who are really important,” Tan said. “Even though it’s weird — I mean, no father and son look like twins, right?”

But it works, he added. “You know how Taiwanese dramas have, like, five generations (of characters) and all of them look the same because it’s the same actors?” he laughed. “They said that this would be the last season of Mata Mata but if there’s a fourth season, I’d love to come back as, maybe, the grandson!”

As for Wee, she doesn’t have an issue with the mother-daughter conundrum: She thinks she looks just like her mother, hairdressing guru Jean Yip. “Recently, I’ve been taking some pictures of my mum,” she said. “I told her, ‘I feel I look exactly like you.’ My hair is kind of the same length as hers right now. Very thankfully, in real life, I look like my mum. I think she’s very pretty.”

To play the character of Joyce Goh, whom she described as “book-smart” and “robotic”, she took inspiration from an unlikely source: Jim Parsons’ character Sheldon in The Big Bang Theory. “I think it’s a very interesting way of portraying a robotic, nerdy person — that kind of social awkwardness. You love him, but you want to hate him sometimes.”

But while Sheldon lives in a world of scientific research and progression, Wee’s screen career has seen her constantly time-travelling. Having appeared earlier this year in the MediaCorp TV Channel 8 drama The Journey: Our Homeland, which was also set in the ’80s, her next project is a film called My Love Sinema, for which she is currently filming in Ipoh, which is set in the ’50s.

“I’m really thankful for that,” she said of her roles, adding that her favourite time periods are the 1950s and 1960s. “Period projects are very meaningful because I can never go back to experience what it was like. It’s only through (acting) that I can.” May Seah

Catch Mata Mata: A New Generation starting Dec 7 at 10pm on MediaCorp TV Channel 5.