My awkward moment: Chen Hanwei

SINGAPORE — Let’s be perfectly clear here: Chen Hanwei didn’t have any awkward moments of his own while he was on the set of Blessings, the drama now airing on MediaCorp TV Channel 8, in which he plays the ineffectual scion of a traditional bakery who is visited by his time-travelling ancestor (played by Shaun Chen).

Unsurprisingly, though, being the irrepressible poker-faced goof he is, Chen is instead the source of his co-stars’ awkward moments while they are on camera and he is not.

“I play pranks on other actors,” he divulged. “When they yell, ‘Action!’ I pull my zipper down and back up really quickly. It’s not like they can see anything, but it gives them a little shock. And they have to continue doing their scene and hold back.”

His fellow cast members Shaun, Yvonne Lim and Yao Wen Long were not exempt from his little tricks. “They scream,” Chen said, then when people ask what happened, “I’ll be like, ‘No! I did not pull my zipper down’!”

Stout denial, it turns out, is Chen’s forte. It works, because “I am good at suppressing my laughter!”, he bragged. “Yvonne and Jesseca (Liu) can’t do it, neither can Shaun. I think I’m the best. They all can’t compare to me.

“I like teasing them and then putting on my poker face. No one knows that I’m the one creating trouble.”

That’s probably why they say men never grow up.

Catch the last three episodes of Blessings on weekdays at 9pm on MediaCorp TV Channel 8.