My awkward moment: Desmond Tan

SINGAPORE — If you think it’s easy to look as cool as Desmond Tan while playing a cop in Against The Tide, well, even cool dukes trip up sometimes.

“When I first got the role, I thought it was going to be action-packed because he’s a cop, but in the end, it wasn’t. There were almost zero fighting scenes — but there was a lot of chasing and running,” Tan said.

His character, assistant superintendent Zhou Jianfeng, isn’t actually very good at his job (“He’s never cracked a case,” Tan said) so it was even more important that he looked the part. Which was why it was a bit awkward for him when he failed to do even that.

In one of the chase scenes, he had to run and jump across a fence while looking suave. “We did a few takes so towards the end, I was quite tired because I was jumping up a slope,” said Tan. “During one of the takes, I almost didn’t make it across — my leg caught on the fence and I almost fell. I looked quite stupid, lah.

“They showed me that take — it was quite funny. And they didn’t say ‘cut’, so I had to continue the chase. That was quite awkward and embarrassing,” he said.

That was one of the rare scenes where Jianfeng is actually working on a case, because like Tan mentioned, it’s a wonder the character manages to earn his salary.

“Sometimes, he almost gets the culprit — I think that is cool — but other than that, he’s stupid, because he’s very hot-tempered,” he added. “It’s fun playing a hot-tempered character because you can really vent your frustrations sometimes.”

And what would make Tan very frustrated? “Traffic, certain things in life,” he said with a laugh. “(In life,) we don’t have a lot of opportunities to vent ... When I was playing this character, I could raise my voice. It’s fun but tiring and sometimes, I would have a headache at the end of the day.”

Catch Against The Tide on weekdays at 9pm on MediaCorp TV Channel 8.