My awkward moment: Divian Nair

SINGAPORE — Divian Nair is the self-proclaimed “king of awkward moments” so, naturally, he had trouble picking only one awkward moment white working on the set of Mata Mata: A New Era.

In the MediaCorp TV Channel 5 show set in the 1970s, he plays police officer Raj Mohan, whose pal is fellow officer Lee Boon Ping, played by Rayve Tay. Their characters will make their debut in the episode on Monday — and their chemistry falls into the, er, hirsute category.

“Most of the time, the awkward moments happened between the characters Raj and Boon Ping,” Divian shared. “Boon Ping has crazy hair and it flops all over the place. Sometimes we’re doing a scene and he just turns around and his hair gets in my face. And he doesn’t know because the director hasn’t called ‘cut’ and I have to talk with strands of his hair in my mouth. It’s kind of strange.”

Coincidentally, another awkward moment on the Mata Mata set also involves his mouth. “There’s also a bit of a kissing scene which I did and it’s my first on-screen kiss, so that was really nerve-wrecking,” Divian said. In the interest of not giving away any spoilers, he did not reveal whom he shared the kiss with, except to say “it’s one of the Junior Inspectors”.

The prospect of that scene didn’t actually daunt him until it was crunch time. “I woke up in the morning and was all raring to go. ‘It’s the day of the kiss scene and everyone’s going to watch me kiss a girl.’ When we actually came down to it, I had chicken feet,” he said.

“It was kind of scary. Because it’s 40 people on set watching you kiss a girl, and you’re like, ‘Do I know how to do this?’ There’s no romance when all these people are there. It becomes a very technical thing. So, yeah, we had to do 10 takes of, like, full-on making out. So that was really awkward. But it turned out to be a lot of fun. I think she was more nervous than me and that made me feel a bit better.”

Catch Mata Mata: A New Era on Mondays at 8pm on MediaCorp TV Channel 5.