No drama please, says actress Julie Tan

SINGAPORE — Julie Tan has a pretty sweet deal in The Journey: Our Homeland. As an eligible rich girl, not only were most of her scenes shot in air-conditioned luxury rooms, while her co-actors sweated it out outdoors; she also has Ian Fang and Shane Pow vying for her affections in the drama.

“I kind of like the feeling of being chased — like, the ball’s in my court. I get to choose,” Tan said of her character.

In real life, though, the actress said one guy is enough. “Too many ... I don’t really like drama. There is already a lot of drama in our shows, so in real life, I would like to keep it simple,” said the 22-year-old.

No, she does not believe in playing love games. “If I like the guy and the guy likes me — just get together, and then we see how things go ... and not so much play games, like, ‘I’m going to text him one hour after he texts me’.

“I have friends who do that,” Tan said, adding that she chides them when their plans backfire and the guys lose interest.

Although she is close to Fang and Pow in different ways, do not ask her to choose between her co-stars. “Shane is like my brother and my sister,” she said. “We are always fooling around on set and watching funny videos.”

They also play-wrestle — although she said he lets her win. “I’ll be like, ‘Ah! It hurts!’ Yeah, I fake it. I mean, that’s what girls always do, right?”

Her bond with Fang arose because “we are often misunderstood”. He has been her confidant since they co-starred in 96°C Cafe. “Ian and I felt very alone back then,” she said. “We were young, there were a lot of things we didn’t understand, and we were both quite strongheaded in some ways, so we offended quite a few people. They had this thing where they didn’t really like us. It felt almost like we only had each other.”

One reason for their behaviour, she explained, was that they had “just started out”. “Maybe we didn’t really focus that much and we were always playing. In this industry, no one has the time to babysit you. If you don’t grow up fast, people will just write you off as being difficult to work with. People say, ‘Why is Julie so rude?’, but there are days we don’t feel like talking. After filming, which is sometimes very draining, I’ll be very spaced out. If people talk to me, I might come across as very cold. The thing is, they don’t understand that, actually, it was a long day.”

These days, things are quite different. “We both learnt the hard way,” she said. “After a while, you just learn how to be more people-oriented, in a sense, and you finally understand the meaning of respect.” May Seah

Catch The Journey: Our Homeland starting July 16, weekdays at 9pm on MediaCorp TV Channel 8.