Sandra Ng and her golden chickens

SINGAPORE — What is an interview with Hong Kong comedian Sandra Ng without a dash of candour and a whole lot of laughs?

Speaking in a mixture of Mandarin and Cantonese at last month’s press conference with fellow actress Ivana Wong and director-screenwriter Matt Chow, the veteran actress kept us rolling with laughter with funny anecdotes from her latest film, Golden Chickensss.

“I thought about bringing them home,” Ng quipped, referring to the enormous 38G breast prostheses that she had to wear while shooting Golden Chickensss, to raucous laughter in the room. “On the last day of our shoot, I thought about bringing them home for the whole family to enjoy.”

Ng reprises her award-winning role as the simple and kind-hearted prostitute-turned-mama-san Ah Kam in Golden Chickensss, which is the second sequel to 2002’s highly successful Golden Chicken. The 48-year-old, who rose to fame in the 1990s after a series of comedic roles in films such as 1988’s The Greatest Lover and 1992’s All’s Well Ends Well, has starred in more than 100 films, and is widely recognised as one of Hong Kong’s most bankable actresses.

Golden Chickensss also features about a dozen superstar appearances, including Andy Lau, Louis Koo, Donnie Yen, Nick Cheung, Edison Chen, Ronald Cheng and Tony Leung Ka-Fai — all of whom agreed to appear in the movie because of their personal friendships with Ng, who also produced the movie.

“To be fair, we paid every actor the same amount. But that was because we really didn’t have the budget,” Ng explained. “And each one of them is a big star. I wouldn’t be able to afford to pay them even if you divided their usual commission by four.”

She added sheepishly: “So I wrote a thank you card to each one of them, to tell them that I was crying tears of gratitude.”

But Ng was all praise for Hong Kong singer-songwriter Ivana Wong, who plays a hard-working and determined young prostitute who speaks in Mainland Chinese-accented Cantonese in her first film role — even though Ng didn’t know her name when they first met.

“I was passing by the hair salon (where Ng was getting her hair done), and she said to me, “Hey, Wong Somebody,” Wong recounted, to shouts of embarrassment from Ng. “She wanted to ask me for (Cantopop singer) Hins Cheung’s telephone number. So I gave her his phone number, but I also invited her to watch my musical.”

And according to Ng, the demure and soft-spoken singer’s performance in the musical proved her potential for comedy, even though Ng admitted she had initially been reluctant to spend one of her precious free nights watching the show in the first place.

“I’ve had so many arguments with that long-haired guy (referring to her longtime director and producer boyfriend Peter Chan Ho-sun, who sports shoulder-length hair) at home. He says I go out for movies and dinners all the time. I was also really tired that night, and as you know there’s paparazzi now, so I have to dress up when I go out.

“After I watched the musical, I went home and told Chan that I had found an actress he could use. But he rarely makes comedies these days, so I just kept her name in my mind.”

And when the time came for Ng to cast the movie, she thought of Wong.

“We were originally going to look for an actress from Mainland China with a great body for her role,” Ng explained. “We thought about it for a long time, and we realised we would really want to kill ourselves if we found someone with a great body but zero acting skills. Then suddenly, I remembered Ivana Wong.”

Ng continued: “Ivana comes from a good family, her parents have taught her very well, and she is very cultured. And it’s okay that she’s doing comedy — but think about what her profession is in the movie!”

Ng also expressed disappointment that audiences in Singapore would not be able to hear the accent Wong invented for the role, because the movie is dubbed in Mandarin here. “Ivana says her parents haven’t seen the movie, but I believe they will be proud of her when they see it. They will be surprised to see her do so well!”

Golden Chickensss is in cinemas now. For the full interview, visit Rated G (http://tdy.sg/blogratedg)