As it is, being an actor isn’t easy — but Zoe Tay faced all that and more when she suddenly found herself under the watchful gaze of someone who had it out for her.
In a recent episode of the Mediacorp talk show The Zoe and Liang Show, Zoe Tay revealed that there was someone in her past who disliked her so much that she couldn’t catch a break from criticism.
“Have you ever been scolded from the beginning [of a day of filming] up until the end?” the 55-year-old actress asked Ya Hui, who was the show’s guest star.
Ya Hui shook her head and said that she’d never been in such a situation before, but Zoe raised her hand, answering her own question: “I have!”
Recounting her experience, Zoe Tay said: “Every day without fail, when I walked past her I would get scolded. I got scolded even just sitting there.”
Yai Hui and co-host Guo Liang expressed confusion and asked Zoe Tay for elaboration.
Shrugging her shoulders, Zoe then stated: “She simply just ‘marked’ me and kept staring at me. No matter what I did, she would find something to say about it.”
Guo Liang, 54, added: “That sounds so pointless, to target an actor like that — it shouldn’t happen. How unprofessional!”
Zoe also gave further examples: “Even if I only had to film the last scene of the day, I would be booked for the first one too. She told me, ‘I don’t know when I’ll need you, so I need you around.'”
Despite the inconvenience, Zoe was made to stay on from 6am in the morning until after 7pm in the evening, she shared.
“At around 7.20pm, she told me to run from one location to another — that was all I needed to do [for my scene], and we packed up after that,” Zoe said.
Back then, she didn’t understand why it happened to her.
Jokingly hazarding a guess, Guo Liang suggested that it was because the individual had fallen for Zoe.
And although his guess was off the mark, it was surprisingly close to the truth.
“Many years later, I heard from her,” Zoe said. “She told me, ‘Oh, back then, I thought that my husband fancied you.'”
Guo Liang immediately exclaimed: “You see, it wasn’t her [who had fallen for Zoe], but her husband!”
He added: “This morning, I heard a phrase. Someone said, ‘Women can live without food, but they can’t live without jealousy in their lives!'”
This article was first published on AsiaOne and republished on theAsianparent with permission.
