Hi George. It's been a while but I want to know how you've been. I mean it's been years.
It's been a new years. Yeah it's been a few years what the kids say nowadays it's been a minute but it's been a hot minute. A lot of minutes. It's been a lot of minutes since we last spoke I think. Yeah I mean 2015, at least. You know
how has the pandemic been treating you and your family and work
like everyone. I love the pandemic. No, I mean we all hated the pandemic right? It got us all stuck inside initially. It was all fun and okay. Yeah. Well I can enjoy this little home time and then you just go crazy especially when you've got kids and family and you know everyone out there has had similar issues. It's a whole mess hasn't it? And then now we're still in it. We're just trying to slowly crawl out of our hermit crab existence and just see what's out there now. Real life
since the last time I think we've spoken you have obviously moved and not only that, I mean your dad twice
over. How
has that been for you? I'm just trying to imagine you as a dad and all I'm thinking is that they're climbing all over you. You're the fun dad, you're not the disciplinarian at all doing everything
was more relaxed and I am. I get anxiety about everything. I've always been the more anxious person and scared of things. Just scared of things in general Janet was always the more outgoing, adventurous one who's not afraid to do anything that was pre kids and then post kids, it's translated into how we parent. I am, I always the one who sees Egan or Dylan, my two kids, you know, they're standing somewhere a bit too, looks a bit to sketch and I'm worried they're going to fall, so I'm
the one that's okay. Alright, so yes, so we're still like that and I am definitely not the relaxed dad.
Are you loving the fatherhood? Are you feeling, are you feeling like, okay, this is this is good,
gene you don't have any kids, right? You're you're Yeah, I mean, I can tell from your fresh face, you don't it's like yeah, I can tell from no bags under your eyes for me and this is with tons of makeup for me, For me it's yeah, it's been,
there's there's so many more. Instead of this sort of like more moderate kind of level of happiness, you get these highs and you also get these sort of lows, the anxiety of parenting as well, but you get these new peaks and new troughs of emotion basically and I think it's an actor really has opened up a lot more in me that wasn't there before, maybe always locked inside before to the point where now I would also, in terms of emotionally, I would cry at anything, I used to cry a lot
of stuff, but now you remember Avengers Endgame when Tony Stark says, I love you 9000, whenever he says 14,000 everyone was correct and I always triple it. I just bawled my eyes out and also I was on a plane recently and I saw two rows down on a small screen, someone was watching up, remember up with that
show, the balloon
don't talk about it in the short film at the beginning, it just shows like this whole lifetime of love and they get one of them passes away. Spoiler alert, I was bawling just in the 1st 10 minutes, I wasn't watching my tv screen, I was watching like three rows down two or three rows down on someone else's seat. So when the flight attendant came past, I'm bawling and sitting in front of a blank screen, what is wrong with this guy? What is wrong with him? Well, so I
love that, that is so nice. It's sort of open up your, your
even more than I used to be the most emotional wreck and now I'm even more of an emotional wreck now. Yeah,
that's cute, George, that's lovable and you're right, you can tap into all that for all your acting work, isn't
it? Absolutely true. The stakes, you can raise the stakes in a much more real way now I feel, I feel it really helps. But so to any actor out there, my best advice is to have kids, anyone and just have kids, you know, so
congratulations on the film on your Hollywood
debut can come that big? Yeah this scale. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Thank you.
Directed by James wan who is huge in the horror scene
with the Conjuring,
insidious, saw what was the experience like for you working on this film with him? He
um it was terrible. No, he was your perfect director because when you talk to him face to face off camera and stuff, when you're not working, he's so jovial, he's so friendly, so down to earth makes you super relaxed. But then when you get to work and you're filming and its action, he knows exactly what he wants. He's super confident and he will guide you through this because he's made billions and billions of billions of dollars three times over with
his franchise. So Aquaman sort et cetera. So I just went okay, James, whatever you say, let's do this. So he's your perfect director because you don't want someone who's nicely nice all the time, including at work and not, no, I don't really know what to do, he's not like that, he's nice to you. And then when it comes to work he's down to business and that's the perfect combination.
Are you a fan of the horror genre? Is this your thing? Do you love it? Are you?
I am not, I'm not really usually a fan of horror is too scary. Horror films, horror video games too scary. What am I
saying? I shouldn't have asked because you cried it up.
The main thing for me in terms of acting in this sort of is a lot more action. I don't know whether you've seen it yet, but there's a lot of action for anyone who hasn't seen it yet. There's a lot of it's more like a slasher, like a retro James didn't want to go back to the horror genre that he's already worked on. If he was going to come back to direct an original thing, he wanted to do something that he's always wanted to do and that's the sort of retro genre,
hollow style. I didn't didn't know what was at first, I thought it was an ice cream, like a retro italian noir, but it's more like an eighties slasher. So it's fun. But still there are some scary moments and I had to be there and my acting was basically to try not to burst into tears when I got scared. No. Cut George
get it together.
George, I'll
be honest, I haven't watched the movie. I only watched the trailer and it scared me to bits
trailer shows you an element of it, but it only shows you really small part of it. You don't, first of all you don't see a lot of me and that's the important thing here. Gene. I think we both agree. But but you but you will see it takes you on a a massive ride. It's just a crazy goes bonkers basically. Almost halfway around halfway through it goes just crazy,
we need to talk about that shirtless scene, which I'm so disappointed. Did not make it in the movie.
Yeah, believe me. I was disappointed to there's a lot of work that went into that now.
What happened?
What James told me was that it was too hot. No, no, he didn't say that when I wake up then I woke up I started crying. And what happened was when I first met James when I first knew I got the role, one of his first conversation with me. I was actually in Singapore at the time. He emailed me saying, hey George nice to meet you on email, I'll meet you soon in L. A. But first um do you mind I love this character if he was bulked up, only this kind of strong character and I
said I was like happy to be there. I said yeah, James, whatever you want, what kind of body type do you want? You want to kind of chris Hemsworth like bulky or do you want more sort of cut? Like Bruce lee kind of cut, define and George young cut. And he said and he replied, oh bolt and cut would be great. I thought what? I have two months? I was in Singapore eating chicken rice. Everything.
Maybe some ice ca chung as well. I was just the algorithm about two months and thankfully the studio paid for the producers paid for a personal trainer and stuff and just, we just went at it and I've never worked out so much in my life because think about jean, think of the fear of being on like a 40 ft screen permanently. Anything, any imperfections whatsoever is there forever. So that drove me and let me go to the gym. Anyone just think about to be on a massive screen all over the world.
And so yeah, I got worked out, got all ready for that scene. We filmed the scene, I have clips of it, I have recording of it and then because of the pacing, it's a very action packed pacing especially from the sort of right at the halfway point. It couldn't be too still. And there was a scene where I'm like my injuries were getting tended to and I had to reveal a little bit of the chest and I wanted to drop my trousers as well and he just didn't fit the ride that James constructed this roller
coaster ride of the film. So we have talked about it and talked to him like the hashtag released the shirt that said to him at some point, it's definitely gonna be a deleted scene somewhere or in a special edition or somewhere when the DVD comes out, it has to be blu ray, whatever it has to Yeah, it's got to
be
releasing my footage for when I just recorded off it was there at the time. She recorded it.
Did you at least do like a calendar shoot or something with all those with all that work that you
could still do it just the same shot. I already did like not now but when I had it when I had that body the same shot and just do like a zoo lander like january, february, exactly the same image just with a different background color or something you know and then a santa hat like for december of course
for all the other occasions, Halloween Janet must have been a happy, happy wife you know
she noticed, yeah she was away for one month but for the first month I was filming here in L. A. And she was in Taiwan she came back for the second half of the filming and she noticed she said oh well you're a lot thicker, you've definitely, you're a lot more solid. She said to me and I knew there was a difference there,
she approves, I mean
she proved that it was, it was all paid for. So just thinking production for paying for that body and gave it back as soon as I finished
what was your first like cheat meal the second, you know you were done with that. What did you have
just carbs finally you know I just desserts, I didn't have the catering is always, I always compared the catering like Singapore when we're filming something, you get the lunch box, which I loved. I love it. But then it's very different in Hollywood. You get like order sushi, but then also you get an amazing desserts card like
cakes
and donuts or cupcakes and all this stuff and I couldn't have any of that when we were filming. So I went, what did I have? First of all, we went to a fast food place immediately after I did the shirt that me and Janet disorder just fries and burgers and all that stuff. And then I would have, I would have gotten some dessert would have been some sort of form of ice cream, just like a tub of ice and some and some baked goods, you know, whatever I
can imagine
it. Imagine this for a second listeners imagine all those beautiful desserts we can eat.
Are you happy with how the movie turned out?
I've been so happy with the reception, the audiences, the comments I'm going on instagram and stuff and just and the reviews, I mean people are getting it that there was James always said it was going to be a polarizing movie. It was going to split the audience down the middle. But really what we've found is a lot of the critics get it because they get that he's trying this new thing with the genre and and also homage to some of the heroes he directed it. Like brian de Palmer and David
are Gento. These sort of people that he worshiped when he was growing up. So they got it. And the audience also, especially the horror fans, especially James, James wong fans. They all got it as well. So I'm really pleased with the reception. You get it for the there's so many highbrows sort of serious things and I love how horror and just film the general of pushing the envelope that way. But with something, you know, post Covid and everything. I just you want to get out of the house.
See something that's just fun. This is this is just like a ride, like one of those thrill rides kind of thing, like a mixed bag of sweets with sugar. And again,
what's next for you? I know you're in L. A. Right now. What's happening there? Are you working on something or you're going to take some time out right now?
It's meetings I don't want to take any more time out. I mean thanks to Covid that was that was a big break. But it's meetings now since the movie it's just come out. So it's basically just kind of seeing what happens after this sort of the aftermath of that and what we can do whether it's L. A. Or wherever. So we're just seeing talked about the people three to someone at Mediacorp as well. And just saying if that ever happened because they're just good memories filming and they
get the right team together. I'll get on the plane and do the quarantine like five year quarantine. I can't remember
about their
half a decade.
Yeah. Do you miss working here in Singapore?
There was so much fun. I mean, it's Singapore is just, I made so many friends there. I had so much fun. It was, it's what developed my career. I mean, I did some stuff before Singapore, but really on the scale that I could do at the platform that we have in Singapore and it was an amazing experience and develop my confidence in this realm and developed a fan base as well. And it helped. It did help, but it
did translate to the west. I think Singapore. The beauty of Singapore's, you have mandarin and english and you know, all sorts of different languages, you have those options and including english. So it could translate to the west. So for me it was an amazing place to grow my career. I would love to come back If the right project comes in then of course
that would be great. It would be so nice to have you back for a little bit.
Just don't need to do a shirtless scene. I'm just saying that I don't want to work that hard again, workout that hard. I mean, I will if you need me, if people need me to fine, I'll do it. But yeah, I
mean, hey, this huge. You know Hollywood deal comes in and says, all right George, You know, you're going to be mostly shirtless, you, you're going to do it.
You're
working out every day
and we have a deal.
Well, it's been so lovely chatting with you George. Is there anything you want to say to your fans are watching or listening to this right now?
Gene and anyone who hasn't seen malignant yet, it's out in theaters right now. Go see it. It's a fun ride. People, some people say they're not, they don't like scary movies. This is more of a fun kind of thriller slasher kind of thing. So enjoy
if I end up crying, I'm going to call you or something like George.
You're not crying. I'll understand. Believe me, I'm the person. I'll cry with you. It's okay.
Thank you, George. So nice chatting with you.
Nice to chat with you to see you.