PUBLISHED ONOctober 20, 202610:10 AMBYEsther Lam
Carrie Wong was excited to dive into her first thriller Kidnap Game and her two weeks of filming in Singapore alongside an all-Japanese crew turned out to be an unexpected eye-opener.
Speaking to AsiaOne recently, the 32-year-old local actress revealed that working with them offered a whole new level of trust and support on set.
She shared that for local productions, she would usually check the camera angles with the crew during filming, especially for emotional scenes, to prepare herself.
However, for Kidnap Game, the crew assured they would follow her lead, allowing her to focus entirely on her performance, and she rarely needed more than two or three takes each time.
“It was very amazing that they simply told me, ‘Just do your thing, we will come to you. Don’t worry about other things,'” said Carrie.
“You feel very protected and you feel like you have to worry about nothing else but your performance.”
Kidnap Game is a suspense thriller series that centres around seven simultaneous kidnappings across Asia, with the victims’ families becoming entangled in a deadly game. Each character is assigned a vastly different mission in a scheme designed to claim six lives, leaving only one survivor.
Carrie plays cheerful flight attendant Janice whose fiance, played by local actor Herman Keh, is kidnapped.
The series also stars Japanese actor Kentaro Sakaguchi as elite detective Toshiro Niide, South Korean actor Lee Joon-gi as genius surgeon Han Ki-joo, Taiwanese actress Alice Ko as influencer housewife Christina, Filipino actor Joel Torre as taxi driver Miguel, Thai actress Praew Narupornkamol Chaisang as nightclub hostess Ayun, and Stanley Yau — a member of Hong Kong’s popular boy group Mirror — as multinational corporate lawyer Andy.
It is produced by Hong Kong-based MakerVille, in collaboration with South Korean production company SimStory and Japan’s Fuji Television, and was also filmed in Hong Kong, Taipei, Seoul, Tokyo, Bangkok, Manila and Okinawa.
‘It gave me goosebumps’
That culture of care extended beyond filming and into the set’s daily environment, including how newcomers were welcomed on set.
Carrie told us that whenever a new person joined the production, someone would introduce them and the entire cast and crew would applaud to officially welcome them into the project.
“It’s a very different culture,” she added. “It gave me goosebumps because of the dedication and passion they have for the entire project.”
She admitted that while the tradition felt “a bit awkward” for her and Herman as it was not something they had experienced in Singapore productions, she felt “it’s such a motivation and a great energy to start the entire series”.
On whether she felt any pressure representing Singapore in the international production, Carrie candidly admitted she didn’t burden herself with such thoughts and instead chose to focus entirely on giving her best.
“I’m actually someone who enjoys pressure because when you feel pressurised over something, that means that whatever you are doing means a lot to you,” she said.
Rather than shying away from the weight of the project, she embraced it and said: “I tend to take it as a positive energy for me, not trying to panic and overwhelm myself over this.”
Struggling to understand her character
Stepping into the unfamiliar genre of dark thriller, Carrie revealed that she sought help from veteran actress and acting coach Yeo Yann Yann to better prepare herself for the role.
As the story’s premise is not a situation that people can easily understand or relate to, she wanted help from someone to push her emotions.
“Nobody can understand it truly and how it feels to be in that mental situation. I was just curious about how far I can go,” she said.
She added that consulting Yann Yann helped her have a clearer mental picture of how much desperation and energy she needed to bring to the screen.
Carrie also recalled having to constantly run mental rehearsals for her scenes.
Since she and her on-screen partner Herman shared almost no scenes together and had little time to build their chemistry off set, Carrie had to imagine the history between their characters and draw on that backstory to tap into the right emotions.
“I feel that the most difficult thing was really the desperation that you need to hold in your heart,” she said, describing the process as deeply draining.
On whether she finds it hard to separate herself from the story after intense scenes, Carrie confidently said she knows how to get herself out of a scene and believes in not dwelling on it too much after it’s over.
Another challenge Carrie faced was her difficulty in relating to her character Janice.
While the physical aspects of filming were rather manageable, she recalled bridging the mental gap with Janice being the real test.
She admitted: ” I don’t understand what Janice is thinking at first because she’s so different from me that I can never understand how she feels.”
Carrie said she would personally lose sleep and appetite if she were in such high-stress situations, but Janice would remember to eat, drink and sleep.
She recalled being puzzled by a scene in which Janice stops to put on her sunglasses before running off during a crisis, a choice Carrie initially found baffling. When she asked director Yusuke Kato about the character’s actions, he explained that Janice was simply “taking a break”.
However, she came to realise that Janice experiences anxiety in her own way, adding that her pampered yet carefree nature also served as a rare
Kidnap Game is now available on Viu.
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