Best known to audiences as sexy vampire Eric Northman on the HBO TV series True Blood, which ended its run in 2014, actor Alexander Skarsgard is now heating up the big screen with his big break, The Legend Of Tarzan.

The 39-year-old plays the title role of John Clayton aka Lord Greystoke, the man known as Tarzan, who was reared by apes and is now in England taking his place in the House of Lords, with his wife Jane (Margot Robbie) by his side.

When he is sent back to the Congo to serve as a trade emissary of Parliament, he is unaware that he is a pawn in a deadly game orchestrated by the King of Belgium’s envoy (Christoph Waltz).

The action adventure flick opens here tomorrow.

Skarsgard is poised to make female fans swoon even more because of a sex scene during which, surprisingly, Skarsgard sustained the only “injuries” on the shoot.

They came courtesy of his co-star Robbie.

At our interview at the Beverly Hilton hotel in Beverly Hills, he said of his bruises: “(Director) David Yates was, like, ‘it needs to be animalistic. We need to feel the intensity. Come on, it’s Tarzan and Jane having sex. It can’t be like a missionary position’.”

SEX SCENE

He laughed and continued: “Margot is very sweet and didn’t want to hurt me, but we were on the table and I’m on top of her and it’s a shot of my back and just Margot’s hands.

“David wanted to feel like she’s really into it and it gets primal, so he was just egging her on (from) behind the camera, going, like, ‘Beat him, scratch him, hit him’.

“So Margot started going like (makes scratching gestures) on my back. Very traumatic experience. My job sucks, doesn’t it?”

Also sure to get the women feeling flushed is Skarsgard’s hot bod.

The strapping 1.93m-tall hunk’s Tarzan muscles are still visible even though he said he has given up the intense training and diet.

Of his punishing regimen, he said: “I wanted to put on weight in the beginning, so for the first three months, I was on a 7,000 calorie a day diet, which meant that I basically walked around on the True Blood set with Tupperware with steak and potatoes, just eating constantly.

“I lifted weights so I put on weight, but the goal wasn’t just to get bigger. I didn’t want Tarzan to look like a bodybuilder in the jungle.

“When he moves through the jungle, he has to be very athletic and flexible and nimble.”

The second phase was when he arrived in England for the shoot at the old Harry Potter studios at Leavesden, outside London.

“I started working with a choreographer on movement. It was yoga, Pilates, that kind of stuff, to get more athletic.”

He had to buy a whole new wardrobe to accommodate the new body, “but I also didn’t have a social life for nine months, so it wasn’t like I needed a lot of clothes… I couldn’t drink and I was on a very strict diet”.

Skarsgard followed in the footsteps of his father Stellan, an actor and now 65.

After a brief stint in the Swedish military, Skarsgard was in various indie movies like Straw Dogs, Melancholia and Disconnect as well as the war-themed TV mini-series Generation Kill.

So his first leading role in a US$180 million (S$243.5 million) tentpole blockbuster was incredibly exciting for him.

“The set looked like an amusement park. It was the biggest movie set I’ve seen in my life and I couldn’t believe it when I saw that I got to play there all day and that was my job for the next six months,” he said.

HUGE SET

Leavesden is an old Rolls-Royce airplane factory and a year before shooting started, film studio Warner Bros. turned two of the hangars into jungle sets 274m long.

There were massive trees and real bushes, and African grass was planted to recreate a savannah and an artificial lake.

A second unit went to Gabon to shoot backgrounds so that the vistas looked authentic.

CGI features prominently in the film as Tarzan has to interact with his brother apes and other wild animals.

No real animals were used in the shoot – all were lovingly recreated using cutting-edge visual effects.

There is a scene where Skarsgard fights his ape brother Akut – “a stuntman in a sumo wrestling suit, basically”.

In a scene with a majestic lion, Tarzan nuzzles him in greeting.

“(That) was also a stunt guy in pyjamas, which was slightly awkward to shoot because we met five minutes before. He was, like, ‘Hey, what’s up dude, and then down on all fours’.”

Skarsgard added “The scene with the elephant was a tennis ball on a C-Stand so that really felt like Day One of drama school in a way, where I had to have this emotional connection with this tennis ball.

“So it was quite exciting for me to watch the movie two months ago and to see how this tennis ball transformed into this beautiful elephant and how the stuntman in his grey pyjamas was suddenly like this beautiful lion.”

Skarsgard attributes his love for Tarzan to his dad, who worshipped the character as a kid.

“Every Saturday, they would play these old Johnny Weissmuller movies in Stockholm at the local movie theatre and he would save up his money and go see them.

“When he had a son, he wanted to introduce (me) to his biggest idol, so I fell in love with Tarzan and the jungle through my father watching these old movies together.”

And it will be a family affair at the Stockholm premiere of The Legend Of Tarzan in two weeks’ time, with his sister hosting the after-party.

Skarsgard says: “My dad was more excited than I was when I got the job… Out of all these premieres around the world, that’s the one I’m most excited about.

“To watch this movie next to my dad who introduced me to the character is going to be a pretty cool experience.”

Sex scene was ‘fun’: Robbie

Australian actress Margot Robbie burst on the international scene with Martin Scorsese’s The Wolf Of Wall Street (2013), where she played Leonardo DiCaprio’s sexy wife.

Before that, the cheerful 25-year-old’s resume in Hollywood was slender, though she starred in the long-running Australian TV series Neighbours for a few years.

But her star has been on the rise, with roles in last year’s Focus opposite Will Smith and as supervillain Harley Quinn in the upcoming Suicide Squad.

And, of course, the project we are at the Beverly Hilton to talk about, The Legend Of Tarzan, where she plays Jane, who is no shrinking violet or damsel in distress.

When kidnapped by the baddie (Christoph Waltz) as bait for Tarzan’s capture, she more than holds her own, gamely throwing herself into rivers, rescuing allies and fighting alongside her husband.

And thankfully, the blonde bombshell is not in the obligatory skimpy jungle outfits.

How would you describe your version of Jane?

It’s set in the late 1800s.

She seems like a bit of a rebel for that time.

She doesn’t want to conform to Victorian London.

She grew up in the Congo.

She seems a bit defiant and when she said, ‘I want to go to Africa too’ and John is, like, ‘No we’re not’, she’s, like, ‘Well, we are’. And he’s, like, ‘Okay, fine we’re going’.

So I liked that. She’s just a little bit defiant and bossy.

How was it working with Alexander Skarsgard?

As an actor, I so admire the choices he makes.

And he gives such varied performances.

You watch something like The Diary Of A Teenage Girl and then you watch something like The Legend Of Tarzan – you can hardly believe it’s the same person.

I think he takes on roles that a lot of leading (men) wouldn’t and I admire him for that.

As a person, he is just the loveliest human being.

I think it’s a testament to how he’s brought up.

He’s really raised well.

He’s just a very respectful, charming, lovely person.

And how about that sex scene?

I think it was an opportunity to explore their relationship in a different way.

When you’re watching Tarzan and Jane, two people who have such primal urges evidently and are so madly in love, you want that to be represented in their love life.

And David Yates definitely encouraged that.

When we were shooting he was kind of, like, ‘More aggressive, dig your nails in, punch him, whatever’.

And I was, like, ‘Okay, we’re going for it, sure’. So, yeah, it was fun.

– Meher Tatna

This article was first published on June 29, 2016.
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Though not a household name like television drama favourites Rebecca Lim, Jeanette Aw, Qi Yuwu and Elvin Ng, local actor Chin Han (full name Ng Chin Han), has been making waves in the land almost every actor dreams of – Hollywood.

Very recently, on Sunday, it was announced that the 46-year-old Singaporean just got signed onto Creative Artists Agency (CAA), which boasts a host of popular A-list actors such as Robert Downey Jr., Jennifer Lawrence, George Clooney and Meryl Streep.

Most recently starring in blockbuster Independence Day: Resurgence, the bilingual thespian has movie credits in critically-acclaimed The Dark Knight, Captain America: The Winter Soldier, hit TV shows Fringe, Arrow and The Blacklist. He is also currently filming for Ghost In The Shell, an adaptation of a Japanese manga of the same name. The adaptation has been met with much controversy after Caucasian actress Scarlett Johansson was unveiled as the protagonist of the upcoming movie, with many accusing the casting as another instance of “whitewashing”.

His response to the matter? “There are just some stories that lend themselves more easily to adaptation because they address certain universal character arcs and concerns.” He also has faith in the industry moving towards a more diverse nature, and credits it to longer-running television shows, which lend themselves to greater opportunities in the inclusion of actors from various ethnicities, ages and genders.

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Twentieth Century Fox, JOSHUA SHULTZ, HBO Asia, Phil Bray for Netflix, The Straits Times, The New Paper, AXN, Sony Pictures, HKTDC, My Paper, Warner Bros, ECHELON TALENT MANAGEMENT

However, he still condemns the phenomena, listing examples of Mickey Rooney in Breakfast At Tiffany’s (1961) and Marlon Brando in Teahouse Of The August Moon (1956) as “at worst offensive, and, at best, misguided”.

Regardless, he still feels grateful for the opportunities he had been given, stating “I can speak only from a personal point of view… but I’ve had the opportunity to work with great directors (…) I’m happy being in smaller movies or doing roles that are ostensibly supporting roles, as long as I get to work with the directors I want to work with.”

Definitely an actor to watch out for, here are 10 things you never knew about Chin Han, who’s representing us in Hollywood.

1. He used to be on classic local melodrama Masters of the Sea

Cast of Masters of the Sea (1994) | Photo: REPRO

Masters of the Sea (1994) was the first full-time English drama produced by Mediacorp predecessor TCS (Television Corporation of Singapore). Many of us would probably have been too young to appreciate a melodrama, but I’m quite sure we have recollections of it playing on a TV somewhere in our house, with our grandmothers and aunties glued to the screen.

In it, Chin Han played the brooding grandson of the drama’s feisty matriarch played by veteran actress Margaret “I will crush you like a cockroach” Chan.

The drama wasn’t received well by critics, but still remains a classic in Singapore television history until this day.

2. He had over 5 months of kungfu training for his role on Marco Polo

Photo: The Straits Times

During a Reddit AMA (Ask Me Anything) for his portrayal of villain “only a mother could love” Chancellor Jia Sidao in Netflix TV series Marco Polo (2014), he was asked by a fan of the show on how long he took to perfect the mantis style kungfu, a defining trait of the character.

In spite of being trained in Tai Chi by his dad in his younger years and having dance training for his acting career which made the choreography easier, it still took him 5 months of training and over 300 hours with a stunt team to perfect his form.

Talk about dedication!

3. He can cook up a mean meal – or so he says

Chin Han as Leader of the Chinese Space Squadron in Independence Day: Resurgence (2016)

Photo: Twentieth Century Fox

In the similar Reddit thread, when asked who would win in a fight, his character or his sister Mei Lin (played by Olivia Cheng), he simply states, “I don’t fight with women, but we could have a cook-off. And I would win!”

This confidence possibly came from his role in food-centric movie Final Recipe (2013), in which he starred opposite acclaimed Malaysian actress Michelle Yeoh and played her husband who is a chef. “I get to do a lot cooking in it as well which is great,” he said in a Yahoo interview in 2012.

The movie premiered in 2013 at the San Sebastián International Film Festival.

4. He might have gotten too good at playing the bad guy

Chin Han as Lau in The Dark Knight (2008)

Photo: Warners Bro

With his more iconic roles being ones in which he plays the bad guy (see: Lau in The Dark Knight and Jia Sidao in Marco Polo), a Reddit user has posted him a question that he couldn’t help but giggle about:

“When I see your face, I get angry. Is that a compliment? Don’t you ever want to be a good guy?” quipped a Reddit user.

“Hahaha! But I am the good guy! We are all heroes in our own movies!” he replies in his typical affable manner observed in the AMA.

When asked if he sees his casting as “some sort of a reflection on Hollywood’s current stereotype of Asian actors”, he responds that he doesn’t actually see them as villains, only as characters with intentions conflicting with those of the protagonists.

He also reveals, “I am drawn to conflicts and complexities in characters (and) whether they are of a particular ethnicity is not that interesting to me.”

5. One of his favourite roles so far is Lau from The Dark Knight

Photo: My Paper

With a career spanning over 20 years, Chin Han has had the opportunity to play a large variety of roles. One who never wants to stop improving, he states that while he hopes to be best remember by the last role he plays, he has a “fondness” for Lau, the mob boss/accountant in The Dark Knight (2008). He revealed that while he created the portrayal of the character from scratch, his process was “definitely informed by a host of characters from the Frank Miller graphic novels”.

His hilarious reason for choosing Lau out of all the characters?

“Because he’s good with calculation, and it’s about tax time now.”

6. He is one of Asia’s 25 greatest actors of all time

Photo: The New Paper

Acknowledged by both Singaporean and international media to be the first Singaporean actor to make a splash in Hollywood, Chin Han has also been dubbed to be one of Asia’s 25 greatest actors of all time by CNN – a great honour given that the rest on the list are acting greats like Tony Leung Chiu Wai, Amitabh Bachchan, P. Ramlee and Gong Li.

So what’s “Top 10 Favourite Male Artistes” again?

7. His love for movies and acting started young

Chin Han in blockbuster 2012 (2009) 

Photo: Sony Pictures

In an interview with South China Morning Post, he revealed that his interest in movies started at the tender age of 6, and revealed an adorable nugget of trivia: “When my parents asked me what I wanted for my birthday, I would always say, “I want to go to the movies.””

He then spent the 1980s and 90s working in theatre as an actor, even skipping school to attend rehearsals for his university plays.

“We were rehearsing at night – we finished at midnight and I had to go to school at 8am. It was very tiring.”

His first pay check also came from an acting stint, where he had to don wigs and costumes to recreate 17th century France for an adaption of playwright Molière’s The School for Wives. “I was very happy taking that cheque to the bank.”

8. He retired from acting in his mid-20s

Chin Han in Contagion (2011) 

Photo: Warner Bros

With his raving success now, it’s hard to imagine that Chin Han had experienced such dejection in his acting career that he retired in his mid-20s.

He shared with South China Morning Post, “When I was doing all that theatre work, someone spotted me and asked me if I would do auditions for a TV commercial, for Citibank. I did it. From that, the TV station noticed me and offered me a contract to do two TV shows with them in Singapore. After a few years, however, I decided to retire. I felt I wasn’t going anywhere, so I thought I’d leave it to people who were still passionate about TV acting.”

Fortunately, he never really gave up on the industry, and went on to the production and directing side for around 8 years before going to Hollywood again as an actor.

9. His Hollywood break came from ‘a leap of faith’

Chin Han with Morgan Freeman in the Dark Knight (2008) 

Photo: Warner Bros

His clinching of the role in The Dark Knight actually came more as a surprise than a calculated move on his part.

He shared on Reddit that his friend, who was a manager, called him up on an “interesting project” which was the sequel to Batman Begins (2005). Not knowing about the series at that time, Chin Han merely jumped onto the chance simply because he knew about and liked director Christopher Nolan’s work.

Albeit not knowing anything about the movie or his role being even after he arrived in the US for the auditions, he knew that his choice to go over was right, because it was a chance to work with Nolan. “I would do it if it was one word.”

He finally clinched the role of Lau, and his initial leap of faith turned out to be the start of even more things to come in Hollywood.

Expressing his gratitude to Nolan, he states humbly, “There are so many surprises in my life; I don’t take anything for granted. I enjoy every experience that comes; I don’t think too far ahead.”

10. He cites passion and never giving up as his reasons for success

Chin Han as Kay Song in Serangoon Road (2013)

Photo: HBO Asia

Even in his extremely enviable position, Chin Han simply cites “being in the right place at the right time” and “not giving up” as main factors contributing to his Hollywood break.

“I think it’s a question of being passionate about it to stick around even when times were tough. So I think that would explain it.”, he states in a Yahoo interview.

Honestly, I beg to differ; his success is probably due to another factor which he humbly downplays in all his interviews – the undeniable talent that he possesses.

All the best Chin Han, and always remember that you have your fellow Singaporeans rooting for you from back home.

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Indonesian siblings Tasia and Gracia Seger might be passionate about spicy food.

But that’s not the only reason why they have been nicknamed the Spice Sisters on the seventh season of Australian reality TV cooking series My Kitchen Rules (MKR), where they have made it to the top 13.

“On a day to day basis, we fight a lot. Even outside the kitchen,” Gracia, 25, told M last week when the duo were in town to promote MKR. The series airs at 9.25pm every Monday to Wednesday on DIVA (Singtel TV Ch 303/StarHub TV Ch 513).

She said: “People think we’re fighting (in the kitchen), but we’re communicating.”

Born in Indonesia and brought up in Australia and India, they also have two older sisters and one younger sister.

“We’re five girls. We need to be heard. We need to be loud,” Gracia said.

The sisters seemed destined for the culinary industry at an early age.

Tasia, 27, said: “Growing up, food was a really important aspect in our family. Every celebration was a gathering for food.”

They were gradually introduced to cooking when they helped their mother in the kitchen between the ages of nine and 12.

WORKING AS A TEAM

While growing up, they often discussed owning their own food business and they were eager to join MKR after watching the second season because they were drawn to the show’s format of having contestants compete in pairs.

Tasia said: “With MKR, you’re able to (compete) with a team member. It gives you support and comfort. In other cooking shows, you have to do it alone.”

The sisters auditioned for this latest season after graduating from the University of Melbourne and they realised that focusing on Asian cuisine helped them stand out among other contestants.

But it has triggered negative reactions as well.

“A lot of people have commented on the fact that we just cook Asian food and don’t think out of the box,” said Tasia.

“But I don’t think they realise that Asia is a continent. They don’t really understand that it’s not a (single) cuisine.”

The desire to highlight the diversity of Asian cuisine was an additional motivator in their love for Asian fusion food.

Gracia said: “I think that’s what we’ll want to do (after the show) as well – redefining Asian food (in a way that’s) not just by its country.”

This article was first published on June 29, 2016.
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LOS ANGELES – An all-female reboot of “Ghostbusters” hits theatres next month amid a savage backlash by Internet trolls that has thrown the spotlight back onto Hollywood’s gender discrimination problem.

The film’s first trailer has become the most reviled in YouTube history, having amassed almost 900,000 dislikes, while director Paul Feig and his cast have been bombarded with death threats and misogyny on social media.

“This garbage was made to make Feminazis happy,” one Twitter user complained in a broadside typical of the firestorm of abuse.

Feig, who has made his name directing female stars in hits such as “Bridesmaids,” was responsible for bringing on board Kate McKinnon, Melissa McCarthy, Leslie Jones and Kristen Wiig for the new version of the 32-year-old all-male original movie.

“I’ve been hit with some of the worst misogynistic stuff you’ve ever seen in your life over the last two years,” he told a recent producers’ conference at Sony Pictures headquarters in southern California.

“The onslaught that came in was just so chilling.”

The “Woman and Hollywood” blog noted a similar reaction after the producers of “Star Wars” cast female leads — in the latest instalment and the upcoming “Rogue One” — after six consecutive male-led films.

“We are struggling every day to get the word out against that bias. We still get called in the press a ‘chick flick’ constantly,” Feig said.

“We’re never referred to without the words ‘all-female Ghostbusters,’ which makes me crazy,” he added.

“You never talk about the ‘all-male Expendables.’ It’s an uphill battle that I can’t believe in 2016 we’re having to fight.”

The backlash against “Ghostbusters” demonstrates how deeply ingrained the idea remains that big-budget, mainstream movies are “the province of males,” says Martha Lauzen of San Diego State University’s Center for the Study of Women in Television and Film.

“Traditionally, they have featured males and been made by males, with a young male audience in mind,” she said.

“Further, the majority of critics reviewing these films have been male,” she added. “Making a reboot of one of these films with a mostly female cast violates this group’s sense that this public space belongs to them.”

Women comprised nine per cent of directors and 11 per cent of writers working on the top 250 domestic grossing films in 2015, according to Lauzen’s annual Celluloid Ceiling study.

The knock-on effect is fewer female characters of any depth or interest on screen.

Of 11,306 speaking characters in film and television in 2014 analysed by the University of Southern California’s Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism, two-thirds were male overall and almost three-quarters in feature films.

However, the figures suggest the industry is shooting itself in the foot.

Female-led films grossed 3.3 per cent more than movies with male protagonists in 2014, according to Stacey Smith, director of the school’s Media, Diversity, and Social Change Initiative.

At just 25, the Australian actress Margot Robbie is carving out a reputation for picking roles that are anything but shrinking violets, from the feisty Naomi Lapaglia in Martin Scorsese’s “The Wolf of Wall Street” (2013) to the villainous Harley Quinn in “Suicide Squad,” which comes out in August.

“I think people have finally recognised that half the ticket sales are coming from women,” she said in an interview about her fiery take on the character of Jane in the upcoming “The Legend of Tarzan.”

“And if they don’t create the kind of roles that women are going to be able to relate to, then they’re not going to enjoy watching them as much.”

Anna Rose Holmer’s directorial debut “The Fits,” which played to acclaim at the Venice and Sundance film festivals, could be described as independent cinema’s “Ghostbusters.”

Made almost entirely by women and girls behind and in front of the camera, it focuses on an 11-year-old who trains as a boxer with her brother at a Cincinnati community centre while dreaming of becoming a dancer.

Holmer, who wrote the film with Lisa Kjerulff and Saela Davis, feels the gender-bias tide may finally be receding.

“But ultimately, the thing that’s going to change is if people hire women and people invest in women and people take risks with women in the helm,” she said.

“That’s the only way it changes, and that requires action,” she added.

“It’s very simple and it’s possible.”