Malaysian actress Cheryl Chitty Tan on breaking away from parents' money and showbiz woes
She also recalled the shock she had after moving to Singapore, joining a food rescue group and eating beans every day.
As someone who has worked both on stage and in front of the camera, Malaysian actress Cheryl Chitty Tan has seen what Singapore showbiz has to offer (and it’s not always a bed of roses).
Tan, 34, is now based in Singapore and aside from being a professional actress, she teaches and occasionally shares posts on Instagram Stories about certain causes which she holds dear, including mental wellness. Most recently, she was reposting information from the high-profile Hollywood strikes.
Though Tan advocates for social causes, you might not want to call her an advocate.
“Advocate is a bit of strong word. I’m just a person who retweets stuff I like on the Internet,” she said in an interview with Yahoo Southeast Asia.
Explaining how this desire to help others came about, Tan confessed that she felt “very misunderstood” as a child and it “kind of continued through to adulthood”.
“So, like, there's a sort of a big pain that I carry from my childhood from that. So as I've been learning to deal with my own stuff, I also want to help other people who feel misunderstood to deal with their things as well.”
Tan added that coming from a family that is all about “helping others” means she naturally wants to “give people the help that I felt that I didn’t really have enough of”.
“And because we are having a severe mental health thing in the world where everybody is extremely anxious, it's definitely a very big kind of mission in my day to day to, like, if somebody sees a little tweet that helps them to have a little bit of a realisation, then that's great.”
$30 in her bank account
While Tan said that being an artiste “pretty much leads to bad mental health” due to the unpredictability of the job, she also confessed that money woes didn’t really affect her as much in the beginning as she was “born upper middle class”.
Despite starting off in theatre in Singapore, which is arguably harder than TV, Tan was still somewhat comfortable for a while as she was living with her parents in Kuala Lumpur.
“I came, I did theatre, I didn't have to wait for a pay cheque. Didn't matter that the money is small because it's enough for these two months. And I just go home and shake leg in my father's house and until the next gig comes.”
A shock to her system came in 2018, when she started working in Singapore after signing with Fly Entertainment.
She shared, “I have to wait for my money because there's a system. I have to pay rent on a regular basis and it's not like nonsense family-friends thing anymore; it’s now 1,000 bucks a month. And that's when I learned what it feels like to have $30 in your bank account and be like, ‘Woah! What is this? This is bad.’”
To be fair, Tan decreased her reliance on her parents’ money since 10 years ago, but admitted that there were still some expenses covered by them.
So, it was only after she started living in Singapore in 2018 that she felt the full brunt of being financially independent.
Tan also recalled a period where she ate beans everyday for a period of time, and accepted a handout from a member of food rescue group which she was a part of.
She said, “I joined a food rescue group one time and this person in the group was like, ‘I'm going to rescue curries from an Indian restaurant. Do you want some?’ And I was like, ‘Sure.’ And then the next thing you know, he's got like five bags of lentil curry.
“That was right before pandemic started. So there I am eating like little frozen packets of beans everyday for like three months and we're having no money coming in because of Covid.”
Now, the actress makes enough to “live modestly and invest”, thanks in part to her teaching gig.
“It's much more stable, for sure. I would love to be making more money. I would feel very much more comfortable if I was doing that. But I try to be careful with the money. I invest. I am worried about retiring in Singapore. I'm worried about massive hospital bills. I'm worried about children if children want to turn up in the picture, and about buying property.”
Tan added, “The first thing I tell young actors getting into the professional game is you’ve got to learn about money, because you're going to be poor. And you got to learn about mental health, because you're going to be depressed.”
The competitiveness of society
But, on the flip side, Tan pointed out that Singapore’s showbiz is “pretty good” as the competition is “still not that intense”.
She explained, “It's not normal here to see actors doing waitressing. It's not that common to see actors being like the doorman when they have already worked with Oscar-winning directors… Mostly they teach or they do real estate or they sell insurance or sometimes they will drive Grab or whatever. The actor-adjacent jobs are okay for you to have a reasonable lifestyle.
“But I think that what makes it hard in Singapore is that Singapore as a whole society is competitive. And it's harsh, kind of… It's a lot of comparison, a lot of people telling you you're not good enough, if you're not rich, yeah there's a lot of that.”
Her start in television was also an “awful” experience which left her “in a place of healing” in 2018 after coming off a “severe mental health struggle with starting television”.
She shared, “It was a completely different world; the culture is completely different. It's much nastier in Singapore. So my first TV gig, the working conditions were much nastier. They treat you much more like you are expendable. Like you need to be grateful to be there. Like you have no right to question people.”
This caused a shift in her “world view” as she questioned whether she had to behave like TV actors to be as successful as them though they were doing things “I don’t really like”.
“I started drinking a lot and partying a lot. and I was, like, dating this really unhealthy guy. And then, like, trying to escape from my own severe thing. That's probably one of the most unhealthy periods,” she said.
When asked if it was possible that she was treated as such because she wasn’t a big star, Tan replied, “Well, they definitely don't treat Zoe Tay like that. But they probably did when she was very young lah. There's a definite hierarchy. For whatever reason, it's become a culture that they enjoy and think it's acceptable and people accept.”
What’s lacking in the discussion of mental health
It’s obvious that Tan isn’t a medical professional but as someone who’s had her own struggles and witnessed the experiences of others, she reckons that more can be done in the discussion surrounding this issue.
“Number one is not enough people in the public consciousness are recognising that we are having a serious public health issue [about mental health]. Through my research for The Monster in the Mirror, we learnt that suicides are up among the youths. Kids around the world are reporting higher levels of anxiety and depression than ever,” she said.
The Monster in the Mirror was a musical staged in May 2023 that highlighted the important issues of mental health and self-love among youths who are dealing with the challenges of growing up in today's world. Tan was the lyricist for the musical.
Another thing that Tan thinks should be looked at is the impact of systemic problems on mental health.
She explained, “Life is hard. That's why people get addicted to things. People get addicted to things because of loneliness. The science bears it out. It's well documented, but we put all the emphasis on the individual to solve the thing, but actually, it’s the community that has to be fixed.”
And if you were wondering (like we did), Tan is okay with public figures jumping on the mental-wellness bandwagon as long as it’s being talked about.
“It's better. Yeah, I'm happy about it, I'm glad. And the bandwagon thing is, like, it doesn't matter if you're doing it to be trendy. Good, do it. It’s better than fascism being trendy - which it is,” she deadpanned.
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