When 8days.sg first spoke to Ayden Sng last March, he had starred in Bryan Wong’s short film The Playbook, where he played a bartender romancing a dying woman played by Sheila Sim. At the time, the newbie had almost no experience under his belt, which had us wondering what was it about Ayden that led Bryan to cast him after one meeting. (P/S: It could be the same thing that led us to hail him as TV’s next big thing after that first chat too.)

Speaking to us over the phone (’cos of the COVID-19 situation and all), Ayden, 26, muses: “You need a kind of rawness that comes with inexperience to have [an onscreen] relationship with an older woman. And I was able to retain some of this rawness because of my lack of familiarity with filming and acting in general.”

And it’s perhaps this rawness which saw Ayden get cast as Jesseca Liu’s much younger love interest in Loving You, which just so happens to be the rookie’s first lead role in a Mediacorp drama. Not bad for someone who has been a full-time actor for less than a year, or seven months to be exact.

As for playing a much younger love interest again (while Sheila is nine years older than Ayden, Jesseca was born 14 years before him), the good-looker says: “I love it when this happens. When the people I work with are older, it also means that they’re more experienced. It’s a very advantageous position because my acting is elevated alongside theirs and it’s a great chance for me to learn.”

8 DAYS: Loving You is your first lead drama role. So what was the experience like?
AYDEN SNG: It’s been very fulfilling. This is my first full-length production and I felt very thankful that I had a great cast and production team to work with. I also really enjoyed filming in Kuala Lumpur because there were no distractions. (laughs) It was great focusing on just one thing 'cos there were no peripheral duties, such as dealing with emails and answering work queries that I had to worry about.

And how was it like working with Jesseca?
People tell me not to say this, but I grew up watching her on TV. (Chuckles) I’ve always thought of her as someone who is fairy-like, and when I knew that I was going to be paired with her, I was just so excited. She definitely didn’t disappoint and has this air of elegance around her. There’s just something very real and down-to-earth about her but when she’s acting, she exudes a different kind of presence.

Do you still think of her as 'fairy-like' now that you've worked with her?
Jesseca and I are both not extroverts, so we took some time to break the ice and get to know each other. There was a bit of social awkwardness but to me, she’s still a down-to-earth fairy princess that I admire.

There's an 18-year age gap between you and Jesseca’s character.
Yes, and that was the main cause of friction between our characters. One thing that I really love about the show is that it touches on the social issue of whether you should be accepting of relationships with huge age gaps and whether it will work out. People are increasingly less conservative these days and the viewpoints on age gaps or different races and religions, LGBT and so on have changed. I think this drama is very timely.

One thing that really spoke to me is this: if the characters were 20 and 40 now, how different would it be for them 20 years down the road? I would have loved to dive a bit deeper rather than have just raised the issue leaving so many stones unturned. How do people of two completely different phases of their lives explore an intimate relationship knowing full well that 10 or 20 years down the road, the gap will only widen?

Our productions have a duty to discuss issues that are relevant in society and I hope more and more productions will be willing to talk about social issues like these.

Would you get into a relationship with such a huge age gap?
(pauses) Theoretically speaking, it’s doable, but practically speaking, it’s not. If you and your partner are in two different stages in life, it’s realistically not possible to be together.

In this show, the male lead is at a time of his life where he should be working very hard in his career. At the same time, the female lead is very successful as a creative director of her company. She should be thinking about retirement plans or having a family. When two people like that meet and your priorities are different, the relationship is just not doable. You realise that there’s a lot of friction and it won’t work out in the end.

So that’s a no?
I wouldn’t be interested because the other person might end up taking on more of a parental role. My experience with people that are older is that they take it upon themselves to be more mature and responsible and they will impose their thoughts on you. There’s a power imbalance when that happens and you can’t say anything against that 'cos it’s technically true, but not being allowed to have your own opinion is detrimental to your own growth.

Since you’re still young compared to your more experienced colleagues, have you felt similar power imbalances since joining showbiz?
I don’t think there’s the same kind of friction when you’re dealing with the professional aspect of things. (Laughs) People are just more open-minded, and age differences aren’t that important. Working on set with a very diverse cast and crew was very harmonious and I was very happy. Jesseca is super experienced compared to me so I always defer to her when there are acting-related questions. She always tries to help me out, which I super appreciate.

This time last year, you were still juggling an acting career alongside your full-time job as a product manager in a consulting firm.
I finished serving my notice in June and I’ve been acting full time as of July 2019. (pauses) Actually, this is such an opportune time for me to discuss this. This time last year, I was surrounded by bankers, business owners, and other corporate people. Last year, I would have thought that acting and product management is binary, but my most recent realisation is that it’s non-binary. I’m an actor, but if I want to do strategy, then I should do strategy. If I have time, I can do whatever I feel like doing.

Sounds like you want to have a lot on your plate.
I think I should always be in a state of overcapacity. The biggest issue that I face as an artiste is underutilisation. Not just in time, but also in terms of brain cells. If you don’t constantly push yourself to constantly be in that state, you lose track of what you can do. I firmly believe that you have to overload yourself. It’s all good as long as you enjoy yourself.

This seems like the right time for us to ask you what else you have planned.
(Laughs) I’ll be working with Jesseca again in a new drama, where I’ll be playing the second male lead. This time around I won’t be paired with her but we will have a lot of scenes together. I’m very excited to work with her again.

Last year, we said you could very well be local showbiz's Next Big Thing. And in less than a year, you got your first lead role in a Mediacorp drama. Seems like we were right.
All I can say is that a lot of brands have been very supportive. (Pauses) I just want to be a Big Thing, and that’s determined by how much value I can generate in the verticals I've expressed experience in, whether as an actor, fashion icon, artiste or musician. I need to build up a portfolio in each of this verticals and I hope that this continues in the coming year so that I can confidently say that I am an artist.

2019 was about self discovery, and 2020 is about execution. Now that I’ve discovered what interests me, I can just do things without having to think that much about it.

What made you think that way?
There’s a high chance that nobody will care about the production that you’re a part of or any photo and video that you ever put out. It’s something that you have to come to terms with as a content creator. You can spend months filming a drama but nobody watches it. You just have to come to terms with it and positively reinforce that quantity counts.

Don’t people usually say that quality counts more?
Quantity means experience and it also helps you to grow. 90 per cent of my output might be something that people that don’t care about, but does that mean that I shouldn’t do it? For me, I think it’s important to do it anyway. Setbacks and obstacles are all part of the insecurity of the job. You have to find a way to overcome them and you start figuring out that there is a better way to do things.

That’s a pretty deep realisation for someone who’s still a rookie in showbiz.
For any artiste, a dry spell is a period where you have to deal with a lot of insecurities. When nobody wants to cast you and no projects want you, you question your self-worth because you’re wondering why is it that nobody wants you.

It’s something that is even more apparent in Singapore because there’s only that many projects that can be happening at once. That’s why I came to the conclusion that if nobody’s gonna cast you, you just have to involve yourself in whatever projects, big or small, that you can think of.

How did you end up with this conclusion?
There wasn’t much of a thought process to it. There were things I wanted to do, and there was no other opportunities for me at the time, the decision was pretty clear: Whenever there was something new I wanted to try, I just went ahead and did it.

Catch Ayden in Loving You on meWATCH and on Ch 8, weekdays at 9pm.

Photos: The Celebrity Agency, Ayden Sng’s Instagram