Magazine translations

Due to the hype of TVB Anniversary Award, Charmaine was constantly featured in tabloids gossip columns. However, as they're more fluff that real news, I'll just summarize the important points for fans. I apologize if I made any unintentional mistakes.

Please do not repost as news in other site as I do not view this as complete translation.

Article 1: Don't Blame Her
[壹本便利 / Easy Finder Magazine]


Before filming "The Changing Times", Charmaine took a two month break and spend the time looking after her mother. It was the longest holiday she ever taken after joining TVB for 9 years. The last real holiday she took was 3 years ago, for about two weeks.


When she was still a newbie in acting, life was so difficult that she thought of giving up acting. However, one person; Sunny Chan changed her mind. He keep instilling acting philosophies in their chat and as time progress, Charmaine began to have interest in acting.


It's not easy to ask TVB executives out for dinner, therefore if you plan to exchange award for dinner, they won't even bother. "Haha... they have so many things to do, just because you wanted an award they will have dinner with you? There's a lot of people who like to win, not only me. If the executives have to eat dinner with everyone of them, that would be a big deal! Actually, I have already repeatedly explained that it was Miss Lok who treated me dinner as an encouragement for my performance in [Maiden's Vow]. Who would have guessed such a simple dinner will cause so much pressure."


About rumors of exchanging contract for award, Charmaine said her contract still have two years and she doesn't plan to think much about it until it expire in two years time.

When asked if she felt disappointed losing Best Actress award in past anniversaries, Charmaine said: "Disappointed? Instead I will observe why others won, as they must have won due to their merits. Acting, timing, votes, ratings - all these affect the outcome."


Charmaine feel that everyone need love, so she is happy when her mother remarried in 2003. When asked about her own love life, Charmaine only gave a loud sigh. She laments that though she has pursuers, she has no time to date. People always asked if she was that busy. "Today cannot, breakfast cannot, dinner cannot, supper cannot, no matter how I'd still don't have the time. My chances at romances slipped away like that."


In the past, Charmaine plan to get married by 30 years old but now she had given up planning and just go with the flow. She indicated that she will consider retiring from acting after getting married.

Charmaine has always been rumored to be involved with her male co-stars, especially married or committed ones. However, she never get upset or clarify herself, therefore the reporters feel that she is easy to bully. Charmaine say that she believe that the readers will know how to differentiate truth from made up stories. Do you hate the reporters? "Wow, hate? Such a sensitive comment. I can understand that they did it for a living, so you can say it's a love - hate relationship because they also gave me media exposure. However, the downside is that I lost privacy."



Before singing live in [Lady in Red] concert, Charmaine joked with Stephy Tang: "I'm so nervous! What to do, senior?" Ironically, Charmaine doesn't have rumors of discord in the album. It seems that she only have rumors when it come to Best Actress award. Lol...


Article 2: Charmaine Sheh sacrificing HKD600, 000 to fight against Myolie Wu?
[壹週刊869期 / Next Magazine]


The article is about Charmaine declining 3 drama offers and 4 overseas stage performance totaling over HKD600, 000 to take part in TVB grand production "The Changing Times".


Due to War & Beauty [WAB] success in Mainland China, with its ratings breaking Jewel in The Palace (DaeJaengGeum) record, Charmaine's value in mainland has skyrocketed 10 fold. She has attended many ribbon cutting event in mainland and received figure over HKD200,000. In addition, her past advertisement contract has been renewed with increased fees. Some of the advertisement were broadcasted overseas in Canada. At the same time, a lot of mainland series producers are interested in Charmaine and offered her leading roles with fees of HKD80,000 per episode, nearly twice the amount of popular TVB actresses like Ada Choi and Jessica Hsuan.


Far left: Charmaine filming "The Changing Times" with her onscreen mother, Chan Mei Kei.

Charmaine was interested and had originally set aside half year time to film 2-3 series in mainland. However, she received specific request from TVB executives to take part in TVB HK 10th year handover anniversary series, "The Changing Times". Her role is one of the female lead and since the series has more than 60 episodes, they will take 7 months of filming.


When asked about this, Charmaine admitted that it was true. She felt a little depressed as she originally planned to film two costume series and one modern series. As her mother was sick, Charmaine had to decline one and went back to Hawaii. She thought she still have two other series, about fifty episodes in total but suddenly the company contacted her and Tommy Leung asked her to become one of the cast, saying that the character has a lot of potential. Charmaine pondered over this for a few days, deciding whether to choose money (mainland series) or TVB series. In the end, she chose "The Changing Times" as the series will be broadcasted simultaneously in mainland via CCTV - this opportunity is hard to come by. In addition, due to the busy filming , she had to decline four overseas stage performance in Atlantic City and Malaysia, losing approximately HKD100,000.


Charmaine won Fav Actress award at both Malaysia Astro Drama Award and Beijing Drama Award earlier this year.

Sehseh: There! That explain it - she have mentioned that she will be spending 6 months in mainland to film series - and I thought she meant The Changing Times (SYFW). Though I was wrong at that time, it turns out that it came true and she did join SYFW after all! I'm very curious what mainland series she was supposedly to take part in and also the casts... $80,000 per episode? That is one hell of amount too difficult to resist. Do the math: 50 episode x $80,000 = $4,000,000! Whoa!

While working for TVB project earn way much less, I agree that it's worth taking a gamble with "The Changing Times" since the chance of working with CCTV doesn't come along everyday. Let's hope that her role turn out to be as good as per promised by Tommy Leung. Before this I was worried because most of the cast member belong to his camps, including his favorite godchildren; Jessica and Raymond (not to mention his real daughter Toby Leung) while Poon Ka Tak has his favorites in Sheren and Ron. Basically Charmaine is an "outsider" in their big family.

I've changed my site banner and the pics were edited from Beauty Pro Magazine, November Issue:


I'll translate when I have the time. Scans credit to Bebe from www.shehsheh.com.