2021 Local Showbiz News Lookback: Wedding Announcements, High-Profile Spats & Viral Moments That Caught Our Attention This Year

For some reason, 2021 was the year that a whole bunch of our stars decided to go “Surprise, I’m married!” even if they never went public with their relationships in the first place.

Perhaps the biggest shocker came from Rebecca Lim, who casually dropped a few pics from her mystery fiancé’s proposal to her in November after less than a year of very hush-hush dating.

Her engagement, which she revealed to 8days.sg in an exclusive interview, subsequently shone a spotlight on Ian Fang and his emo, cryptic reactions, but he staunchly maintains that they have always just been “good friends”.

Then, not long after Becks, it was her former BFF Desmond Tan’s turn to share a piece of happy unexpected news when he revealed that he had married his uni sweetheart of 12 years in France — five years after he popped the question and four months after claiming he wasn’t engaged.

Other celebs who had out-of-the-blue wedding news include Kimberly Chia, Sora Ma, Benedict Goh, and Kim Lim. Lurve is in the air.

First comes love, then comes marriage, and then comes baby. Or should we say, babies.

Becoming dads again were Xu Bin and Zhang Zhenhuan, whose wives gave birth to their second kids in March and September respectively.

Then there was Cheryl Wee, who welcomed her third child in October, and Constance Song, whose second daughter was born in March.

Joshua Ang also had a daughter with his new partner less than a year after confirming that he and his ex-wife, with whom he has a three-year-old son, were divorced.

Entering motherhood for the first time was Ase Wang, who gave birth to a daughter in February, so yes, our feeds will be flooded with pics of cute kids for quite a while.

When Chantalle Ng was filming My Star Bride, she was worried that she would get into trouble with audiences for playing a Vietnamese character.

Not only was that not the case (in fact, viewers, including those from Vietnam, praised her performance), the show went on to propel Chantalle to a whole new level of stardom and can now be considered one of the most popular and well-received local dramas in recent years.

It even started trending in China — by early August, the show’s video views on Douyin had crossed the 100 million mark, and like most other successful productions, it’ll be getting a sequel, namely, its own telemovie.

Unfortunately, this year wasn’t all rainbows and butterflies for Chantalle, who unwittingly found herself dragged into very public family drama with her estranged father Yiliang.

After she opened up to Quan Yifeng on Hear U Out about how Yiliang once beat her so severely that she had to be hospitalised for a week, the former Mediacorp actor took to Facebook to claim that he had Lin Meijiao’s permission to hit Chantalle.

He also went on about how much he still loves his daughter and stated that he has left both her and Meijiao an inheritance, but neither Chantalle nor Meijiao responded to his rant and instead focused on mourning the passing of Chantalle’s grandmother.

Hear U Out has certainly proven itself to be a treasure trove of astounding celebrity revelations.

During Marcus’ episode, he shared that he’s still renting a room instead of owning a place as he has to pay S$4,000 a month in alimony to his ex-wife, plus another S$1,000 monthly in child support to his former mistress and baby mama.

He also recalled his young and wild days, during which he would make a fortune as a singer before squandering it all on food, alcohol, and women.

Owning a car comes with a lot of responsibility and these two incidents showed us just how important it is to be careful.

While Gurmit, who was caught speeding in April, got off relatively lightly with a S$800 fine and three-month driving ban, the fallout from Shane’s second drink driving charge were far more severe, resulting in him parting ways with Mediacorp, getting replaced halfway through a drama, and spending five weeks in jail.

Photos: Calvin Oh/CNA, Try Sutrisno Foo/CNA

Also hit with legal woes was Terence, who was fined S$3,500 in May for that infamous gathering of 12 people — more than double the social gathering limit of five during the COVID Phase 2 restrictions — at his condo last year.

Yup, we learned lots of lessons about the importance of behaving oneself in the year 2021.

Photos: Hanidah Amin/CNA, Jeffrey Xu/Instagram

The thing about making public accusations is that even if you refrain from naming names, people are still gonna make guesses, and that’s precisely what happened after Elvin’s episode of The Inner Circle, during which he recalled being bullied by a veteran Taiwanese actor on the set of a drama.

Netizens soon began speculating that he could have been talking about Patrick Lee, but the latter’s reps denied the rumours and Taiwanese star took to social media to ‘congratulate’ Elvin on becoming “a little more famous” thanks to the saga.

That wasn’t the end of it, though. The scandal prompted Dasmond Koh to come out with his own veiled allegation about “an unpleasant incident” that happened between Elvin and Angel Lim, who’s signed under Dasmond’s agency NoonTalk Media.

Thankfully, it’s all water under the bridge now.

Sora Ma also waded into the conversation by telling a local Chinese daily that she was treated so poorly by a veteran actor on the set of 118 II that she would cry in her car after work, but the identity of the supposed perpetrator is still a mystery for now.

On a more light-hearted note, 2021 was also the year we were introduced to Elvin’s pink and red ombre suit, which spawned its own memes and was likened to everything from bandung to, um, female sanitary products.

Wonder if he’ll go for another beverage-inspired outfit for next year’s Star Awards?

Former Pokka International CEO Alain Ong, who was also the director of Pokka International and Pokka Corporation (Singapore), was charged in court on three counts under the Companies Act in November, which means he could face a jail term of up to 12 months or fined up to S$5,000 if convicted.

Benjamin Kheng and Annette Lee’s catchy power ballad ‘The Caifan Song’ captures the debilitating panic that some of us experience when ordering food at a cai png stall, especially when we’re unable to describe the dishes beyond “this” and “that”.

The video has amassed over 900,000 views at the time of writing, along with loads of comments praising the song (the top comment on YouTube says it should be nominated as next year’s National Day Parade song, which honestly doesn’t sound like such a bad idea).

Another clip that caught the attention of netizens was an excerpt from a 2013 episode of Crimewatch featuring Star Search finalist Jernelle Oh as a gangster ah lian, which has now achieved viral meme status as people have been using the audio to recreate different scenarios.

The super popcorn-worthy divorce saga between Night Owl Cinematics (NOC) co-founders Ryan Tan and Sylvia Chan captured Singapore’s attention like the hottest new TV series.

It all started when anonymous Instagram account @sgcickenrice posted a string of allegations about Sylvia being an abusive boss. She later apologised, did a tearful tell-all interview with Xiaxue… then got called out by her ex-husband for supposedly lying.

Amidst all this, Xiaxue managed to uncover the identity of the person behind @sgcickenrice, a 20-year-old student named Brandon who, unlike most people in this mudslinging match, actually owned up to everything.

Will 2022 bring us more juicy influencer brawls like this? Guess we’ll have to wait and find out.

While not strictly showbiz-related, you can’t deny that the video of SPH CEO Ng Yat Chung stating that he takes “umbrage” at a reporter’s question at a press conference, along with how many companies reacted to it (do you own a shirt that says “umbrage” on it yet?), was super entertaining.

And if you still don’t quite know the meaning of the word by now, this might be able to help.

Photos: The Straits Times/YouTube, Lazada