Evergreen, who left TVB in 2019, was a guest on a recent episode of talk show Night Talk, where he shared that the toughest period he had to endure was not the whole Ponzi scheme scandal.

Rather, it was in 2010, when he had just won his first Best Supporting Actor award at the TVB Anniversary Awards. The actor had been lauded for his performance in No Regrets, and it looked as his career would skyrocket after that. 

Unfortunately, it was a whole different story behind-the-scenes. According to Evergreen, he was not respected by people in the company, and it got so bad that he was considering leaving TVB at that time. After winning the award, however, Evergreen had a change of heart, believing that things were finally looking up for him. Unfortunately, that was not the case.

Laughing at his past self for “being naive”, Evergreen said: “How was I to know that in the 10 months following my win, I’d be out of work with no projects at all, to the extent that I really didn’t know what to do”.

“Before getting the award, I was able to land co-lead roles, but as we approached the 20-episode mark, I only appeared in a couple of scenes, in just a few episodes. And I still had to [endure] other people treating me as if I were transparent,” he said.

And all these did not happen just ‘cos Evergreen was slacking off. He recounted an incident where he had asked the director for hiss opinion on a scene. Said director then proceeded to glance at Evergreen disdainfully, before shooing him away, telling the actor that all he had to do was to “record a voice-over”. 

“I also once scolded an assistant director for being disrespectful to a veteran actor, who had sacrificed a lot for this industry. Without these veterans, we wouldn’t even exist,” he recounted, before sighing: “Who knew that [years later] I’d be in the shoes of the veteran actor, [getting disrespected by others].

Photos: Evergreen Mak/Instagram, Sina Photo, TVB