Benjamin Kheng On Game Of Thrones, Terrace House And That Time He Wore a Fake Moustache On Mata Mata

BENJAMIN KHENG: Depends on whether Game of Thrones is on. Then that’s like, all the time. So I’ll try to squeeze in maybe an episode a night. Sometimes, the boy in me watches four or five, which is bad. But yeah, I try to watch maybe one episode or something every day. It’s like a nightcap.

Do you watch TV in the morning?

Nah, no time for TV.

What are the shows that defined your childhood?

Strangely enough, I grew up with a lot of sketch comedy. So a lot of Monty Python, Nickelodeon and Disney Channel stuff.

And you’re now doing sketch comedy with The BenZi Project.

Yeah! I feel the urge to just talk about stuff that I always wanted to talk about socially that I guess couldn’t really with the band or my own persona. So to revisit sketch comedy a lot later in my life [feels like a homecoming].

Are you a fan of Saturday Night Live?

I follow it, but I wouldn’t say I’m a fan. It’s kind of hit-and-miss sometimes. But I like the concept and the idea of bite-sized narratives that really strike you hard. Even shows like Black Mirror are so appealing to me because they are bite-sized but have a lasting impact on you. The aftertaste is so strong because it deals with a subject matter that is really compelling, or affects you in a personal way. Social commentary in that sense is what comedy and sketch comedy do very well for me. So I guess that’s why growing up, I was so intrigued with how people wrote and conceptualised it.

Game of Thrones. I rewatched [the entire final season] again! Just because (laughs).

Did you like the season finale?

It’s crap lah! It’s total bull! The major aching plot points were dope, I think if they gradually worked their way towards the end in [nuanced] fashion, then there would have had more of an emotional payoff. It’s just a waste lah. It’s like when you have a three-act structure, they’ve completely trimmed Act Two. There’s no conflict, no process, and the payoff was just not as impactful.

What’s the next show you plan to binge-watch?

I have not seen Westworld Season 2, so I’m going to work on that. That’s why I still have my HBO Go account; I haven’t unsubscribed yet, post-Thrones (laughs). Everyone’s raving about Umbrella Academy, so I think I should give it another shot. I watched a bit and kinda tuned out. I probably need to watch Hirzi’s Channel 5 show, Stupid Man, Smart Phone. That looks pretty good.

What’s the TV show everyone's talking about but you haven't seen yet?

True Detective, Downton Abbey, and Peaky Blinders.

Terrace House! This is why I love it. I remember watching it for the first time, it was midway through the shoot for Toggle's The Breakup List. Our producers had it on and it was a scene where the characters threw a surprise birthday party for a housemate. It was his 20th birthday.

After he sat down, his mates asked him, “So, what do you want to do with your life? Where are you going?” And he was like, “I don’t know.” And he started to break down and had this existential crisis. And then everyone just started crying and had an existential crisis as well! I was like, “Oh my God, I so relate to this show!”

[The show deals with ] the nuance of Asian tradition and our tendency to suppress emotions. And there’s commentary about the characters, too. No big drama, everything is kinda veneered. That appealed to my Asian-ness, straight up! It’s also mind-bangingly slow. That says something about the storytelling: you can slow things down and stretch things out. You can take time with them.

Only two come to mind. The first one is Breaking Bad. In this very pivotal moment where they introduce the death of big antagonist Gustavo Fring. It’s shocking, the way he died. It’s so unlike anything else on Breaking Bad.

The other moment is from Love, Death and Robots, an animated anthology series on Netflix. This one episode, ‘Zima Blue’, is simple but profound. But when it got to the resolution, my jaw dropped.

What are the shows that inspire what you’re doing right now?

To be honest, you cannot talk about brilliant TV shows without talking about Breaking Bad, just in terms of charting character arcs and writing nuance. Why Breaking Bad is so important is that it doesn’t just further the plot, but it furthers the character arcs as it furthers the plot.

I think a lot of writers both locally and around the region don’t do enough of that. We just write lines for the plot, and the characters say things that don’t make sense for the character. It’s just so incongruous that it doesn’t make sense.

But to write a script that deals with micro-narratives and an overarching narrative while furthering the plot and the character at the same time, no show does it like Breaking Bad. People don’t understand why, and that it just seems like a normal show, but the nuances are what make the show so addictive.

It also does what no other show has done before: turning a good guy into a bad guy…

And we keep rooting for the bad guy.

The only thing that I distinctly remember is when I had to chop up a body. I think at one point I was chopping the body downwards, but the PA was spraying fake blood on me [from the wrong direction]. I don’t remember much from it, to be honest. It was very early in my career in 2014. I just remember that the character looked a lot like my dad when he was young because he had long hair, an afro and a moustache too. I was like, “Oh my God, I’m playing my dad.” I don’t think I could have grown that moustache out back then.

Did you flag the moustache issue to the director?

As a new actor coming into the behemoth that is Mediacorp, you just don’t want to say anything. I’ll probably say something now. Back then, I was like, “Okay, whatever you want…” I think because they really wanted a caricature of Ringo Starr. I was supposed to be playing this Beatles-obsessed dude, whose name happens to be Ringo. The moustache kept coming off. We had to constantly glue it back on in the interrogation scenes.

You also did your first on-screen fight, right?

I was terrible! That’s why I decided to start picking up unarmed combat [after that episode]. The producers did not say there was going to be a fight scene. So I came in and I knew jack s*** about fighting. If they’d prepared me for it, I would have [done better]. But it was my first time doing action on screen. I’ve done action on stage, but to do it on-screen was completely different. It was not a good scene (laughs).

Photos: Netflix/Fuji Television/East Entertainment; HBO Asia; AMC

Catch Benjamin Kheng in Wonder Boy on Ch 5 tonight (June 25), 10pm, and later on Toggle. After Love is now streaming on Toggle; The BenZi Project is on YouTube.