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“Our history books are filled with men”; creator & EP Jean Yeo sets about meeting Singapore’s forgotten women
15 May 2023
When Ochre Pictures’ "Last Madame: Sisters of the Night" premieres in Singapore on 13 July this year, creator and executive producer Jean Yeo strikes another victory for period drama.
Set in the 1920s, "Sisters of the Night" is the prequel to "Last Madame" (2019), a multi-generational story about modern-day banker Chi Ling, who returns from Hong Kong to Singapore to claim her inheritance – a run-down shophouse.The new season centres around themes of sisterhood, survival, espionage and Singapore’s culture during the era.
Sara Merican talks to Yeo about fighting to make period dramas in Singapore, unearthing important historical stories and her hopes for "Sisters of the Night".
What are some of your hopes for season two? “Before Last Madame, everybody said period [dramas] don’t work, or that people don’t watch them. In Singapore, we don’t have many period dramas because we simply don’t have the budgets to do it. This is just one small part of a fascinating array of stories and if you want to go further back, we have stories from the 14th century. I’m hoping that with more streamers coming, we can bring out stories that people do not know about this part of the world. I wanted to unearth these interesting, but forgotten characters, like these female characters in Last Madame. They’re hardly ever spoken or written about. Our history books are filled with men. I want to unearth stories that deserve to be told and I think that Singapore will be so much richer for it. It is easier and better for me to do contemporary shows, but I really do love telling these [period] stories.”
Why did you expand the story of "Last Madame" with a prequel rather than a sequel? “I love researching and I love history. There was so much material that I wanted to sink my teeth into and one of the stories that came up by chance was the character of the ma-jie in season one. After Last Madame, there were a lot of requests for a second season. We had a focus group and what came up from the group’s discussion was how this ma-jie character came about. We hinted at the backstory through flashbacks but we didn’t dig into i...
When Ochre Pictures’ "Last Madame: Sisters of the Night" premieres in Singapore on 13 July this year, creator and executive producer Jean Yeo strikes another victory for period drama.
Set in the 1920s, "Sisters of the Night" is the prequel to "Last Madame" (2019), a multi-generational story about modern-day banker Chi Ling, who returns from Hong Kong to Singapore to claim her inheritance – a run-down shophouse.The new season centres around themes of sisterhood, survival, espionage and Singapore’s culture during the era.
Sara Merican talks to Yeo about fighting to make period dramas in Singapore, unearthing important historical stories and her hopes for "Sisters of the Night".
What are some of your hopes for season two? “Before Last Madame, everybody said period [dramas] don’t work, or that people don’t watch them. In Singapore, we don’t have many period dramas because we simply don’t have the budgets to do it. This is just one small part of a fascinating array of stories and if you want to go further back, we have stories from the 14th century. I’m hoping that with more streamers coming, we can bring out stories that people do not know about this part of the world. I wanted to unearth these interesting, but forgotten characters, like these female characters in Last Madame. They’re hardly ever spoken or written about. Our history books are filled with men. I want to unearth stories that deserve to be told and I think that Singapore will be so much richer for it. It is easier and better for me to do contemporary shows, but I really do love telling these [period] stories.”
Why did you expand the story of "Last Madame" with a prequel rather than a sequel? “I love researching and I love history. There was so much material that I wanted to sink my teeth into and one of the stories that came up by chance was the character of the ma-jie in season one. After Last Madame, there were a lot of requests for a second season. We had a focus group and what came up from the group’s discussion was how this ma-jie character came about. We hinted at the backstory through flashbacks but we didn’t dig into it in season one. Also, I honestly had more material for a prequel than a sequel, but I fully intend to do a sequel after this.”
How has the potential for regional and global distribution influenced the production of season two? “Even with "Last Madame", we had an eye for it to travel. With a couple of our recent shows, we put quite a bit of our own money into the projects, because we want to reach a bigger audience and platform. It is a very hard goal to achieve but I’m trying to show that good stories do travel. It doesn’t matter where it’s from.”
What are some challenges that you faced in making season two? “We had to do a lot of research into what Japanese brothels look like and there are hardly any photographs. Based on our research and a little bit of imagination, we had to create a brothel that is both Japanese and Nanyang Asian. The other challenge is costuming. Season one was tough enough with costuming using the right cheongsam that fits the era, the right collar and the right sleeve-length. We got our materials from all over Asia, like China and even Dubai. But in season two, we had to go to vintage stores in Japan, and we bought some of our kimonos from there so that it is authentic.”
"Last Madame: Sisters of the Night" premieres on Mediacorp's online platform mewatch on 13 July and on Mediacorp’s YouTube drama channel on 20 July.
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