Nicholas Tse grumbles about need to constantly prove his detractors wrong
HONG KONG: Actor Nicholas Tse has grumbled that in his latest role as a celebrity chef, he is still struggling to prove his detractors wrong.
In fact, he discloses that as the child of top Hong Kong actors, he has been constantly striving to make detractors eat their words.
Right now, he’s also hoping they’d eat some of his food.
On gallivanting off into hosting a celeb chef show, Nicholas explained: “People are asking me are you still going to do concerts? I am, but I don’t want to just do a concert. I want to do maybe a carnival thing with food, with DJs, with a lot of electric dance music, and maybe on the last day I’ll come out and do my concert along with video gaming. I think nowadays it’s more about the experience than ‘oh I want to buy some high- end clothing’. Now it’s all about the experience. I don’t need all the vanity stuff – but I want to have fun.”
His latest fi lm, Cook Up a Storm, released earlier this year showed a Cantonese street-food chef battling against a Michelin starred one, which made people wonder if he could really cook, or he was just acting like a chef.
As for dealing with detractors, Nicholas said: : “That’s how it’s been all my life. My parents were actors, so I got into the entertainment business with all of Hong Kong booing me, if you want to check how I debuted. For the fi rst four years I never got one round of applause.
“Whenever I got on stage it was just boos. I couldn’t even hear one word of what I was singing. But I endured it. Show after show, performance after performance, for four years. Until I got my fi rst (claps hands). So I’m here to stay … That’s why I treasure every fan, I treasure every round of applause, and if I can get through that crap, I can get through this crap.”
Right now, Nicholas is in Norway, where he is fi lming an episode of his show Chef Nic, cooking on an icebreaker in the Arctic Circle for a week with Taiwanese chef Andre Chiang.
Notably, Chang had recently announced he will close his two-Michelin- star restaurant in Singapore in February.
In China, Nicholas’ show is wildly popular, thanks to cameo appearances by the likes of Fan Bingbing, Donnie Yen, Jackie Chan and Angelababy.
However, this season features budding chefs in competition, and Nicholas is looking forward to handing out one million yuan ( RM634,000) to the winner, who he hopes will use the money to get a leg-up in his or her culinary career.
On what it was like starting the show seven years ago, Nicholas recalled: “I rushed down to the supermarket and I was thinking how hard could it be. So I made my fi rst cream puff and it turned out inedible, which is ridiculous. Why? It’s just flour, water, butter and maybe some milk. But yeah, it was disastrous.”