100 Malaysians, 100 Milestones – LSA100 this year spotlights actor Jojo Goh, who reflects on what has been a momentous year in her career and personal life — where she uncovered unknown parts of herself with her roles in the film Padu and the upcoming series Emerald Hill, and a fresh perspective on turning forty.
“You know, I used to attend events and I would talk to people for, like, an hour,” Jojo Goh says to me, before anything else, “then the next day when I bump into the same person, I cannot register that face and it feels like I have to restart the whole conversation again. And sometimes people go like, ‘Are you okay?’ But it’s not intentional at all! It’s probably just me not living in the moment enough.”
First of all, what an opener. It already tells me a lot about who Jojo is as a person. I ask her to describe how her year has been in a word and, after sharing that anecdote with me, she says plainly, “Diving.” The image is in there my mind, but still I implore, Could you tell me more?
“I think it’s more like diving deeper down into my own feelings,” she muses. “Every year we kind of already do that, but it seems like every year it gets a little bit more intense, with age catching up and all that. This was the year that I did a lot of introspection. You know, I turned 40 this year and I’m at this phase of my life, like, ‘Okay, so this is almost the second half of your life.’ So, what do I want to do? ‘Cause it used to always just be ‘career, career, career’ for me. All of a sudden it hit me — if I live up to 80 I’d have, like, 40 years left. What do I want to do with the remaining time? Do I still want to just keep focusing on my career? I want to dive deeper down into myself, and figure out my purpose. You probably already have it but maybe you’ve never really put so much attention into it, and never developed the seeds that are actually there.”
Jojo has been acting for more than a decade now. Acting, for her, is also an act of diving — a way to channel parts of herself that she might not have recognised were even there. After her stint as a beauty pageant finalist with Miss Astro Chinese International in 2006, Jojo’s acting career covered a range of ‘strong women’ roles, like the resolute Nancy in the action-packed film Duan Nagho Bogho, the wise Sammi in The Hidden Dragon and of course most recently Mulan in the film Padu, chronicling the rise of the national women’s basketball team to their historic victory in the 2015 SEA Games.
“Every role that has been introduced to me is an opportunity for me to learn to look at the world from a different perspective,” Jojo opens up. “What I think an actor should possess is comprehension and openness. You just have to be really open. Because inevitably, sometimes we don’t agree with the decision-making of the character. We tend to reject things. Acting is the only place where I can feel safe and not be judged by others. You have to really fall in love with your character to be able to ‘deliver’ or at least believe in it.”
She recently wrapped up filming for Emerald Hill — a spin-off of the Singaporean drama The Little Nyonya that’s set to air in the first half of 2025. The series centres on a Peranakan family in Malacca, and Jojo admits it is perhaps the most challenging role she has taken on yet.
“It’s not that I don’t like the role, I don’t like the character,” she says with a small laugh. “I don’t agree with her. I’ve always been playing strong characters, and she was just really submissive. She’s the most traditional Nyonya in the Nyonya family. And in that era, you know, things were sort of changing already. You have female characters in that family who would go and chase their dreams. But she’s the one that’s like, ‘Oh no, I want to stick with the family. Once I get married into the family, I serve the family.’ So I really, really didn’t like that kind of role. And maybe that’s why the word ‘dive’ fits here also. I had to dive deeper. I had to try and understand her.”
Reflecting on her career, Jojo sums up her journey by saying that she wants to take it easier for the time being. After an illustrious year, she’s ready to put herself first and just be.
Tell us about your recent projects, such as this year’s Padu. What was the filming process like for that, and what have you learned from working on it?
Padu was tough. It was a huge challenge because it was very physically demanding. So Padu is about basketball and, you know, all of us never played basketball before. We’ve never touched a basketball in our lives. I mean, I used to play for fun a little bit, but yeah. And we had only about one and a half months to prep for that role. So, it was a challenge for the director as well. ‘Cause he said, “I have two options. Choose basketball players that cannot act, or choose actors and then try to turn them into basketball players.” (laughs) So he chose the latter. It was tough, we trained like athletes in a way. And you know, I was, like, turning 40 at the time. So to me, it was like my last chance playing [a character] 20-something years old, because the state of mind is very different. On one hand you’re happy because people think you can still handle a ‘young’ role, but then you know it’s not what you want anymore. And I thought it was my last athlete-related kind of movie or role. But after that, I actually took on another role, which was cycling. (laughs) And I hated cycling. (laughs) But luckily I’ve been maintaining a healthy lifestyle. And the character was, like, the positive person in the whole squad. She’s always the one that’s really supportive. Every single role that’s been introduced to me, even in The Hidden Dragon, is like an opportunity for me to learn to look at the world from a different perspective. But there was one role that I really, really didn’t feel right about. The recent one, in Emerald Hill.
Tell us a bit about that, how you embodied that particular character.
It’s not that I don’t like the role, I don’t like the character. I don’t agree with her. I’ve always been playing strong characters, and she was just really submissive. She’s the most traditional Nyonya in the Nyonya family. And in that era, you know, things were sort of changing already. You have female characters in that family who would go and chase their dreams. But she’s the one that’s like, “Oh no, I want to stick with the family. Once I get married into the family, I serve the family.” And slowly she became a bit crooked, and she’s locked up in her own small, little world. She’s just so in her own cocoon, and she never steps out of the house and sees what the world has changed into.
I really, really don’t like this kind of role. That was a huge challenge. And maybe that’s why the word ‘dive’ fits here also. I had to dive deeper. I had to try and understand her. And the purpose of her life, why she thinks family is the most important thing. So, that was another learning curve also.
I think I’ve become a softer and more gentle person throughout the whole process of becoming an actor. When you try to think and try to put yourself in another person’s shoes, you have more compassion and empathy. It actually softens me down, but at the same time, you kind of overthink things sometimes. And it’s costing you. But then, you know, I slowly fell in love with that character as well. I feel sorry for her.
With Padu, that was very much a ‘team’ kind of feeling, right? What was it like building that kind of chemistry, especially compared to roles where it was more of an individual kind of thing?
I think I felt the most women empowerment with Padu. Because I used to always work alone. Even if you have your costars and all, acting is a very lonely process. Like, yes, I do have friends. I do have my team who are willing to support me, but when it boils down to that moment, you are alone. It’s almost like life — when you have people supporting you, but people can’t be there all the time. So I always like to use this as an analogy. If you are drowning, it’s your own effort to at least last a little bit longer so people can have the chance to save you. If you don’t try to save yourself, nobody else can do that on behalf of you. So, yeah, in Padu that’s what I felt most. We were in the same situation, we were going through the same hardships. I think in Chinese culture also, we’re kind of like, “Okay, takpa lah. We’ll deal with it another time.” But then seeing strong characters like in Padu, it makes me feel like sometimes, we should fight a little bit more.
Since you’ve been acting for more than a decade now, what would you say have been the biggest changes in the film industry since you started?
It has not changed and it has changed a lot at the same time. It really depends on the group of people you are working with. If you know that this thing works and it’s your comfort zone, you tend to do it again and again and again. So, you wanna break from that formula. It’s not a very easy thing, because you always think that’s the right thing to do. But sometimes you have to really open up and allow people to try something else on you. Then you realise, ‘Hey, I probably can carry this as well.’ When it comes to acting, it’s the same thing.
I appreciate people who like progress. So, I like working with the younger generation these days. I like that sometimes the younger generation is full of themselves. (laughs) I like that! It’s not a bad thing at all, you know. Because it reminds me of who I was when I was much younger, like, very opinionated. I like that energy. Right now you have the younger generation coming in, and they have a different set of attitudes towards the world. And they see the world differently also. And that gives me a lot of inspiration. I really genuinely appreciate talking to the younger generation. The older generation, not everybody has progressed.
Oh, and you know what? Meals are also better these days. (laughs) Onset meals, the choices are very different. It used to be just chap fan, you know, always mixed rice. And then, if they don’t have a budget, you always end up with chicken rice because it’s the cheapest option. But these days, with the younger generation, things are changing. You have more exposure to nicer, finer things. And challenges-wise, let me just dive into that for a little bit.
When it comes to allowing the emotions to really flow, I feel we are kind of stuck somewhere. It’s very unfair to put it that way, I know. But maybe it’s just education. Especially for my generation. That’s why I love working with the younger generation, because they seem to not have that barrier. But those are just contributing reasons lah.
Following up on that, for Emerald Hill, you did a lot of the filming in Singapore. How does acting in Singapore differ from the industry here in Malaysia?
I always feel the director is the one that sets the culture of your workspace. Sometimes it’s not necessarily like ‘Malaysian style’, ‘Hong Kong style’, ‘Singapore style’. It’s the leader that’s setting the mood and the tone. But if I really wanna say, it’s also the company. In Singapore, if it’s an in-house [production] like MediaCorp, they probably have a bigger budget compared to us. But their crew and their team is so small. And a lot of times you have to be really independent. But for outside production houses, usually it’s quite similar. I think Malaysia has a pretty strong and supportive crew, very professional. Sometimes even we amaze people from abroad, they say, “Wow, actually you guys are really awesome.” Very systematic, the pacing and everything else is really good. I always say it’s probably because the environment here — especially in the Chinese-speaking industry — is really not easy. So, the people who stay on are people who have real passion. They really do love the industry. And when you really love something, you will try to perform. Maybe it’s not so much the country, it’s also the language background. English-speaking productions will probably have a different set of attitudes, Malay-speaking productions have a different set of attitudes.
You also mentioned that you have an upcoming film next year that’s based around cycling. So how was it for you, going back to do an athlete-related movie after Padu?
I hate cycling. It’s really not my thing. (laughs) Because I’m really scared of falling. So weird, right? I’m scared of heights, the feeling of losing balance. The movie is called My Parents’ Midlife Crisis. From there, you can kind of get the whole idea of the story already. I’m married with a daughter, so you know, it’s a mundane everyday life. Not on very good terms with the husband. And sometimes when you have disagreements with your partner, you’re so frustrated that you cannot break free from that whole process. And she’s stuck in a very old rundown motel, a family business. You probably think it sounds like it’s about a motel owner, but she’s the cleaner. So, she really wants to break free from that loop.
Then her brother whom she hasn’t talked to for many, many years, suddenly passes away. And the only thing that’s left for her is a bicycle. And she herself was a cyclist. To a lot of people, it probably looks like the bicycle is being reintroduced back into her life and she finally gets an opportunity to pursue her dream that she left aside. But the reality is, to me, when I was playing that character, the bicycle is just something that actually helps her to break free from the loop. It gives her the strength and the power to… or a reason. Anything that comes into her life, she will try to grasp it and she will try to make something out of it. So if you ask me if she really likes cycling, maybe not. But she just needed an outlet. She just needs to get away. That’s why when I was sharing this with the director, she said that it’s pretty much her real life story also. And she said, “I’m glad you see beyond just the cycling dream.” ‘Cause to me, the bicycle is almost like a pelampung. Anything that’s thrown to you, just grab it and make something out of it.
When it comes to playing the different kinds of characters that you’ve done, do you draw from any particular inspiration when acting? Or is it just that you understand the character and you put your own spin on it?
It’s both actually. For my recent TV show, Coded Love, the storyline is about this new hologram technology where you can kind of bring the deceased back to life again so that you have an opportunity to probably be a proper goodbye to that person. But it’s really about saving yourself. That was quite a unique case because the role that I was playing is someone who is the most ‘human’ inside, but she appears to look more ‘AI’ than any AI is. She’s very robotic because she’s keeping all her own past experiences and her own real emotions inside, like, buried deep inside. The style of acting is more like a bit more ‘staged’. I wanted to make it like you know that I’m acting. And the first person that actually popped up in my mind was Tilda Swinton. You know, in a lot of her movies like Snowpiercer, you probably don’t realise it’s Tilda until you see the credits rolling out.
But for most of the other roles and characters, I try to… like what I told you just now, I try to dive into their world and try to see it from their perspective. I try to be less technical and just try to be, most of the time that’s my approach. Like with Emerald Hill, it was actually quite heavy inside, you know. It has accumulated into something else and I unleashed a part of me. And it took me a while to kind of get out of that. I think it was a month after I wrapped my role where I just let out a big sigh, like, ‘Finally it’s over.’ I don’t have to be in that emotional prison. The house was like a prison. It was really heavy. Like, I kind of had to be taught that way. What I really like about acting is that as human beings, all of us are really complicated. None of us are single-faceted. So, to me, it’s just about trying to be really open with it. That’s my approach most of the time.
Finally, what’s next for you? What do you kind of foresee for your next year in life?
I dunno, I’ve always wanted to learn new skills, whatever it is. It makes me feel like I’ve not wasted any of my time. It makes me feel like I’ve lived a fruitful life, a go-getter. Like I’m this strong contemporary woman that’s always out there chasing something, doing something. But it’s weird… when you asked me this question, I kind of had a feeling that… ‘Nah.’ I wanna slow down. I wanna not learn so many things. Just this year. (laughs) Maybe this feeling will last just for a few months, I don’t know.
‘Cause wanting to explore new things has always been my core. I’m an Aries, I’ve always been adventurous. Anything that I don’t know, I’ve never tried before, I would just go and try without any hesitation. But for the upcoming couple of months, I just want to reduce and allow more time for myself. Even with the time spent on social media, I’ve cut it down dramatically. I used to maintain at least one post a day for many, many years. But recently, I opened up my Instagram and realised I’ve been posting maybe once a week, once every two weeks. If I don’t feel like saying anything, then I won’t. I won’t force myself to think of things to say. That’s the beauty of life, right? Sometimes I do an interview, and when the article is out, I’m like, ‘I said that?’ (laughs) Like, I don’t feel the same now. But that’s the beauty of life. At this phase, I’ll just allow it and just… be.
