Prior to joining TVB, Kingdom Yuen (苑瓊丹) started out in ATV and in movies. She was recruited to TVB after gaining popularity from a slew of Stephen Chow movies. While Kingdom Yuen enjoyed success in many iconic roles during her time at the big company, she admits, “I did regret joining TVB because after I got in, I only realized that not everyone is working hard for the company. When it comes to profit, there will be people who want you to die.” She recently sat down with hk01.com talking about her transition from ATV to TVB and how she was initially looked down upon by staff members.
Kingdom Yuen recounted when she first joined TVB, “Going from a smaller channel to a bigger channel, don’t even talk about being an artist, even the staff member looks down on you. I remember there was a time the staff member was helping me do an egg tart hairstyle. I told her, ‘Sorry, it’s a continuous drama.’ Then that woman took the comb and smacked it hard on the table and said, ‘Then you brush it!’. Everyone in the dressing room were looking at me. I thought to myself, who doesn’t know how to yell at someone. Yelling at people is even my strong suit, but does it really need to be that way? As a new person coming into a new environment, I just pretended like I didn’t know the rules. So I just swallowed my pride, took the comb and the hairdryer and did it myself.”
Kingdom Yuen compared this to her experiences in the movie industry where she might’ve not been given special treatment because she was still starting out and hadn’t reached that stage yet. However, she said everyone was treated fairly. In her experiences in the movie industry, Kingdom Yuen said no one would think of ways to push you down or make you have less scenes. It was after joining TVB when she realized the contrast between the two industries.
Even though Kingdom Yuen had already achieved a level of fame in the movie industry, she said it was nothing when she went to TVB. She explained, “If you are really close to a producer, you can use the time to drink a cup of afternoon tea and tell them to delete my scenes because I wasn’t acting well. These things would really happened. It won’t be because I am acting well that they would add scenes for me. A lot of things I never experienced before all happened at TVB.”