'After wrapping the drama, I went into shutdown mode': Hong Ling recalls tough times during filming of The Spirit Hunter, Entertainment News
For local actress Hong Ling, the filming period for her new fantasy drama The Spirit Hunter was fraught with personal trials.
In an interview with AsiaOne on June 18, the 30-year-old told us: "It was New Year's Day when my mum was admitted into the A&E, so I stopped filming for about two days. She was in a very critical condition. In the last two weeks of filming, I told the crew that I'd be on standby mode, that I might have to leave right away."
She filmed the drama between October 2024 and mid-January 2025.
"For a whole two weeks after wrapping the drama, I went into shutdown mode because there were so many things going on. I was on the bed the whole time and I would just lie down and sleep. I didn't want to get up or go out, I just wanted to rest."
Her mother died at the age of 52 on Feb 23, and in the same month, Hong Ling, who's married to local actor Nick Teo, suffered a miscarriage.
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Now, four months after the ordeal, "all the emotions just come back" when she's alone. To help herself find strength, she said: "A few weeks ago, I tried to start exercising. My friends and work also keep me busy. When I'm busy, everything just seems to be better."
In The Spirit Hunter, Hong Ling plays protagonist Tian Nana, a 20-year-old girl burdened to carry a toy sword infused with the spirit of Jian Ling (Richie Koh), which curses her to see supernatural entities that she must defeat. 'I had tears in my eyes'
On the more physical side of things, Hong Ling revealed she has a fear of heights that she has yet to overcome even post-filming.
In addition to fight scenes, Hong Ling had to do wire stunts, a special technique where performers are suspended and moved using wires to create the illusion of 'flying', jumping, or other gravity-defying actions. View this post on Instagram
A post shared by Hong Ling (@honglingg_)
For two weeks straight, she was on the wire every day under the watchful eye of a Hong Kong stunt team. She recounted: "I was very afraid and I was shivering. I even had tears in my eyes.
"I was alone up there. Even though the crew tried to support me and say, 'There's nothing to be afraid of, you know you're very safe', I'm like, 'I know, but I'm two storeys high up in the air'."
There was also no preparation for the wire stunts due to the drama's tight filming schedule, so the cast and crew would "just go for it".
Hong Ling said: "I was very afraid that I would injure myself, because they mentioned I needed to stay still when they pull [on the wires], otherwise my waist and other parts of my body would get injured."
Injuries did occur after an intense fight scene with co-star Tyler Ten, where she suffered a muscle tear in her dominant arm. Cradling her arm back and forth, she explained to us: "I was filming with Tyler and you know how he's very tall and muscular, right? For one scene, we had to interlock arms and he would flip me 360 degrees onto the floor.
"We had a full day of filming and with all the fighting scenes, my arms were already very tired. When it was time to lock our arms, I didn't have the strength to lock mine. So when he flipped me, my arm didn't dislocate thankfully, but there was a muscle tear and I had to see a doctor. TCM (traditional Chinese medicine) was my best friend."
In the aftermath, even having sought medical attention for the injury, Hong Ling still felt the strain in her arm "every day" with all the fight scenes planned beforehand. Share strong sense of justice
To Hong Ling, she feels that portraying her role in the drama was not a huge struggle. She elaborated: "Actually, I think Nana's character is very easy to play. It's very straightforward, compared to Ferlyn (Wong) and Tyler's roles. She's just a very girl-next-door. It's the fight scenes that were the most difficult part."
Ferlyn plays Hua Chen Feng, a mysterious swordswoman whose actions teeter between good and evil.
She said that while she and her character share a strong sense of justice, she lacks the degree of frankness Nana has. However, she shared with us something she did "impulsively" during an event in 2022.
"There were two fans, A and B. B wanted to take pictures with me. I don't know what exactly happened, maybe B cut the queue or something, but A started to scold B and bodyshamed him saying things like, 'You fat pig! Why do you keep wanting to take more pictures?'
"I didn't know what was right or wrong anymore, because at the time I thought A shouldn't have done that and I confronted him. I told him, 'You are wrong. You cannot bodyshame people. You have no right to scold him.' And I just continued walking.
"Then, an admin of my fanclub approached me and said that next time, I shouldn't just confront A since it's probably not good for me or my image. But to me, I felt that B was wronged and A was at fault, regardless of whether I made the right choice to call A out on his actions."
Hong Ling will be present in this year's Star Awards, having received five nominations: Best Actress, Most Emotional Performance, The Show Stealer and BYD Favourite Female Character for her role as Guan Lin in Unforgivable, as well as Top 10 Most Popular Female Artistes.
The Spirit Hunter will be available on demand for free on Mewatch from June 30. It will also premiere on Channel 8 on July 3, airing weekdays at 9pm.
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kristy.chua@asiaone.com
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