10 things you should know about Singaporean actress Carrie Wong

Before acting in front of film cameras, Carrie Wong fronted photography cameras as a blogshop model. She did it while studying for a diploma in Hospitality and Tourism Management at Nanyang Polytechnic.

Carrie Wong’s break into the entertainment industry came after she was talent scouted for the reality show Hey Gorgeous in 2013. The competition show looked for talents in tertiary institutes and Carrie Wong emerged as the runner-up alongside Richie Koh and behind champion Alfred Low.

Carrie Wong went on to debut in the rugby-themed drama Scrum in 2014, thus beginning her journey as an actress. Since then, Carrie Wong has starred in many notable productions including The Journey: Tumultuous Times (2014), My Friends From Afar (2017), A Quest To Heal (2019) and Soul Detective (2022), garnering both nominations for acting and winning multiple Top 10 Most Popular Female Artistes along the way.

In a 2015 interview with Her World, Carrie Wong shared that her parents were okay with her not going to university and were supportive of her decision to enter the entertainment industry.

“My friends are in university and I’m not. But the most important thing in life is to know what you want to do. I have never been student material. I could study day and night but my results would still be worse than my friends’. Thankfully, my parents never put any pressure on me. They are the sweetest parents in the world. In fact, when I decided to enter showbusiness, my mum was very excited for me and my dad said: “Give it a try since you are still young.””

In a December 2022 press conference, Carrie Wong shared that she found showbusiness to be “a very cruel place”. She explained that the industry and environment forced her to “grow up regardless of whether you want it or not” and that made her thoughts different from when she was younger.

Carrie Wong added that while she enjoyed acting and performing, she recognised that there are both positives and negatives to being a public personality especially since she’s a straightforward person. Through the years, one of the biggest lessons she has learnt is to work on communicating. “I would get into trouble because I used to think that it was okay to voice out my thoughts. I thought [it was fine since] different people think differently. But I realised not everyone reacts to things [the same way] and I now know how to present myself and communicate better with people.”

In 2018, after four years and almost 20 productions under her belt, Carrie Wong went on a two-month sabbatical to give herself time to rest and recuperate before heading back before the lenses.

“Honestly, I’ve been feeling a little stagnant at work. I’ve been working non-stop for four years, acting in drama after drama. Sometimes, I don’t know how else I can bring something fresh and new to my roles. I think it’s a stage that every actress will go through in her career. I chose to take a few months off as opposed to a week’s leave ’cos I feel like it’s the only way I get to enjoy quality rest. If I don’t do this, I’ll continue working for the next few years and I may not improve or progress. I believe that taking a break to experience life will be enriching and that can help me in my acting career as well.”

When asked about the possibility of working in China should the opportunity present itself in April 2022, Carrie Wong said, “I feel… yes. I don’t know, must be able to come back lah. But I am always looking forward to overseas opportunities because you have to connect and try to experience different cultures, especially those that are out of your comfort zone, to make you learn more and grow into a better actress.”

In an October 2022 AsiaOne interview, Carrie Wong revealed that she’s “oversensitive and overthink a lot of things.” Perhaps as a result, she stated, “I’m very, very scared of the supernatural, so I can’t watch horror shows or I’ll have nightmares or not be able to sleep at night.”

Carrie Wong also shared a supernatural encounter she had when she was younger. In an apartment during a family trip to Malaysia when she was around 12 or 13, “everyone in my family experienced or saw something [strange] except me, but I fell very ill and had a high fever. My cousin said that she could hear someone singing in the showers, and we thought maybe someone downstairs was being loud. But my mum said she felt somebody jumping on the bed, she felt the bed moving.” To make things worse, the family almost got into a car accident right after leaving the apartment.

Looking at Carrie Wong now, it might be difficult to imagine that she was insecure when she was younger. In primary school, Carrie Wong recounted that she felt quite the outsider. “I was very tall, and very, very, skinny, and I had very, very, ugly teeth before I got braces. I loved to speak Chinese, and I didn’t like to speak English. That was when all my friends started to stay away from me. So, I didn’t really have friends back in primary school. I was very not confident at that time.”

That changed in secondary school after she had gotten braces and started feeling better about herself. “I became more confident after getting braces and started smiling. I think that was the big change for me. After that I felt like I had more confidence, and I realised that I’m a very outgoing girl. As long as people are willing to talk to me and all that, I can be very outgoing.”

In May 2019, a video leaking explicit Instagram DMs between Ian Fang and Carrie Wong instantly propelled the two to headlines. The uproar was because the private conversation suggested a physical relationship between the two, especially since Ian Fang was rumoured to be romantically linked to Rebecca Lim and Carrie Wong was then attached to Taiwanese model Boris Lin. She later came out to apologise for the “distasteful language” that “caused everyone unnecessary worry and harm”.

A year later, Carrie Wong went on Quan Yifong’s Hear U Out where she reflected on the scandal. She shared that the incident made her difficult to face her parents, especially since the leak happened on her mother’s birthday and she had hurt them. The silver lining of this all? Carrie Wong is now even more sure of who her true friends are.

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