Babe, me?
She may have been calm and cool about her nomination, but her second Babe Of The Year win – with a record-breaking 6,405 votes – made actress Rui En “flabbergasted”.
In an email to The New Paper, the 31-year old said she was “bewildered” when she first heard the news about how many votes she had received this year.
She beat Jeanette Aw, who received 804 votes, and YouTube star Munah Bagharib, who received 183 votes.
“My fans… I have no words for how incredibly committed they are,” she said.
“Truly, any and all awards actually belong to RBKD, all my fans and them alone.”
RBKD, the moniker for Rui En’s fan club, was also responsible for her first Flame Awards trophy, also for Babe Of The Year, back in early 2009.
Then, she was up against this year’s nominee, Jeanette Aw, as well as Joanne Peh, both of whom had shined in blockbuster drama The Little Nyonya.
She had also been nonchalant about her chances then, saying it would be “The Little Nyonya year”.
Up against Aw again this year, as well as hot newcomer Munah Bagharib, Rui En declined to talk about her chances.
Now that she has won again, she is somewhat amused.
“I really am the sort to head down to the kopi tiam in shorts and slippers. Highly un-babe-like…” she said.
She had a few stern words for The New Paper about the title, too.
“I…have to be honest. Babe is really not one of the most favourite words of mine. To me, ‘babe’ means swaddled in pastel blankets and also had a lot of very strong Christmas connotations,” she said.
All right, we hear you. A name change may be in order. Who are we to argue with someone who has had such a great year in showbiz?
Her Babe Of The Year win caps a year of trophies, including Favourite Female Character at the Star Awards for her role in A Tale of 2 Cities, and Best Actress at the recent Asian Television Awards for her role in Unriddle 2.
All, one must note, without seemingly overly eager and overexposed or the opposite of completely catty or cold.
It is her refreshing “real-ness” that endears her to her fans, who “stretched” themselves this year to make sure she took home the Babe Of The Year title again.
RBKD fan club president Peh Xin Yi, 25 told The New Paper that this year, they heeded Rui En’s advice to “vote within their means”, but they strategised to ensure their idol would emerge tops.
“Our fan club has more than 90 members, but we posted about the Babe Of The Year voting through Facebook (where Rui En has more than 116,000 fans) and Twitter,” said the club president.
“We had one member who wanted to set aside $100 to vote for her (each SMS costs 20 cents), but we stopped her as we don’t believe in having one person vote excessively.
“That’s why we promoted it online.
“Flame Awards was one of the first we got for her (RBKD was formed in Nov 2008).
“It’s a great way to end the year.”
Juliana June Rasul
Source: The New Paper, Asiaone
Categorised in A Tale of 2 Cities ä¹åœ¨åŒåŸŽ, Asian Television Awards, Asian Television Awards 2012, asiaone.com, EN, Flame Awards, Flame Awards 2009, Flame Awards 2012, RBKD, Star Awards, Star Awards 2012, The New Paper, Unriddle 2 最ç«ææ¡£ 2.
Rui En has been voted as the Readers’ Choice for The New Paper’s Flame Awards 2009’s “Babe of the Year”. Check out today’s The New Paper on why she claims she’s a Kopitiam girl instead.
BABE OF THE YEAR
‘I’m just a kopitiam girl’
The votes are in and here are the readers’ picks
28 January 2009
SHE scored an F9 in Chinese Language for her A levels.
And now she’s playing a Chinese language teacher in her next Channel 8 drama, My School Daze.
The New Paper’s Babe Of The Year, Rui En, seems to be doing the impossible these days.
She edged out Jeanette Aw, a hot favourite after the huge success of The Little Nyonya, to claim the coveted title.
The 28-year-old actress attributed her win to her ‘maturing’ fan base who ‘read The New Paper’.
She said: ‘The only other thing that I can come up with is that people appreciated my honesty when I gave that confessional interview.
‘And that maybe my story made an impact on them.’
She was referring to an interview that she did with The Straits Times last year in which she opened up about her parents’ divorce, her delinquent days and her dabbling with cigarettes and alcohol.
‘Tell all’
Rui En admitted that she made the decision to ‘tell all’ to make peace with herself.
‘I wanted a very public confessional because I wanted to prove to myself that I had moved on from all those bad experiences in my life.
‘I’m a lot at peace with myself right now. I never used to be able to feel happy with the small things in life but now I can.’
The pretty lass confessed that she hardly considers herself a babe.
She revealed that she’s actually a ‘kopitiam girl’ at heart.
‘Wait till you see me without this get-up (referring to her make-up and attire).
‘Basically I’m the shorts and T-shirt and slippers kind of girl. I’m the just-wash-my-hair and go to the kopitiam and buy kopi type,’ she said.
Most of the time, she said, she opts for the kopitiam instead of those ‘restaurants where they give you those small portions with a dribble of sauce’.
‘I’m the kind of girl that feels that non-hawker food is not real food.’
With My School Daze hitting TV screens in April, Rui En said she wondered if her junior college teachers would be shocked at her role as her grasp of the ‘Chinese language was very bad’.
As the interview drew to a close, the actress had just one question.
She asked with a laugh: ‘Are you sure you guys counted the votes correctly?’
Source: The New Paper
Previous article on Rui En’s nomination for the Babe of the Year 2009, is available here.
Categorised in Flame Awards, Flame Awards 2009, The New Paper.
FLAME AWARDS 2009
SUGAR-sweet, chilli padi-hot or cool indifference? Does it really matter? HO LIAN-YI, CHARLENE CHUA and TAN KEE YUN tell you why these lasses are our nominees for Babe of the Year.
Rui En, actress/singer, 28
Claim to F(l)ame: Known as a non-conformist who is fiercely private about her personal life, Rui En made heads turn when she finally dropped her ice-queen exterior and opened up in The Monday Interview series of ST Life! in December.
The Story So Far: The confessional interview turned out to be a surprise.
More so because Rui En has gained a reputation for being cool and nonchalant.
She had been garnering rave reviews over the last two years for her acting, mostly in roles of strong, intense female characters, like a feisty cop in Metamorphosis and a selfless HIV patient in By My Side.
But fans knew little about her. Until the interview.
She spoke about her parents’ divorce, her ‘periods of delinquency’ when she dabbled with cigarettes and alcohol, the insecurity and emptiness that led to her hunger for fame and how she hated herself back then.
And ‘what touched me completely was the heartfelt response from readers and fans’ after the interview was published.
She said: ‘It crossed my mind that I’d be nominated for being honest, so this is something refreshing!
‘And of course, it feels great!’
Rui En does not rate her chances of winning Babe of The Year high at all.
‘I think this will be The Little Nyonya year,’ she said.
We certainly dig her candidness.
Next Change: Rui En stars as a bubbly and spunky aircraft engineer in the upcoming Channel 8 drama series The Dream-catchers, which opens on 4 Feb.
Source: The New Paper
Categorised in EN, Flame Awards, Flame Awards 2009, The New Paper.
