Jeanette Aw plays the baddest villain in new drama but couldn't tahan seeing her character with blood oozing out

After blacking out last month, Jeanette Aw said she's taking September off and closing her bakery Once Upon A Time temporarily to rest and recover.

With more free time on her hands, the 42-year-old actress recently baked mooncakes and shared them on her Instagram Stories.

However, one thing that we think she might not do to R&R is watch her new drama, the iQiyi Southeast Asian original The Ferryman: Legends of Nanyang.

During the recent press event for the supernatural series, Jeanette said she doesn't watch horror shows because she gets scared easily.

"There was a scary scene of me lying on the ground with my hair fanned out and a lot of blood flowing from my neck. It's scary when I see it," she said.

She added: "I wasn't afraid during filming because I knew everything was a prop. But I would think twice if you asked me to watch the series because I have to suspend belief while watching the show. You can't be thinking, 'I know how they filmed this', so I'll be really scared."

In The Ferryman: Legends of Nanyang, Lawrence Wong plays Xia Dongqing, who has yin-yang eyes and can see spirits, while Qi Yuwu plays Zhao Li, a grim reaper. Together with Xiao Ya (Taiwanese rookie Kate Kinney), they communicate with the distressed, wandering souls in the mortal world and help them with their unfinished business.

Jeanette plays three different characters in one of the stories featured in the series.

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The first is a modern-day policewoman Ah Chun, who dreams about her past life as a dancer dressed in red. Jeanette also had to learn the dance sequence from an instructor especially for this scene.

Though the dancer is technically her second character, the role was more of a "cameo", she explained.

Subsequently, as Ah Chun learns more about her previous life, "some things happen" Jeanette teased, and the villainous spirit Hao Ji appears.

While she can't reveal how Hao Ji is connected to the other two characters, she said the role was one of the reasons why she agreed to star in the drama.

"I've never played a role like that before and that was the first thing that attracted me. I didn't have to do any scary things in the drama and even if I had to, it was done with props," she added.

Hao Ji is a spirit who has existed for a long time and has been trying to fulfil her adopted father's wish of world domination.

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"Hao Ji is the strongest villain [in the drama series] and I've never played someone this bad before. She's not bad just because she's bad. She has a backstory and she's actually grown attached to her mission."

Sharing more about the emotional width she took on when portraying Ah Chun and Hao Ji, Jeanette said: "Ah Chun has a very deep emotional story that she's been yearning for, and she hopes this whole memory of her past lifetime is real, so she's been living for that moment.

"And even though Hao Ji is very cold, she's got this emotional attachment to someone that she's grateful to for her life, and that's why she feels like she has to carry out this mission for world domination because that was his dream. And she actually goes through so much to make sure that she lives for so long, and that she has the power to finally achieve that mission… Everyone's just her minion."

The Ferryman: Legends of Nanyang is now available on iQiyi.

[embed]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kbRxUTaoCQY[/embed]

kwokkarpeng@asiaone.com