'Not as simple as just spending our lives together': Qi Yuwu on what keeps him and wife Joanne Peh as family

Growing up in a traditional Chinese family, local actor Qi Yuwu understood the importance of giving the best life to his wife and children.

However, with life experiences and influence from his wife, local actress Joanne Peh, 40, he also learnt that modern family views require more than just material needs to be fulfilled, he told AsiaOne in an interview recently.

"A lot of times and more importantly, it is also about listening to what our family members say," the 47-year-old explained.

Yuwu admitted that he is still learning to be a good father and felt that nurturing their children is a lifelong learning experience.

"Children at different ages have different kinds of needs. I think being a father also means a lifetime of learning. I take it as a cultivation of experience," he shared.

Yuwu and Joanne tied the knot in 2014 and share a daughter, eight, and a son, six, together.

Very different people with common values

Yuwu said that a fulfilling marriage is to learn and grow with each other's changes.

He shared: "For two people to live together, it is not as simple as just wanting to spend the rest of our lives together. Everyone is growing and changing every day actually. Not just my wife and my children, but I am changing too, because we are exposed to different things every day and through those exposure, we have different experiences and thinking.

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"It is very challenging for two people to catch the changes in each other and continue to have common understanding and agreement. But at the same time, we need to give each other space and not limit each other."

In addition, Yuwu shared that while Joanne and him are two very different people, it is their common values that keep them together as family.

Yuwu said: "We respect our differences but at the same time, have common values on certain important aspects in life. This is what matters most to us. I cannot imagine if we have different values; I think it would be very difficult for us to live together.

"I think a lot of times what keeps a family together is their values. If their values change, I feel that the family would have a very tough time, because there would be a lot of things that they would not be able to communicate and think on the same page. But if their values are the same, I can understand that everyone has different ways of handling the same matter."

When asked to elaborate on some of the values they share, Yuwu said that he and Joanne were colleagues for 10 years before they were together and throughout the years, they have come to understand each other better.

"Joanne witnessed what I went through all these years, so she understands the reason why we are the way we are now; all these things are understood through time.

"I think it is hard to talk about the values in specifics. It is our views towards family, life, our goals, our perspectives on what is kind and beautiful, how we treat people, how we look at this world and what we understand about losses. It's hard to elaborate in detail because there are just too many of them," he added.

Bringing John Lim to life

And it was because of these life experiences and family influences that Yuwu was able to relate to his character John Lim in his first English drama Come Closer.

Set in the 1980s, Come Closer centres around the Lim family, which consists of John, his wife Lim Mei Kwan (Jeanette Aw), son Kiat (Raynold Tan) and daughter Hui (Lim Shi-An). When Hui accuses their chauffeur Siva (T.Suriavelan) of molesting her and Siva ends up murdered, each of their secrets is slowly revealed as their relationships are torn apart.

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"I grew up in a traditional family and so I understand John's mentality; he wants to provide the best to his family and provide the best life for his wife and children. I think these are traditional Chinese values," he said.

Yuwu said the role was something unexpected, as he thought the production team would look for familiar faces from Channel 5 to act in the lead role.

In addition, Come Closer marks another collaboration between Yuwu and Jeanette, which Yuwu said felt like "working with someone familiar in something that is special and fresh".

He added: "There are a lot of things that we don't need to discuss on set because having worked together many times over the years, we have established trust between each other… I think she has grown a lot and changed, so there is a slight difference while working with her this time round. She has different ways of handling certain emotions during acting."

Yuwu shared that he accepted the role because he had seen director K.Rajagopal's projects.

He shared: "Raja is a director of arthouse films. To have an arthouse movie director film a television drama on Channel 5, the change is quite interesting. I have seen Raja's works and I feel that he is really good at using camera angles to create atmosphere."

At first, he was also worried about not meeting the director's expectations, but his worries dissipated after they worked together.

Yuwu, who shared that Come Closer looks very cinematic, said: "I feel that we have similar views in many things, especially our views on what would look good on screen and acting methods. During filming, he was very comfortable to work with and everything went on very smoothly, so I felt very lucky to have taken on this project."

Come Closer is now available on meWATCH and airs on Channel 5 on Mondays at 10pm.

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yeo.shuhui@asiaone.com

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