When Esquire Singapore caught up with Ayden Sng last year, he was in the throes of filming the Channel 8 series All That Glitters. Much of the conversation lingered around the idea of typecasting—a familiar, if frustrating aspect of Singapore’s acting scene. It’s easy to empathise with Sng’s desire to break free from these shackles and truly test the limits of his craft. How many times can one play the good son, the polished, educated love interest—the character that always feels safe? But Sng isn’t one to shy away from reinvention. He’s an actor hungry for growth, even if it means throwing himself into the unknown and rebuilding from scratch.
When Ayden Sng first stepped into the industry at 25, Mediacorp was the unknown, an uncharted territory for a young actor eager to make his mark. Five years and countless Channel 8 dramas later, Mediacorp has become a familiar space, almost too familiar. The shows blend into each other, the roles begin to blur, and the people—well, everyone knows everyone. “TV filming in Singapore is like a big family,” Sng tells me, playfully cross-legged on a couch in a narrow studio. I’ve never been to the set, but I nod because I can imagine it. Sng, with his easy charisma, fills the room with a lightness that’s both infectious and disarming. He speaks with what I can only describe as a fragile meticulousness, but with the crew during the photoshoot, a more relaxed side of him surfaces, emboldened by the cadence of Singlish and the occasional slip into Mandarin. It’s been a long day—leather jackets layered against multi-layered turtlenecks, striking pose after pose under blinding lights—but you wouldn’t know it from the way he carries himself. There’s no posture here; this is the Sng his collaborators have come to know. It’s obvious he feels at ease here, but for an actor dedicated to their craft, comfort can be a cage, and growth, after all, often blooms in discomfort.
In late 2023, Mediacorp’s The Celebrity Agency embarked on a collaboration with China’s Huanyu Entertainment to select three local actors to be represented by the prestigious agency. Sng was selected as one of them, which meant that the actor would have to be based in China for the foreseeable future and direct his focus on the sprawling Chinese market. An opportunity like this is the stuff of dreams for many Singaporean actors because it could spell the eruption of their career into global heights, beyond the shores of our small nation. Yet, with any leap into the unknown, it carries its fair share of risks. For Sng, it is akin to pressing the reset button on his career. If navigating the local scene in Mediacorp was his first unknown as an actor, then the colossal landscape of China is his next great unknown.
Regardless, this is a fresh start, and in a market brimming with unlimited possibilities, Sng can finally break free from any typecasting and fully explore his range as an actor… right?
“In China, I’m essentially starting from scratch, so ironically, I’m looking to be typecast again,” he reveals, catching me completely off guard. Quite honestly, I had mapped out the entire interview in my head during my research—half-ready to set pen to paper and frame the cover story as “The Reinvention of Ayden Sng”. It would have been a grand angle that showcased how Sng has a second shot at avoiding the pitfall that is being typecasted. After all, wasn’t breaking out of typecasting part of his struggle back home?
He elaborates, “Stage one for any actor in a new market is to be typecasted because people need to think of you for a specific type of role, that’s the easiest way to get cast.” He continues, “After you’ve been in the market for a few years, that’s when you need to break out of that mould and showcase your versatility.” When we spoke to Sng last year, he was at the tipping point, on the verge of shedding that mould in the local market. “Stage three for me would then be to defy all of this.”
However, navigating a market as vast and varied as China’s means that “typecast” isn’t as simple as it sounds. “Honestly, I’m still trying to figure that out,” he admits. “China has a lot more genres than we have in Singapore—historical dramas, fantasy fighting, WWII period dramas. It’s a discovery phase.”
Despite this ambiguity, he’s finding his footing. In one of his recent projects, the wuxia drama 临江仙 (Lin Jiang Xian), he plays an immortal—a role that tested his physical limits as an actor. “It was my first time doing wire work, in over 40°C weather,” he recalls, smiling. “I was flying around with a sword for over 12 hours a day. It was exhausting, but memorable because it was a series of firsts for me.”
But there are challenges acting in China that go beyond the physical. The uncertainty of navigating a foreign territory, on top of the pressure of having to perform at the top of your craft can be intensely palpable. “You get one shot, and you have to make it count,” Sng confesses. This urgency means that now the hunger for growth he’s held for years—the one that has felt so distant—is within his grasp, he’s finally seizing it. From vocal training to movement classes and picking up the intricacies of wire work, Sng has been placed in an environment that demands rapid growth, a stark contrast to what he had been used to. “Growth used to be something that was always on my mind and was something I was trying to do”, Sng admits. “But now, it feels like I have to do it, and quickly.”
Despite the highs of being in a new market, being uprooted from everything familiar—culture, routine and rhythm—has been taxing. “Even though my Mandarin is fairly proficient, I don’t have the cultural context to respond in a way that is required of me,” Sng reveals, likening himself to a deer in headlights during social interactions. He also describes himself as a sponge, absorbing more than contributing, which he concedes makes him a dull conversationalist. “There are times when I wish I could reply to them in English, then I would know what to say, but I can’t.”
“And this is coming from someone like me who thoroughly enjoys Mandarin and Chinese.” Ironically, this challenge is part of why he loves being in China: the total immersion in Chinese culture. This affinity with Chinese culture can be traced to Sng’s childhood. “Growing up, I definitely consumed more Chinese content [than Western content],” says Sng, enraptured for the first time in our conversation. “Which is why working in China feels like a dream come true for me.” Before the internet made television shows and movies from other countries like China widely accessible, Channel 8 was the cornerstone of Sng’s childhood entertainment. “Chen Li Ping was my favourite actor,” he beams. “I watched her when she was [My Teacher] Aiyoyo.”
Creating and starring in Chinese media clearly ignites something deeper within Sng, which explains why his tone remains upbeat and hopeful, even while opening up about his challenges in China. The 30-year-old isn’t closing the door on Western projects just yet though. “The goal would be to be involved in more international projects,” he says. And in true Sng fashion, the reason is quite simple: growth.
Whether it’s Hollywood, the UK or regional countries—it matters not which foreign market he steps into. He’s more concerned about discovering the inner workings of the industry across different settings and refining his own craft. His journey in China is a prime example. “You go there completely clueless,” he confides. “You do two shows, and then you have a stronger understanding of what you can and cannot do. You realise what you’re weak at and the skills you need to improve on.” This learning process endows Sng with a roadmap, a clearer path towards bettering his craft and guiding him to becoming the actor he wants to be.
For many, success in this industry can be measured by the number of followers you have on Instagram, the accolades, the fame. But for Sng, the idea of “making it” isn’t as straightforward. “Someone earning SGD3,000 might want more, and when they get SGD6,000, it still won’t feel like enough,” he continues. “There’s always going to be something you want or feel like you need to improve on. So, it’s really about enjoying the journey.” Instead of asking himself “Have I made it?” his instincts are to ask himself, “Are you happy with where you are, and what you’re doing?
It is a grounded view of success, one that emphasises that cliché of journey over the destination.
Yet, in a career that has been marked by transitions—from Singapore to China, from typecasting to growth—Sng’s definition of “making it” is more about internal satisfaction than external achievements. He is more concerned with his own evolution than ticking off boxes of conventional success. “To create that kind of joy machine for yourself. That’s something that people need to find.”
The television format is fast-paced and unrelenting; actors are typically not afforded the luxury of time when preparing and filming for a role, especially in Singapore where productivity is a priority. While a drama with 30 episodes (roughly 1,200 minutes) may take three to four months to film, a 110-minute movie often takes just two to three months. For an actor, the unhurried, deliberate nature of cinema creates an ideal environment that allows them to fine-tune every performance and mull over every nuance. “Taking more time to create something good, that’s something that every actor would like to do,” Sng says, earnestly.
The extended preparation time that films offer actors—the slow burn of cinema—may explain why the medium has yielded some of the greatest acting performances in history. Think Al Pacino in Dog Day Afternoon, Mahershala Ali in Moonlight, Tony Leung in In the Mood for Love. From Sng’s perspective, it wasn’t a particular film that has triggered his desire to explore cinema. Rather, it was the performances themselves that struck an emotional chord with him. “It’s just something that would make you want to be in a position where you can do something like that.”
His criterion for a good film is refreshingly honest, “as long as it’s entertaining”. Whether it’s laughter, tears, or fear, if the film elicits the intended response, he would consider it a success. And if it can keep his attention for more than 10 minutes… cue the score and hand over the Oscar. Who’s to tell Sng a film is bad if he enjoyed it? Film, like all art forms, has always been subjective. A distraught office worker suffering from corporate burnout will have a completely different experience watching The Perks of Being a Wallflower than an awkward teenager battling with social anxiety and identity. That same office worker could watch My Dinner with Andre and form their own interpretation of the film, coloured by their own life experiences. “Filmmakers, in some sense, have a huge role to be able to shape how their audience thinks based on their own worldview.” Sng opines. “But how the audience reacts to it is a reflection of overall social sentiment at that point in time.”
If you couldn’t already tell, Sng thinks—deeply. A scroll to the bottom of his Instagram page reveals pictures with long introspective captions attached to them—mini dissertations on maturity, identity and freedom. These days, those personal journal entries are long gone, replaced with simpler captions and sometimes, even just a single word. What changed?
“Somebody in the industry told me that nobody’s reading any of my posts,” he reveals. “They suggested one-word captions instead.” It’s practical advice considering the fleeting attention span in the landscape of social media today. However, there’s more to this than a strategic social media move.
“I think I used to have more things to say,” he reveals, pointing to the insular nature of filming in Singapore. “When you are stuck in an environment for very long, you’re not really absorbing enough knowledge to form a perspective about a lot of things,” says Sng, adding further depth to his move to China.
Comfort, close relationships and familiarity—these are some of the things Sng has had to leave behind in dedication to the craft. But there is something else: his cats.
“I feel like my cats would call me irresponsible because I’m hardly ever home.” His life is divided between two countries. He has cats in China, cared for by his assistant and also in Singapore, looked after by his family. It’s far from ideal for someone who doesn’t mind being branded as that “crazy cat uncle”. In a perfect world, Sng would have Doraemon’s magical door, bringing his cats along with him wherever he went.
He admits that the constant travel and time away from home come with emotional challenges. “I wish I could spend more time with them,” referring not just to his cats but to the other important people in his life. But instead of letting the guilt consume him, he approaches himself with kindness, “I don’t let the guilt eat me up. I know that I’m trying my best and that’s what matters.”
Photography, Digital Imaging and Retouching: Jayden Tan
Styling: Asri Jasman
Art Direction: Joan Tai
Hair: Christvian Wu using KEVIN.MURPHY
Makeup: Ying Cui Pris at AASTRAL BEAUTY using LANCÔME
Styling Assistant: Kyla Chow
Desmond Tan is no stranger to covers; they’ve punctuated every chapter of his life. From his early days in the industry, where youthful energy and ambition defined him, to the more seasoned actor we've come to know, each interview has captured the essence of the different stages of his life.
But this one feels different. There’s a sense that he’s stepped into a new phase, one that’s about inner transformation as it is about outward success. He has a daughter now, and with that comes a shift—a deepening, a quiet assurance and a fresh perspective on life that wasn’t there before.
Perhaps it's the 17 years spent in the industry, but the insecurities that once clung to him like shadows in his youth have softened, giving way to self-acceptance. External measures no longer dictate his perception of himself, and he doesn’t seek validation from them either. It takes a certain level of nuanced understanding of oneself and the world to get there, but it makes perfect sense given his favourite film is Wong Kar Wai’s melancholic In The Mood For Love.
This digital cover feels like more than just a feature but a reflection of a man who has embraced his past, matured into his present and is ready to step into the future with newfound clarity. It’s a snapshot in time, one that perhaps, years from now, his daughter will look at and see not just her father, but a man who once grappled with self-doubt, anxiety, and identity, and emerged stronger for it.
ESQUIRE SINGAPORE: You're a father of a newborn. What was your initial reaction when you first held your baby?
DESMOND TAN: At first, I didn’t feel much when I saw her in the labour room—there was so much adrenaline. But once everything settled down, emotions hit me all at once. It was magical. I held her for the first time about six or seven hours after she was born, after all the checks were done. The moment felt surreal; like time stood still. It was just like in the movies, where the camera zooms in from a wide shot of the earth, then to the continent, then to Singapore, and finally into that very room. It was a heartwarming and moving experience, and even now, talking about it gives me goosebumps.
ESQ: How has fatherhood been treating you so far?
DT: I’m loving every moment of it. I haven’t felt frustrated or regretful. Everything’s been smooth, and I feel blessed to have an easy baby. Fatherhood has given me a new perspective on life, made me grow, and changed my priorities for the better. I now focus more on the quality and intrinsic value of things. It’s motivated me to push harder in both life and work, and I believe it’s expanded my emotional range as an actor.
ESQ: What are you currently working on?
DT: I’m working on a production called Devil Behind the Gate, where I play twin brothers. It’s one of the most challenging projects I’ve ever taken on because I have to portray two very different characters with opposite personalities.
Switching from one brother to the other on the same day is challenging, with all the necessary makeup, wardrobe, and character changes. But I enjoy the challenge, even the tough parts because I believe growth comes through deconstruction. This project is helping me build a new foundation for bigger opportunities.
ESQ: You've a daughter; how's it going?
DT: She’s an easy baby—sleeps from 8pm to 8am. But that means I often don’t see her awake. I leave early for work and by the time I get home, she’s asleep. The only time I see her awake is through photos or a baby monitor during my lunch break.
It reminds me of having a Tamagotchi—those virtual pets we had growing up. I turn on my phone, watch her through the camera, and sometimes talk to her through the speaker. At first, she would cry when she heard my voice, but now she recognises it and doesn’t cry anymore. It’s funny when I think about it.
ESQ: What's something you've always dreamt of doing with your child, even before having her?
DT: When I was younger, I imagined having a son to play soccer with, go biking, or camping. But when I had my daughter, everything changed. There are so many things I want to do with her—read books, sing duets, teach her music. The one song I always sing to her is “A Whole New World” and I hope that, one day, we’ll sing it together. It feels like a special bond between us, like the song is our theme.
ESQ: You entered MediaCorp when you were 21. How has the industry changed since then?
DT: The industry has evolved a lot, especially with the rise of streaming platforms. When I first started, people mainly watched TV for entertainment, but now there’s so much competition from productions around the world. We have to adapt to the changing tastes of both local and international audiences.
The way people consume entertainment has changed too—formats have shortened, and social media has become a big part of the industry. I used to see myself strictly as an actor, but now I realize I need to wear multiple hats. Social media helps promote our work, and I’ve come to embrace that.
ESQ: Are you interested in exploring other mediums like international film?
DT: Always. International interactions have opened up new opportunities, and I’m eager to take on international projects. Working on sets with different cultures and experiences always brings out something new in me. It’s exciting, and I’m constantly inspired to grow and explore more. I don’t want to be a wallflower in this industry—I want to leave a legacy, to be a beacon of inspiration for my generation and the next.
ESQ: What is your favourite film of all time?
DT: Definitely In the Mood for Love by Wong Kar Wai. The film captures the beauty of that era in Hong Kong—the costumes, like the iconic cheongsam worn by Maggie Cheung, the silhouette of Tony Leung’s suits, the hair, makeup and music.
I’m particularly drawn to the performances in the film. Tony Leung and Maggie Cheung’s portrayals, the subtlety, and even the silence in the movie speak volumes. The film’s understated emotions hit me more than the loud action of blockbuster movies. For example, the back shot of Maggie Cheung sobbing in the shower is powerful without showing her face. It’s these kinds of cinematic choices that show the power of film.
ESQ: Are you an introvert?
DT: I think I’m a mix, like everyone. We’re all somewhere on that spectrum. Over the years, I’ve become more extroverted, but I still have introverted moments. I get exhausted after being around a lot of people, but I also enjoy sharing things I’m passionate about. I’d say I’m about 80 per cent extroverted, though I’ve never taken the Myers-Briggs test.
ESQ: As a self-proclaimed "Ah Beng," do you ever feel a sense of imposter syndrome at fancy events like fashion week?
DT: I used to think of myself as an "Ah Beng," but I’ve realised I’m more of a heartlander, a local Singapore boy. I often felt out of place at high-society events but over time, I’ve grown comfortable in my own skin. I’ve learned that everyone has doubts, and it’s okay not to know everything. What matters is accepting your weaknesses and being willing to learn and grow, even if it’s just a little each day.
Now, I’m confident in who I am and my background. I don’t see it as imposter syndrome anymore; it’s just part of my journey. I enjoy meeting people at events without feeling the need to prove myself—it's about embracing who you are and owning your story.
ESQ: Do you struggle with small talk?
DT: When I was younger, I did. I felt the need to prove myself, to be recognized, and taken seriously. But as I matured, I realised that doing less is more. When you’re comfortable with yourself, people can sense it, and they’re drawn to you. It’s important to just relax, enjoy life, and share your passions. Over time, I’ve learned that the key is to be comfortable and positive. When you’re relaxed and enjoying yourself, others will want to be around you.
ESQ: When I was doing research for this interview, I came across an interview you had where you talked about how anxiety is one of your biggest fears. Is that true?
DT: My anxiety stemmed from my struggles with language as a child. In this industry, you’re expected to be strong in expressing yourself, which was difficult for me. The pressure of recorded interviews and live shows added to my stress. As a perfectionist, I put extra pressure on myself, which only made things worse.
ESQ: How did you overcome that?
DT: But over the years, I’ve learned to accept who I am—both my strengths and weaknesses. Accepting yourself makes you feel more comfortable and less anxious. You can’t treat anxiety with anxiety, but you can treat it with self-love and love for others.
Being a father has also helped. I’ve read books on parenting that focus on psychology, and I’ve learned that our anxieties as adults often stem from childhood experiences. By revisiting those events, you can unlock and overcome your fears and anxieties.
Photography: Hong Seong Jip
Art Direction: Joan Tai
Styling: Izwan Abdullah
Grooming: Haruka Tazaki
Producer: Oh Seoyul
Photography Assistant: Woo Do Kyun
The Onitsuka Tiger Autumn/Winter 2024 collection is available exclusively at the Onitsuka Tiger Flagship Store at B1 -37 Takashimaya Shopping Centre and online.
“To grunt and sweat under a weary life,
But that the dread of something after death,
The undiscovered country from whose bourn
No traveller returns, puzzles the will,
And makes us rather bear those ills we have,
Than fly to others that we know not of?”
-Hamlet, Act 3, Scene 1
About 20 people gathered to celebrate Carolyn Too. They were her friends and her colleagues, and they came to speak lovingly of her: how gregarious she was, and how generous with her time. They recalled her smile, her easygoing nature. Stories about the first time they met her poured out, as did little anecdotes about how much Carolyn meant to them. There wasn’t a dry eye in the room. Sentences were punctuated with sniffles. Even Carolyn wasn’t spared the torrent of emotions as she dabbed at the corners of her eyes.
Dear friend of Carolyn, You
are cordially invited to join us for
a special occasion as we gather
to honour Carolyn while she is still
with us. This event “Celebration
of Life” is an opportunity for us
to celebrate Carolyn’s life, share
cherished memories, and express
our love and gratitude.
When it comes to the conversations in an end-of-life scenario, people tend to become more mindful—aware even—as they tiptoe around the past tenses. The overcompensation of putting everything in the now—Carolyn is here. Carolyn says this. Carolyn has cancer. As though there’s still the semblance of control of the situation; that through the powers of words, you can steer the circumstances to a favourable reality.
About 30 minutes before the living funeral, the mood was considerably lighter. Cheeky, in fact, as Carolyn nodded towards the opposite corner of the bed, gesturing me to sit. “Don’t worry, I’m very chill one.” We are in her bedroom, where the make-up artist is finishing up applying eye shadow on Carolyn.
Dressed in black, Carolyn leans to her left, angling herself just enough that it’s comfortable to face me. Her smile comes as easily as she engages you, as you immediately feel that you’re meeting up with a long-lost friend. Carolyn feels overwhelmed. She didn’t expect the swell of media attention over her living wake; her three-bedroom flat feels more intimate with two film crews crowding her living room. It’s an unrehearsed choreography of camera shots and blocking; the irony of capturing the naturalness of the scene while still being an intrusive presence.
“The idea of a living funeral is new,” Carolyn says. “There was one previous case in Singapore that I saw and I was inspired by it. We, [the] Chinese, don’t do this sort of thing. But when I brought up this topic to my close friend, she said, what’s the difference? You always have parties at home anyway. This is just like that but bigger.”
It almost sounds flippant the way Carolyn says it but she has always been affable. She prefers it if people shed the enforced social civility and just relax and have fun. She once saw the idea of a living funeral as taboo but now she is warmed up to it.
It feels rude to mention that Carolyn looks tired but she has issues with sleeping. Carolyn points it to her cancer. She feels it—her tumour, this dread guest—in her stomach. She has an ascitic tap, where she drains the fluid that’s produced by the tumour to reduce the discomfort. “I have to do this every morning and it’s quite tiring,” she says. “Plus, I’m diabetic so I also have to do my insulin shots, I need my meds. I have to eat so that I can sustain my sugar throughout the day.”
There are days when it might get too much for her; all she wants is to do nothing. But as she lies in bed, reason takes the wheel and her mind formulates a compromise: if it’s too much in the morning, do it later.
“It is human nature to try to survive,” she explains. “It’s not like I don’t wanna go to work so I take leave. If I don’t do it, I will die.”
“Life is just a candle, and a dream
must give it flame.”
‘The Fountain of Lamneth’, Rush
This is the length and breadth of Carolyn’s life.
Carolyn Too is the eldest of three children. Her family owned and operated a confectionary business. Early memories of bringing her classmates and stealing bites from unattended confections floated about Carolyn’s consciousness. She was bubbly as a kid. However as she transitioned to her time at CHIJ St Theresa, her recollection fell slack.
She didn’t take to the education system and left school after her O’levels. While pursuing her mass communication diploma at MDIS, Carolyn also worked part-time at a balloon company and as a KTV DJ.
The next phase of her life was a long-standing tenure at Pearson Education. For 13 years, Carolyn had a sales team and sold textbooks to private universities. She switched to Marshall Cavendish, where she travelled extensively, and then to LexisNexis. She stayed for two to three years before quitting due to the environment being hectic.
By then in her 40s, her kidneys started to fail. It was probably due to being a type one diabetic since her 20s. Still, she took the news in stride. She was offered two kinds of dialysis treatments. One was hemodialysis, which involved cleaning her blood at a dialysis centre three times a week. The other option was peritoneal dialysis, where waste is collected from the blood by washing the empty space in the abdomen (peritoneal cavity). This is a daily affair but it can be done at home. Carolyn picked the second.
She still had to go for surgery to insert a peritoneal catheter via a laparoscopic surgery. After the first treatment, they found that the water output was less than what was put into her body. An x-ray confirmed that the catheter was slanted so another operation had to be done to straighten it.
But when her urologist operated on her, they spotted a large tumour in her ovaries. Carolyn was alone when they broke the news to her. She cried as the nurse comforted her. They drew blood from her and eventually inserted a permanent catheter in a vein near her neck for hemodialysis. Test results confirmed she had ovarian cancer in the second and third stages.
She broke the news to her family, they were supportive. While thoughts about how long she has left clouded her mind, her innate positivity broke through like a high noon sun: “let’s get through chemo. I can tahan the process,” she had said.
The clinical team suggested transferring her to the oncology department at the National University Hospital (NUH). They would have a better understanding of her situation. At NUH, they found a 28cm-long tumour sitting in her pelvic area. They placed her on chemo treatment, but each session left her weak due to renal failure complications, and she had to be hospitalised after each chemo session.
Her hair thinned out from the chemo; her head became spotted with ulcers. Vomiting was a common affair; her appetite waned. There was dramatic weight loss. Sam Yew, Carolyn’s close friend, aided her when she was in hospital. She put him down as “godbrother” as it was easier for him to visit during COVID restrictions; the appellation stuck and that’s how she has been referring to him since. When she was warded, Carolyn could tell if the other patient in the room was about to die. That’s when the two visitors-per-bed rule is relaxed and the patient’s bed is surrounded by relatives and friends.
Sometimes, she can hear children crying—plaintive pleas telling an elderly parent that “they can go now”. Carolyn tries to block it all out by cranking up the volume in her earphones. She knows dying is what waits for all of us at the end. But even with that knowledge, there’s still the fear and uncertainty of how she would go. Will there be pain or suffering? She prayed; eyes squeezed tight as her fingers interlocked so keenly that her knuckles became bone-white. In her prayer, she made a simple request: “When it happens, just take me in my sleep.”
After her chemo treatment gave her the all-clear, she was in remission for about two months before the cancer returned.
“And as it is appointed unto men once to die,
but after this the judgment.” Hebrews 9:27
In a study conducted by the Lien Foundation on Singaporeans’ perception of death, only half of the 1,006 people surveyed have talked about death or dying with their loved ones. One of the biggest triggers for opening up conversations about death and dying is when one is faced with a life-threatening illness or when someone they know passes away.
About 36 per cent of the respondents stated that they were comfortable talking about their own death but when it comes to talking to someone who is terminally ill, that number dropped to 20 per cent. The big reason for this is that the respondents have no idea how to broach the subject.
But that survey was in 2014. Since then, conversations around death and dying have opened up, albeit slowly. Prompted in part by the COVID-19 pandemic and through initiatives like the 2023 National Strategy for Palliative Care and online portals like My Legacy, the public is becoming increasingly receptive to the idea of funerals being an occasion to celebrate life instead of death.
The Life Celebrant is one such funeral service that focuses on the deceased’s life during the wake. Founded by Angjolie Mei, a second-generation funeral director, the idea to commemorate rather than mourn, started when she had to organise her own father’s funeral. She’d always known her father as a stoic man but she discovered another side of him through stories told by his friend who came to the funeral.
To further demystify death and dying, Angjolie wrote her autobiography called, Dying to Meet You: Confessions of a Funeral Director. She went on to launch a podcast of the same name in 2021, where she and a guest talk candidly about the topic of death and life.
HCA Hospice, Singapore’s largest home hospice care provider, was behind the first widely-documented living funeral late last year. Michelle “Mike” Ng was an HCA patient who took quickly to the concept of a living funeral when it was first suggested to her by HCA’s principal medical social worker, Jayne Leong.
“Living funerals form a part of the legacy-related work that medical social workers typically facilitate with patients and their families,” Leong explains. “But it is not recommended to all families as every family is unique and may have different ways they wish to honour and celebrate their lives and legacies.”
Mike’s living funeral was documented by Our Grandfather Story (OGS), a digital publisher. Uploaded to YouTube, the video was OGS’ most-watched content with 3.3 million views to date. Viewers’ comments were largely positive and sympathetic; many saw the concept of a living funeral as ideal. One of them was Carolyn.
Like Mike, the idea of a living funeral was suggested to Carolyn by her own medical social worker, Shannon Sim. This time, Carolyn is open to more coverage of her living funeral. Aside from Esquire Singapore, The Straits Times and Channel 8 were the other two media covering the occasion. With this level of media intrusion, does the Observer Effect come into play at Carolyn’s living funeral? Would the mood be different, or, perhaps more relaxed, without the presence of journalists and cameras?
“The intimate connection between patient and invited loved ones and significant others to these special events are organic experiences that will happen regardless of whether there is media coverage of the events or not,” Jayne Leong says. “For Mike’s living funeral, she expressed her wish for more people to know about holding a living funeral, hospice care and talking about death and dying openly, thus we invited the media to cover her story.”
Steps were taken to ensure prior consent from the patient and their guests. Should anyone feel uncomfortable about being photographed and filmed, their request for privacy is respected.
Shannon led the organisation of the event. They invited friends and roped in volunteers to help with Carolyn’s make-up, setting up the decorations and documenting the affair. Catering and other expenses were covered by HCA.
It was a lovely experience, which is an uncommon thing to say at a living funeral. Throughout the four hours, Carolyn’s friends said their peace. Reminiscences of the past were traded; laughter punctuated the sombre air. Carolyn belted out a few tunes with her karaoke buddies and gifted personalised cards with handwritten notes about how much each of them meant to her. It had the timbre of a farewell party for someone making that big move overseas.
The doctors gave her a prognosis of no more than six months to live. That was about a year ago. Against all odds and assumptions, Carolyn abides. She even managed to tick another item off her bucket list: spending the day at Disneyland in Hong Kong. As ever, ‘godbrother’ Sam was there by her side to watch over her.
Still a presence on social media, Carolyn continues to dole out information on her progress and help allay fears about death and dying. She walks her dog. She even plans to travel alone to Taiwan—much to Sam’s chagrin.
For Carolyn, she believes that there is more to this after she passes. A heaven, where there’s no pain, no sadness. “There is a fear though,” Carolyn adds, “not about the end but how I am going to go. The suffering is what I’m afraid of. The fear is always there but I put it aside and live in the moment.” We all ride on hope, living one day at a time. But some like Carolyn, will hold on tighter than ever; their fierce focus is on the present as their candle burns at both ends.
(Editor's note: Hours after this article was uploaded, Carolyn's medical social worker, Shannon Sim, said that Carolyn is not continuing with her dialysis and is now on terminal discharge.)
(Update: Shortly upon returning home, Carolyn passed on peacefully surrounded by her family and care team.)
I WAS PLAYING around in the surf one day in Hawaii and someone zoomed passed me on a boogie board and I thought, “That’s amazing!”. And then someone went by on a surfboard and I thought, “That’s even more amazing!”. It’s hard to explain how invigorating and joyful surfing is.
WHENEVER I SURF, I feel something deep inside me. That’s the same feeling I have when playing on stage in front of a lot of people.
OUR CHANGING THINKING on spirituality fascinates me. Where quantum physics meets with philosophy meets with mathematics meets with engineering; how they’re all coming to the same place from different starting points and how the numbers and teachings vindicate one another. We’re all one. We’re indivisible.
THAT KIND OF IDEA is not for everyone. You basically have to say goodbye to everything you thought was real. It gets craaazy!
WHEN I LISTEN TO MUSIC—even classical music—I have a tendency to imagine that all the instruments are guitars and that makes it all so much more interesting. Play an oboe passage on guitar and it can sound amazing. Translate a French horn passage in the harmonics of a guitar and the result can just be incredible.
I KNOW ONE DAY my children will come into a lot of money and that bothers me. I still don’t know what I’m going to do about that, especially as I grew up with very little and know that when I had some disposable income I went a bit crazy. I’ve had pretty much everything I’ve ever dreamt of having.
THE TRICK always is to want what you already have, not to keep on wanting.
WHEN I WAS A TEENAGER and inspiring to be a rock musician, I was taken with rock ’n’ roll’s glamour, the romanticising of the lifestyle. Well, then you experience it—and it’s all bollocks.
BELIEVING in sex, drugs and rock ’n’ roll is a quick way to ruin your life. Pretty much all of my peers bought into all that and didn’t come out at the end of it—addictions, narcissism, just inappropriate behaviour, all that changes people for the worse. The problem is that it seems like a good idea at the time. Yes, it was fun, but every day I have regrets [about it].
WHERE METALLICA STANDS in culture is very important to me. The band just gets bigger every year and when people hear your music for the first time when they’re younger, they just latch on to it. There’s only a handful of bands that are like that. In our case, it speaks to people who are pissed off and don’t know why, people who haven’t had enough of a voice or who haven’t yet found a way to express it.
WHEN we’ve all run out our lives, Metallica will still be this living entity. For some reason, it’s so much bigger than the four of us [band members].
IT’S SO HARD to find stage clothes—something that’s unique, that you don’t see everywhere but has a flashiness to it because it also needs to be something you can see from 50 feet away.
WEAR ALL BLACK—as you do in heavy metal—and the stage gets dark and then suddenly it’s like, “Where’s Kirk gone?” It took time for me to realise you can really express yourself through clothing and that clothing can be fun.
WHEN I WAS YOUNGER I never really understood what machismo was. And then one day I realised I was neck-deep in it. All my friends, my father, my uncles and cousins—they were macho so I was naturally drawn to that way of thinking. It wasn’t like we were all Clint Eastwood exactly but there is a covert kind of machismo—the aggression and hostility, the need to be the toughest guy in the room. For me that even meant writing tough, scary riffs. It’s still hard for me to write happy-sounding music. It needs to sound like scraping a shovel along concrete.
I TELL MY CHILDREN never to feel pressured by dad’s day job [or] by the idea that they have to rise to some kind of standard [of success]. I tell them to just try to do what makes you happy—as long as it contributes to your well-being—and pray that you can make a living from it.
THAT and be nice to people.
I DON’T KNOW where the points come from but you get extra points for being nice to people. It makes you a lot more positive. And positivity is progress.
I’M A HABITUAL COLLECTOR, BRO. My friend called me the other day and asked me, “Why do you collect plastic bags?”. And I thought ‘I’ve been completely rumbled here’ because I do. I have OCD and collect anything.
I’M AT THAT AGE when I can look back on my life and see patterns when I go hard on certain things—guitars, vehicles, watches... plastic bags.
THE TRICK IS to not care what people think [about you]—not the way you’re dressed or your music or anything.
EVERYONE WILL HAVE AN OPINION—that’s what my parents told me—and it just doesn’t matter, especially since everyone’s opinion is coloured by where they are at in their lives.
UNFORTUNATELY, social media has turned that around.
WHO WOULD BE A COACH? That is the question that might have formed on the lips of anyone watching former Australian rugby coach Eddie Jones’ terse press conference following the Wallabies’ 40-6 thrashing by Wales at the Rugby World Cup in France earlier this year. Jones was in the hot seat, a position in which all coaches at the highest level find themselves at some point. It’s part of the job, if you can call what is a multidimensional, intensely scrutinised and, for some, all-consuming obsession, a job.
“I don’t consider coaching to be a career in any way, shape or form,” says Michael Cheika, coach of the Argentinian rugby team, a former World Rugby Coach of the Year and one of the few people who might have had a real understanding of how Jones was feeling in that moment, having coached the Wallabies from 2014 to 2019. “One day when I grow up, I’m going to have to get a proper job, just like everyone else. I think this is... it’s a lifestyle.”
Cheika, 56, who is speaking to me today from his living room in Paris where he currently lives, loves the real-time, week-by-week, game-by-game accountability of his role (he refuses to call it a job). “That is the best because you know that the day-to-day will get you to the better results later on,” he says. “The ups are never as good if you haven’t had the downs. So, the thing I enjoy most is that attention to results.”
Cheika’s attitude is one that’s built not so much on self-confidence—though, of course, that is important—but supreme self-belief. “Confidence can come and go,” he says. “You can be swayed with confidence. Because after a bad result, you could have your doubts. But what brings you back is that sense of self-belief, that you know what you can do, and what you can achieve.”
If you want to know whether you truly love something, you can get pretty clear confirmation when the things you enjoy about it are the same ones as those you find challenging. Or as pop culture’s most recent coach du jour Ted Lasso has said: “Taking on a challenge is a lot like riding a horse, isn’t it? If you’re comfortable while you’re doing it, you’re probably doing it wrong.”
“Mental health in COACHING is a case of whatever doesn’t KILL you makes you stronger.”
Comfort certainly isn’t something you’ll find in abundance in elite-level coaching. This is a role that puts you on a war footing with failure. One in which pressure is a ceaseless companion, scrutiny can be forensic, and all that really matter, regardless of how much an organisation might bang on about about culture and development, are wins and losses that are there for all to see. Succeed and you’re a saint. Fail and you’re a sinner. As Tom Sizemore’s character says in Michael Mann’s Heat, “The action is the juice”. And if it’s not, well, you should probably find another gig.
In that sense, you could call the coaching environment at the top level of professional sports a cauldron. The mental strength required to operate under such a cutthroat dynamic is difficult to fathom. But mental strength is built on mental health. And while the psychological demands faced by players have become a major focus in the past decade, the same can’t be said of the mental burden carried by coaches. Does the authority and visibility of the position preclude it? Could an admission of weakness and vulnerability put your job at risk? In all likelihood, yes. But there is also the possibility that coaches, the ones who’ve survived, are mentally stronger because they have faced adversity, shouldered responsibility and been held accountable.
“I think that mental health in coaching is a case of whatever doesn’t kill you makes you stronger. Because if you are to survive long enough as a coach, you’re going to encounter all kinds of anxiety and depression, but you’re going to overcome them,” says Dr Bill Steffen, a former division one soccer coach in the US, and assistant professor in sports science at Wingate University in North Carolina, whose primary research focus is mental toughness in coaching. “You’re going to inoculate yourself to those two conditions. Yeah, you get depressed. Yeah, you get anxious. But you figure out how to handle it, or you don’t, in which case you exit coaching.”
If that is the case, could it be that the seat Jones was occupying at that press conference back in September, while hot enough, perhaps, to scold or even brand him, was one he could endure? Because coaching isn’t so much a cauldron as it is a crucible.
WHEN BRIAN GOORJIAN WAS appointed head coach of the Boomers in 2001 after more than a decade as an NBL coach, he had a very human reaction: am I good enough? “I was excited when I got the position, but as soon as I got it, I’d have to say I felt overwhelmed because the responsibility is huge,” says Goorjian, who’s enjoying a view of the Melbourne skyline on a clear Friday morning, as he speaks to me from his apartment in Prahan. “I thought, Am I good enough to do this? Everyone has those doubts in them and people don’t realise that. You feel insecure. This isn’t just you and your team. This is a country.”
Goorjian, whose heavy Californian twang remains strong despite emigrating here in the late ’70s, found his doubt disappeared once he entered the Boomers’ camp and immersed himself in the day-to- day minutiae of coaching, otherwise known as the X’s and O’s. There, the players and support staff would likely have never twigged that their loquacious, at times temperamental, always passionate coach might have felt unsure of himself. And Goorjian wasn’t about to tell them.
In a leadership position that hinges on authority and respect, there’s not a lot of room for outward expressions of uncertainty.
The popular image of the coach as a solitary figure on the sidelines of games means they’re easily reduced to caricature, at least by their critics in the media and in the often hackneyed archetypes they inhabit in popular culture—stubborn, taciturn, volatile, tight-lipped and inscrutable are a few of the more common adjectives used to describe top-level coaches. Lasso, in his unrelentingly cheesy and avuncular nature, clearly bucks the stereotype. But you do have to wonder how much coaches’ public profiles match their private personas. “I’ve spoken with coaches that say, ‘Yeah, I’m screaming just to scream, just to be a presence so that it looks like I’m doing things, even though I know I’m not’,” says Steffen.
Anson Dorrance, coach of the division one women’s soccer team at the University of North Carolina and former coach of the USWNT that won the inaugural Women’s World Cup in 1991, says many people are surprised when he describes himself as an introvert. “I’m a radical introvert,” says Dorrance from his car on the way home from practice in Chapel Hill. “So for me, even on this phone call, this is a performance. This isn’t me. This is me acting like the women’s soccer coach at the University of North Carolina.”
So, what defines mental toughness as it relates to coaching? Steffen conducted a study in which he and his team asked 22 elite-level coaches in the US that very question. The coaches surveyed came up with 46 characteristics, which were then narrowed down to a top 10. Confidence was rated the most important component in a coach’s mental make-up, followed by resilience, consistency, positivity, energy, passion, optimism, adaptability, inner strength and patience. The coaches were then asked if they thought these traits needed to be innate or could be developed. “Most thought it could be developed because a number of them said they weren’t mentally tough when they started coaching,” says Steffen. “Resilience is adversity and adjustment, and if you don’t have adversity, you can’t be resilient. Most coaches had some difficult times, yet they adjusted, they adapted, then they developed that resiliency.”
Cheika agrees coaches need to be mentally agile to succeed. “I’ve got an open mind as a coach but can also be very authoritarian,” he says. “I think that’s a real skill: to be able to be flexible, but to have single-mindedness when necessary. And then not be afraid to change if you feel like, Oh, no, this actually is better.”
Underpinning all of these traits is often an insane level of competitiveness. “Most people that think they’re competitive, I don’t think are competitive,” says Dorrance, who gleefully tells me he was the subject of a celebrated book, The Man Watching, which includes a chapter in which “everyone who hates me gives their opinion on me”.
It was Dorrance’s competitiveness that drove him, during one year of his 47-year tenure at UNC, to take a single Thursday afternoon off. “I was ok with that,” says the 72-year- old, who elevates plain speaking to an art form. “In fact, as my wife will tell you, I hate vacations because what’s going through my head is someone’s getting ahead of me.”
Clearly this level of commitment is not for everyone and even for those who possess it, is surely a double-edged sword. “The beauty of it [coaching] is that it’s not a nine-to-five job, and the curse of it is it’s not a nine-to-five job,” says Steffen, who also used to coach division one college soccer in the US and once had a year where he was away from home for 49 weekends on recruiting trips, a workload that hastened his transition from coaching into academia.
Dr Will Vickery, a senior advisor in coaching at the Australian Sports Commission, confirms that work- life balance is an alien concept to a majority of coaches. “It consumes your life, so you don’t really have a lot of time to switch off,” he says. “You forget the fact that it’s your job as opposed to your life.”
GOORJIAN KNEW HE MIGHT FACE a little extra heat when he stepped off the plane from Japan after the Boomers’ lacklustre FIBA World Cup campaign back in September. He expected it from the traditional media, who he has long courted and enjoyed a fruitful, symbiotic relationship with. But these days, of course, the real criticism, the stuff that might keep you up at night, doesn’t come from those who report on sports for a living. It’s from the anonymous keyboard combatants on social media. Fortunately, or perhaps astutely, Goorjian isn’t on social media. “My daughter’s like, ‘Don’t worry about what they’re saying’, so I’m like, Jesus, it must be fucking horrible.” Goorjian didn’t care to find out. “I’m oblivious.”
But he’s all too aware how such criticism affects the younger coaches he mentors, calling trolling the work of “cowards with no responsibility”. “Man, you’ve got to watch your mental health because some of that stuff is vile, really nasty,” he says. “I had a guy on the phone the other night and he was like, ‘They’re talking about my wife and my kid’. It breaks my heart.”
Cheika too, shuns social media but is similarly aware of its psyche-shredding potential. “All of a sudden you can be receiving everybody’s judgment,” he says. “It’s probably more in the domain of those who are just starting off in coaching. Whereas a coach my age, I wouldn’t know what anyone’s saying on social media. So it has no effect. And this is the thing, right? It’s a choice.”
While Cheika and Goorjian’s absence from social media removes it as a stressor, they don’t shy away from scrutiny from the mainstream media and are accepting of the fact that reporters, like them, have a job to do. “I always look at it like I’m getting rewarded for my work,” says Goorjian. “People say, ‘You can’t hide this’. I like that. I’m proud of what I’m doing, I’m proud of my team. I love that if I lose a certain number of games, my ass deserves to be in the firing line. It helps drive me.”
Cheika too, is not overly bothered by criticism of his performance; invariably, he’s already judged it for himself. “I’m an extremely harsh auto critic,” he says. “What role have I played and how has my performance been? I’m already asking those questions before any media ask me. I feel like the whole pressure thing is a bit overplayed.”
Of course, pressure also comes from within an organisation, particularly if you’re a coach who’s been brought in to help a team take the final step toward a championship, premiership or medal. Goorjian admits that his outstanding record as an NBL coach, including a three-peat with the Sydney Kings, has created expectations he’s found tough to deal with. “You can’t help but feel it within the organisation and to be truthful with you, that’s why I’ve coached overseas [in China] a lot in the last 15 years,” he says. “You don’t want to let people down.”
The perception created by a team’s position on the ladder can see pressure on a coach mount quickly. “Their win-loss record is their litmus test,” says Vickery. “If they’re not winning, then they’re almost seen as failing, which is absolutely not the case. But the public perception is often that way.”
Steffen, meanwhile, believes the focus on results warps perceptions around the job the coach is actually doing. “I think coaches get too much blame when they lose, but they also get too much credit when they win,” he says.
The fact is, when a team is underperforming, it’s not the star player who’s going to get the axe, even if fault lies within the locker room. “It’s easier to get rid of the coach,” says Steffen. “To sack one person versus sacking an entire team. It’s just easier to change it that way.”
In such a transparent, results-driven profession, job security will always be an issue, says Josh Frost, a researcher at the University of Melbourne’s Orygen Institute, who is currently completing his PhD on the mental health of elite coaches. “In last year’s Premier League season in the UK, 13 out of the 20 football clubs sacked or fired a coach. In some sports coach turnover is very prevalent.”
“It consumes your LIFE, so you don’t switch off. You forget that it’s your JOB as opposed to your life.”
Not surprisingly, those who’ve been in coaching for a while have developed strategies to deal with the precarious nature of their position. Cheika, for example, came into coaching from a successful business career and was already financially secure. “No one is forcing you to do this,” he says. “It’s a choice. I’ve always had my own businesses. What that does for you is give you that autonomy so you don’t make compromises for the reason of job security or because you need that salary to pay your mortgage.”
Earlier in his career, Goorjian, too, leaned on a teaching qualification as a form of insurance, allowing him not only to shelve worry about his financial future but also to take risks. “I always had a plan B,” he says. “I taught when I came to Australia. So, I had a mindset of, I’m in a casino, I’ve got five grand in my pocket that I’ve won,I’ve got the other 500 sitting on the table and I’m playing with the bank’s money. Risk-taking is a very important part of coaching. You’ve got to play a little bit by the seat of your pants.”
AS A FORMER PLAYER WITH THE Melbourne Demons in the AFL, Alistair Nicholson remembers his first coach, Neil Balme, being fired after a string of losses in 1997. “I got quite a strong dose of the instability and impact that can have on a football club and player group,” says Nicholson, who these days is the CEO of the AFL Coaches Association. “And then my time under Neale Daniher, there were times where I’d go, ‘You’re looking after us and looking after us well, but who’s looking after you?’ And I think that’s probably where the conversation is now.”
A 2020 study by the Orygen Institute conducted in partnership with the Australian Institute of Sport of 252 elite coaches found that 41 per cent of them had psychological symptoms that warranted treatment from a health professional, while 42 per cent reported potentially risky alcohol consumption. Almost a fifth (18 per cent) reported moderate to severe sleep disturbance and 14 per cent experienced very high psychological distress.
Frost believes the broad remit of modern coaching makes it inherently mentally demanding. He cites pressure from clubs, fan expectation, job insecurity and social media as contributing factors, which are compounded by long hours and frequent travel, often robbing coaches of the ability to access a support network. “I think a range of things can be very demanding and with a lot of social isolation and travelling, not having your social support around you can really contribute towards being more vulnerable to mental health challenges,” he says.
And while the argument can be made that adversity forges resilience in the longer term, the fact is, not all coaches are equipped to deal with the pressures of the job as well as others. This is only exacerbated by the fact that those who are struggling may not feel comfortable disclosing their difficulties due to concerns about the reaction from their organisations. “Coaches are leaders in their environment and might feel less inclined to exhibit or express emotions at the risk of receiving judgment from players or members of the hierarchy or board,” says Frost. “And that’s why it’s really important that organisations cultivate a psychologically safe culture to allow coaches to be able to express their emotions or challenges in an environment that has fewer consequences.”
Steffen returns to the sink-or-swim dynamic of coaching. “Sinking could lead to problems with mental health or you just get out of coaching,” he says. “I know a number of coaches that have just left coaching because of the demands. They felt like it wasn’t healthy.”
Sometimes coaches just need to refresh themselves, something often only afforded by default after contract termination. Increasingly, though, at least in the AFL, some coaches are choosing to take time off on their terms. “We’ve seen in the AFL some experienced coaches take a sabbatical or time -out and the boards have confidence that they’re going to bring something back to the club. Clarko [Alastair Clarkson] and Brad Scott and Ross Lyon came back after a period away and hopefully their energy levels will continue to let them do it because there’re only so many people that can do it at the top level, and do it well,” says Nicholson, whose organisation helped found, in 2018, a mental health education programme
for AFL community coaches and players called ‘Tackle Your Feelings’. Not surprisingly, the mental toll of the profession is something coaches will often only acknowledge behind closed doors, sometimes with other coaches who are equipped to understand the struggles they might face. Goorjian and Cheika both talk regularly to other national- level coaches. Both also see the advantages to be gained in seeking outside counsel. When Goorjian began coaching he employed a performance coaching consultant to evaluate him on and off the court. “Once a week, it’s like I’m sitting in the chair and he would say, ‘Let’s talk about you. You look tired, let’s talk about your...’ so I know that side of it.”
Similarly, after the World Cup, the 70-year-old sat down with a circle of trusted confidantes. “They knew I was going to call. They’ve watched every game. So it’s like let’s sit down and talk. If I have a problem and it’s affecting me, I have people I can go there with. You need it just like the players need it. You need to be evaluated. I’m like everybody else. I’m not made of steel.”
IF COACHING AT THE HIGHEST LEVEL does ultimately come down to winning and losing, you have to wonder how coaches mentally approach this inescapable, sometimes oppressive dynamic. While there is something to be said for attempting to embody Kipling’s immortal line, "If you can meet with triumph and disaster... And treat those two impostors just the same", coaches do have to allow for their own humanity.
“I think coaches get too much BLAME when they LOSE and too much CREDIT when they win.”
“On wins and losses, I have a rule where at midnight, that game is in the rear-view mirror,” says Goorjian. “If we win, I’ve got to celebrate with my staff, ‘Let’s have a meal together’. But at midnight I put it in the rear view mirror and it’s the same thing with a bad loss.”
Of course, the really big victories, the championships or Olympic medals should be savoured, he adds. “I got a three-peat with the Sydney Kings. You carry those rings around in your heart with that group for the rest of your lives. The bronze medal [at the 2021 Tokyo Olympics], I think about that every single day. I wake up and that’s something I carry. It never goes away.”
Cheika, who’s coming off a fourth- place finish with Argentina at the Rugby World Cup, is in a period of reflection when I speak to him. “Look, it’s hard for me because many would say we had a successful World Cup, finishing fourth. I’m still going through the last game where we could have finished third. What could I have done better in the lead-up? Not because I’m looking to be hard on myself but because I know that will serve me so that when that scenario or something similar occurs again, I’ll be able to make good decisions or better ones.”
That is, of course, all you can do, for soon enough victory and defeat are reduced to something altogether less august: statistics. And those, well, those can be damning, even for the most successful of coaches. “If the only time you’re happy is when you win the championship, you’re going to have a horrible career,” says Goorjian. “I’ve been in this close to 40 years; I’ve won six. It’s very, very rare that you finish a season with a win.”
This all serves to underline the fact that in this business, you need a healthy relationship with failure. Sport’s great conceit is that results mean everything and nothing. The stakes are a construct, the drama confected. “The greatest thing about sports is failure because it doesn’t matter if you fail,” says Dorrance. It’s a lesson he tells his players but one that might serve anyone compelled to embark on coaching as a career. “If you want to really grow, fail as often as you can and recover, because it’s in the failure that you’re going to learn about who the hell you are and you get to make a decision on who the hell you want to be.” Well said, coach.
Originally published on Esquire AUS
WE ARE AT A CROSSROADS. One road leads to extinction and the other could lead to a more peaceful, sustainable, healthier and joyful planet. Unfortunately, our emotional and spiritual development has not kept up with scientific knowledge.
IT IS WITHIN our power to reverse this calamity, and that can change if humanity has a shared vision. If we complement one another’s strengths, if we have maximum diversity of knowledge and if we connect, emotionally and spiritually... then it could emerge into a new paradigm.
ALL PEOPLE are interested in, is how many likes they get on their selfies. We have sacrificed ourselves for our selfies.
YEAH, I think celebrity is another way on how we replace ourselves with our selfies. It’s the human condition. They like to think that there’s somebody who’s superior but there isn’t.
I USED TO MEET people on the streets who told me, I read your books. Now they say my grandmother used to read your books.
TRANSCENDENTAL MEDITATION is one particular aspect of mantra meditation. And the mantras that I use take you beyond thought. But now we see that that’s only one form of meditation. [There are others like] mindfulness, reflective inquiry, body awareness, awareness of mental space.
FUNDAMENTAL REALITY cannot be accessed by a system of thought. Whether it’s science or philosophy or any other system. If you want to know reality, you have to go beyond human constructs. Meditation is the only way to go beyond human constructs.
EVERYTHING WE TALK ABOUT IS A story. Stories are maps of reality, not reality. You can’t eat the menu, you have to eat the meal. And so if you want to eat the meal, you have to go beyond rational thought.
MY FAVOURITE BOOKS haven’t changed. Have you heard of Lost Horizon? It was by a guy called James Hilton. It was the first time people were introduced to the idea of Shangri-La. I have other favourites like W Somerset Maugham’s The Razor’s Edge; Rudyard Kipling classics; Arthur Conan Doyle... Shakespeare’s my favourite. I used to be able to recite every play of Shakespeare.
ACTING is a very interesting profession for good actors. I occasionally watch movies and the last one was Oppenheimer because I was curious about the person who had the insanity to create an atomic bomb.
YOU SAW OPPENHEIMER, RIGHT? What an ordinary guy. Do you read Einstein’s biography? I mean, the amount of human problems he had. When you look at famous people, whether they are in the arts or humanity or science or spirituality... everybody is fake. Including me.
IF THERE WAS a biography made on my life? [It’ll be an] authentic fake. At least, I don’t deny it.
HOW OTHERS depict me is a projection of themselves. The story you write about me... isn’t about me, it’s about you because of the questions you’re asking, right? It’s like using AI for a prompt: you’re asking me questions that the next person will not. Every story you write is about you.
IF I HAVE A GRAVE, it would say on the [tombstone], “Where you are, I once was. Where I am, you’ll soon be”.
I HAD A GOOD TIME. Been there, done that.
I WAS NOT SELF-AWARE as a physician-in-training. I graduated medical school in 1970 and went to the United States immediately. The first 10 years of my training, internship president’s fellowship, neuroscience, I was very much part of the system.
IN THOSE DAYS, doctors smoked; we all smoked. Even during the medical conference, doctors would advertise for Lucky Strike or Camel cigarettes. A very interesting time.
WORK doesn’t start until it’s 11am. When I get up at six, I reflect. Meditate; I do yoga. After five I don’t work any more. Weekends too.
I HAVE NO SOCIAL LIFE. I find social conversation very boring. Other than, spending time with friends and family, I don’t go to parties or watch movies.
IT’S DISTRESSING but I watch the news just to keep up with the world. Everybody’s fighting over nothing.
I WANT to be known as an interesting guy. But he’s not there any more. Move on. [laughs]
DO YOU know your great-grandfather? Do you know the grandfather of your grandfather? No. But because of him, you’re here. Every cell in your body has the genes of your ancestors. That is the legacy.
MY NEW BOOK is called Digital Dharma and I think AI, like any other great scientific discovery, can be used to heal the world or to destroy the world. But, at least, we have the intelligence to not allow that to happen.
THEN AGAIN, humans are crazy.
AI IS AUGMENTED HUMAN intelligence: it doesn’t say anything original. It’s a large language model that has no consciousness; doesn’t feel hungry; doesn’t have sex; doesn’t fear death... but it’s super intelligent as a language model..
A LOT OF PEOPLE think I am crazy. Maybe. I don’t know. If war and terrorism and eco-destruction and extinction of species, and poison in your food chain and chronic health and absence of joy is normal, then I don’t want to be normal.
I HAVE NO FEAR. I’ve no fear of death or anything. Zero. My stress level is zero.
TO GET TO THAT STAGE [of having no fear] is to recognise that you’re not your body and you’re not your mind. The only thing that’s real is consciousness; consciousness without form. It doesn’t have borders, therefore, it’s infinite.
Photography: Gan Kah Ying
Art Direction: Joan Tai
“It is frustrating that people still think of board games as being like Monopoly, just going on forever and ever, with players sat there circling the drain until it’s over,” laughs Chris Backe, “when there’s a new generation of board games that allow us to explore aspects of ourselves we don’t generally get to explore. It’s like the movies or novels, only with games you’re not a watcher but a participant. With games, we get to step out of our skin”.
Backe is a rare beast: he’s a full-time board game designer, always working up 20 or so new concepts for his company No Box. He’s testing them, seeing what works and what doesn’t, and over recent years seeing his industry enjoy a huge revival—to the tune of USD16b in annual sales, thanks in part to the pandemic. Over his years in the business, he has concluded this: it’s not that people like to play, but that they need to play. And not just in structured ways, as with games or sports, but in manners that have no purpose at all beyond the pleasure of doing them. We’re not just talking about children here; we’re talking about grown-ups too.
“I’m a strong proponent of the idea that adults should play, by which I mean play that is defined as self-chosen and self-directed, not driven by coaches, not something you have to do,” says psychologist Peter Gray, author of Free to Learn and one of the world’s leading scholars of play. “All play in a sense has rules, maybe handed down [from] generation to generation, sometimes implicit, sometimes just made-up on the spot. But we all need to play more. Play has made us what we are”.
And not just us. All mammals play, from dolphins to dogs. One theory proposes that those mammals are capable of using objects as tools. Like a monkey using a stone to break open shellfish, for example, or the first instance when a stone is used as a toy. Utility came later. Others stress how, despite its energy expenditure, and even the occasional injury, natural selection has not weeded play out, as might be expected.
In part that’s because play is often a process of exercise or stress relief, both good for us. But it also has a much more important role. One key idea—first proposed by Karl Groos in his The Play of Man (1901)—is that play not only allows the nervous system to develop ready for certain activities later in life but it also functions as a kind of practice. Of those skills required for survival, learning to cope with unexpected events, and preparation for doing things as a competent adult.
The skills and values explored in play can be specific to a child’s culture—Groos suggested the likes of hunting, skiing, canoeing or horse-riding. It seems that children’s readiness to play at these is instinctual; they observe and mimic without being prompted. The skills can also be more universal. Play, for example, is often social—first is the need to decide together what and how to play, so cooperation and communication are essential.
In fact, animals that are more dependent on their group for survival tend to play more, with, as Gray argues, hunter-gatherer societies positively suffusing nearly all they do with play. From religion to work and ways of settling disputes, all the better to suppress any drive to dominate. In play, you have to learn to control your impulses, like in play fighting where you’re almost hitting your opponent but never actually. It’s as much mental as physical too. Being self-directed, play also fosters creativity, imagination, experimentation and independence.
It’s why, argues Rene Proyer, professor of psychology at the Martin Luther University in Halle-Wittenberg, Germany, while some of us play in more obvious, more socially acceptable ways—he cites those who play video games, use colouring books for “mindfulness” or who build the complex sets LEGO created specifically for adults (“Adults welcome,” as its ad has it)—we all tend to play in one way or another. Humour, fantasy, daydreaming, sexuality all offer forms of play, as does language, as the very phrase “wordplay” suggests. People often use play as a means of getting through repetitive tasks, inventing challenges for themselves, he notes.
“[If you play with children] you soon learn that almost anything and everything can be play. But, in a way, adults are more free to play because our worlds are larger [than children’s],” Proyer suggests. “And there are good reasons to continue to play as adults, even the opportunity it brings for continued learning. But the easiest answer to the question of why adults should play—and the most correct one—is that it’s fun. Play can be used to maintain alertness, or to keep you in the moment. It’s through play that you can enter a ‘flow state’.”
This idea, of being fully immersed in a feeling of energised focus and enjoyment, is now more commonly cited about sport or the production of art—but it was first proposed, by the psychologist Mihalyi Csikszentmihalyi in 1990.
And yet the evolutionary necessity of play has long been side-lined, even denigrated. Sebastian Deterding, professor of design engineering at Imperial College, London, and a researcher in playful design, says play got in the way of industrialisation and its need for reliable labour. Capitalism saw play as a waste of time; play became associated not with positivity but with the Bacchanalian wildness of festivals.
“Even in the Medieval period kings would complain about peasants playing cards rather than improving their archery or doing something ‘useful’. And religions have often had bans on games because of their relationship to gambling,” he says. “Today in the [first] world the norm is to have roles and duties — as an employee, as a parent—while caring for oneself and one’s dependents. And play doesn’t fit into that. It’s seen as trivial in a culture in which everything is measured in terms of productivity. Even sleep and fitness are about improving your ability to fulfil your social role, while sport is considered to have the necessary function of being a community ritual.”
Historically some games got what Detarding calls a “free pass”: early board games—the likes of Snakes and Ladders—were morality tales dressed up as games, while chess or backgammon were associated with a kind of brain-training. Even when play is discussed today there is, he says, often some vague kind of attempt to legitimise it—it’s a way of getting the family together, or it’s for the improvement of one’s well-being, “even that the PlayStation you just bought was in the sale,” he laughs. “But attitudes to play are changing—there’s more institutional approval, for example, with big museums running exhibitions on video-gaming; there’s more questioning of the values we’re expected to subscribe to. There’s also been a lot of boredom over recent years”.
“In one sense play is on the up, especially coming out of the pandemic. People had a lot of time on their hands that previously they hadn’t, and turned to play as something to do, even as a way of dealing with the situation,” says Jeremy Saucier, assistant vice president at The Strong National Museum of Play in New York and editor of the American Journal of Play. “Sure, play has long been associated with childhood—play is ‘what kids do’—even as many adults became more open to it, and even if they might not have called it ‘play’. Yet there’s still a certain risk in revealing that you ‘play’ in modern culture. Play is still considered to be frivolous in a highly competitive world”.
Unless, of course, that highly competitive world co-opts play in the pursuit of improved efficiency in business or consumer engagement with a product: the so-called ‘gamification’ of the workplace and education, in training and marketing. This reveals a philosophical conundrum. “Play has so many possibilities and there are ways to harness it to bring all sorts of benefits. But if you assign a purpose to play, is it still really play?” asks Saucier. “The danger is to recognise that play is good for us and then trying to throw play into everything. Then it just becomes performative”.
Remarkably, even play among children is under attack. Ana Fabrega, founder of Synthesis—an educational system based on the idea that children are hard-wired to learn skills the likes of collaboration, autonomy and competence through play—was a career teacher with experience in school systems around the world. She notes how with the notable exception of the education system in Finland, time for free, unstructured play has increasingly been squeezed out of school timetables in favour of academic study and the pursuit of higher grades.
It’s not just in schools either. “We’re seeing the rise of a culture of safetyism in which parents don’t want to expose their children to even the slightest risk, even though the instinct to explore risk [through dicing with heights, speed, dangerous tools or elements, and so on] is fundamental to children from a very young age,” she says. “Play is being trained out of us, so it’s no wonder that by the time we leave education, we tend to think of it as not being serious. But we have to take play seriously—it matters, not least because it’s the engine of invention”.
According to Peter Gray, the last 50 years or so have seen other cultural influences gradually erode children’s access to free play too, notably the rise of TV and, more recently, gaming devices keeping children within the domestic sphere rather than being “free range” and out in the world. In parallel, this period has seen a huge rise in all sorts of mental disorders among young people.
“The whole reason why childhood is so long is to acquire the characteristics necessary to be an adult. You’re gradually given more and more freedom and so must learn to solve your own problems—how to keep your playmates happy, how to deal with differences,” says Gray. “Now we have generations who have grown up without that [training] and absolutely it’s had a [negative] impact on them”.
In 1955 the Dutch historian Johan Huizinga, in his book Homo Ludens (playful man) proposed that human culture arises and advances through play; that the pillars of culture, from art to literature, philosophy to the law, arise at times when adults had the freedom and time to play. It’s through play that we innovate. That might not bode so well for a globalised world in the 21st century.
Indeed, Gray says there is evidence to suggest that the good mood fostered by play allows people to perform better at the kind of problem-solving that requires novel thinking. And that, since the 1980s, curtailed childhood play has had a marked negative impact on creativity, as far as it can be measured. “Play teaches creativity, so now we’re producing far fewer creative people in an era when society really needs people to be creative,” he argues. But, he adds, we’re also seeing it reflected starkly in what he notes as the reduced independence and competence of current late teens and 20-somethings. He worries that this will likely become the norm for future generations unless the greater free rein to play, which was historically given to children, is rapidly reinstated.
“We’re seeing high rates of emotional breakdown among college students, for example, often for what would have been considered very trivial reasons a generation ago,” he observes. “Lacking the beneficial childhood experience of play, they haven’t learnt to steel themselves [against challenges], to understand that you can have a negative experience and somehow you survive. There’s an inability to accept negative consequences and to take responsibility for their own failures. Our changing regard for the importance of play [in childhood] is behind all of this”.
That also suggests why we need to take a more positive view of play more broadly, not just for tomorrow’s children and the adults they will become, but for adults today. Rene Proyer notes that the huge popularity of smartphone- and console-based video gaming—an industry that has long since eclipsed the film business, for example—suggests that the desire is there. The average age of a gamer now? 33, with players equally split between men and women. We just need to be more open about embracing the benefits of play—and to recognise that playfulness as a state of mind is a skill that can be developed.
“For a long time, it was thought that video games were just for kids. Back in the ’80s I was almost embarrassed to tell other grown-ups what I did for a living,” says David Mullich, the leading video-game designer for the likes of Disney, Apple and Activision. “Now everyone is slowly discovering how essential play is. It’s in play that we cast off our responsibilities, fears and certainties to engage in challenges that have no material outcome. It’s through play that we find catharsis. We find new meanings in the world. Without play, we wouldn’t be fully human.”
I KNOW FOR SURE that many different types of species are operating hyper-advanced aerodynamic platforms, and they’re visiting Earth, coming and going like taxis. As to who these operators are, I don’t know. Are they interdimensional, inter-realm, interplanetary?
I’VE HAD FOUR vivid sightings of craft that were not jets, helicopters, or planes.
I WAS ON MY MOTORCYCLE about eight o’clock at night, and I saw a red beacon flying over the high-tension power lines. There was no sound. It stops right above my motorcycle and shines a light on me. I look up, totally delighted. And the light winks off, and this thing drifts off over the field again.
MY DAD WAS an absolute absurdist. He would go to a grocery store, grab a roll of paper towels, and whip them over to the next aisle to hear the reaction. “Oh, whoa, whoa!” He was wonderful.
I WAS VERY MOUTHY in class all the way through high school because I knew I could get laughs. I was not a good student, but I was an entertaining one.
My parents enrolled me in the St Pius X minor preparatory seminary for boys, which was a priest school in Ottawa. So I went there from grade 9, 10, 11, and I was asked to leave, dismissed in a letter saying, “We believe your son is not a suitable candidate for the priesthood.”
A LITTLE UNDER HALF THE YEAR, I’m at the farm in Ontario. It’s where the family settled in 1826.
WE HAD A FAMILY MEDIUM, and frequent séances took place in the old farmhouse in the 1930s and ’40s, usually on a Sunday morning. The big black Chryslers, Packards, Cadillacs, and Lincolns would come in with the big bosomy matrons and their tiny, skinny little husbands. They’d sit around the table and my great-grandfather Samuel would host.
I WAS STUDYING criminology at Carleton University and expecting that I would go into the corrections service, having worked a summer as a Clerk 5 in the Penitentiary Service of Canada doing inmate catalogues.
I WROTE A MANUAL for deploying weapons in riots for the commissioner. And I thought, “Well, it's an interesting profession.”
BUT I HAD MET A WOMAN named Valri Bromfield in high school, and she said, “You’re not going to be a prison guard. You’re coming with me to Toronto.” And she dragged me off with our audition tape that we’d made on cable TV in Ottawa. It got the attention of Lorne Michaels.
I HAD A PRETTY GOOD LIFE going in Toronto. We were running an after-hours booze can, selling liquor and beer and wine illegally over the counter and making a massive 80 per cent markup. I bought a Harley. I bought a car.
I HAD AN ORIGINAL 1971 Ontario provincial police Harley motorcycle that had been in the display team of the Golden Riders. It went around the world with these stunt riders from the provincial police. Paid USD1,200 for it. And I kept that for a long time.
I RODE THAT BIKE up and down the thruway from the farm to SNL, the entire four years I was on the show. I never flew or took a train or a bus. I never commuted to New York on anything but that bike. Seven hours. Rain or shine. That was my ride.
IT WASN’T SO MUCH my public exposure that I felt in that first year of SNL. It was Chevy’s. I didn’t get much recognition, but Chevy did. I used to walk down the street with him and they were calling his name out, “Hey, Chevy Chase!”
I SAW HOW Chevy was exposed and thought to myself, I don’t want that.
I TRIED COCAINE a couple of times. I didn’t like what it did. It made me speedy. It didn’t help me creatively. But there were others who liked it a lot more.
I STARTED TO PLAY harmonica when I went up north as a road surveyor and tundra-crawler mechanic for the federal Department of Public Works, a job my father got me through pure nepotism. I played the harp up there around the campfire. I kept it up enough so when Blues Brothers came along, I was modestly proficient on it, and still am today.
MY MOTHER USED TO type my essays up when I was in college. Sometimes they were unfinished and I’d say, “It’s ok. They’ll accept this.” And she’d say, “No, you have to round this out. You’ve got to ride home on a third act or a conclusion here. I’m not letting you go until you compose that.”
MY STYLE IS basically all black. Black jeans, black shirt, black jacket, black tie, black hat. Sometimes I’ll go with a white shirt. I really don’t care about clothes. I prefer just to have a rack of black stuff to put on every morning that’s clean.
YOU CAN NEVER SPEND enough time with your children. You can never listen to them enough, give them enough focus and attention. Accept their advice and their criticism. You can never do that enough.
IF THEY’RE COMING after you and saying, “Dad, you were a little profane today” or “Dad, don’t smoke cannabis in the house”“You know, Dad, you’re driving a little too fast,” instead of being defensive, I’ve learnt to back off the throttle, take the smoke outside. Just listen to them. And cut back on the profanity if I can.
WRITING IS HARD. Alone, it’s arduous. With a partner, you can play back and forth. So I prefer to work with a partner.
I'VE WRITTEN EIGHT SCREENPLAYS that got produced. And every one of them, at some point I'd be stopped cold. Where am I going to go next? So usually, I would just go to sleep and dream on it and get up in the morning and I go, “Well, I got a solution to go forward. It may not be the best one, but it's a solution.”
OK, I’VE BEEN sentenced to death. They’re saying, “Well, Dan, this is your last meal. What would you like?” Oh, jeez, Warden, thanks. Well, let me see. I will have a T-bone steak with green peas, Yorkshire pudding and gravy, garlic mashed potatoes, roasted Brussels sprouts with maple syrup, button-cap mushrooms, preceded by a lemon-zest Caesar salad.
AFTER THAT, I’D LIKE to move on to a Black Forest chocolate cake, all washed down with a fine Brane-Cantenac Margaux. I would like a cigar. [And a helicopter.]
This year, Aykroyd appeared in Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire, the fifth film in the series he helped launch as a cowriter and costar of the 1984 original.
Originally published on Esquire US
Having started in comedy with his group Dutch West, Sam Reich was later hired as director of original content at CollegeHumor, an Internet comedy company. Responsible for boosting the content team, Reich produced shows for TV and online that include Adam Ruins Everything; Rhett and Link’s Buddy System and Badman starring Pete Holmes.
In 2018, CollegeHumor launched a subscription-based streaming platform called Dropout. According to Reich, who was CollegeHumor’s chief creative officer at the time, this was in response to the “difficulty in receiving advertising dollars on traditional media platforms for mature content”.
Then, the bottom dropped out. In 2020, CollegeHumor’s parent company InterActiveCorp (IAC) withdrew funding, which laid off all but seven employees. Still able to see the potential, Reich bought CollegeHumor. With the newly-minted title of CEO, Reich placed more focus on unscripted productions like Um, Actually, Dimension 20 and Game Changer; rebranded CollegeHumor to Dropout; and rode out the pandemic and SAG-AFTRA strike. At the tail-end of 2023, Reich announced that Dropout subscriptions had grown to a point where it was profitable enough to go into profit-sharing with its employees.
On the wave of a new season of shows, we talk to Sam Reich about Dropout, puzzles and the joys and trials of Game Changer.
SAM REICH: I can't believe it's 1:30 in the morning over there. I can't guarantee you're not dreaming up this interview.
ESQUIRE SINGAPORE: [laughs] Oh no, not again. Do you guys work from home?
SR: We do for the most part. We have a studio space and there are a couple of people who come in for post-production. For the most part, we just come in for shoots and the full-time staff works from home.
ESQ: Let's get this interview started. Sam... where are you from?
SR: [laughs] The fact that this joke has travelled internationally is really annoying.
ESQ: But are you surprised that Dropout is known outside of the United States?
SR: Are you kidding? I’m super surprised. And flattered. We went to the Edinburgh Fringe [last year] for the first time and had an amazing time. I was shocked by how many Scots knew about Dropout. It’s really cool to see our work getting out there.
ESQ: What’s the ratio of American subscribers versus the rest of the world?
SR: It’s predominantly US. I want to say... something like 60 per cent US. And then, there’s the second tier, which would be English-speaking countries. So, a fair portion of Europe, Australia, Canada... we’re popular in Germany for some reason. That ranks high on the list. Germany and India. I think that English is spoken in enough places now, for better or worse, that we have more international fans than I could ever imagine.
ESQ: You’ve mentioned before that you were hesitant to be in front of the camera. But you dropped out of school to be an actor.
SR: Yeah, originally I got into this business to be an actor... a dramatic actor. I took an acting class where the teacher said that I should act based on the first impression I gave when I walked into a room. For instance, Sam is short so he should do comedy. And that was the beginning of my comedy career.
I found a lot of warmth in comedy but not a whole lot of work in show business. It’s just really hard to make a living at this. The farther I stepped away from acting, the more money I made. I became a director, then a producer and then an executive... by the time, I became an executive, I worried that casting myself in things would be an abuse of power. I wanted to put myself in a position where I was supporting the careers of other people, who wanted to do what I wanted to do originally. It wasn’t until Game Changer came along. This was a show that no one really wanted to make. I kinda pitched it and got a lukewarm response. No one could wrap their heads around the idea and no one wanted to host it. I said, all right, I’ll take this particular bullet and now I am a gameshow host-CEO, which is a hyphenate I don’t think I share with a lot of people.
ESQ: The title will look great on your LinkedIn profile.
SR: [laughs] Exactly. It’d be a good business card where it says CEO on one side and gameshow host on the other.
ESQ: We discovered Dropout by chance with a Breaking News episode on YouTube—"True Facts About Grant Anthony O’Brien"—where embarrassing facts about Grant (a Dropout writer and performer) were revealed. And that led me down a rabbit hole of other Dropout content and I decided to buy a [Dropout] subscription.
SR: I love hearing about people's different entry points into Dropout. Game Changer and Dimension 20 are usually the popular ones.
ESQ: You’re also a presence on your social media. It’s a little endearing... that someone of your bearing is doing TikTok and [Instagram] Reels.
SR: [laughs] Yeah, I get made fun of for this a lot. Just before signing on to this call, I posted another sketch that I made in my spare time on Instagram. I didn’t have time to do TikTok but I’ll go back and upload to it afterwards. I think I’m one of the few people who loves what’s happening to comedy, thanks to platforms like this. I love how democratic they are. By the way, the House just passed [a bill] to ban TikTok in the US this morning; I’m very sceptical that that will happen.
Anyway, my interpretation of what happened is that TikTok was the first platform that you leaned into this idea of discoverability. So, what you were presented with, first and foremost on the platform, was people you didn’t know. Then given its rise in popularity, Instagram followed suit and created Reels; YouTube followed suit and created YouTube Shorts... TikTok created an opportunity to get seen. That hasn’t existed in our space for a long time. It’s really hard to find an audience doing this, it’s really hard. So, I love it and I want to participate in it. Even though... [laughs] the other day, one of my cast members/writers asked me, so what are you getting out of this financially? The answer is, less than nothing. I’m wasting money doing this. Money and time.
ESQ: You’re one of the rare exceptions as an independent streaming subscription platform to crawl out of a hole and find success. Do you have any advice for people trying to do what you do? Or were your circumstances akin to a perfect storm that will never happen again?
SR: If somebody wants to become a CEO/gameshow host of a niche subscription platform, I probably can offer a lot of advice. I think how we’ve ended up here is pretty niche and unique, and lucky, in terms of breaking into the business in general. This, at least, holds true in the United States. I don’t know whether it’s the same over [in Singapore] but it is still very hard and very privileged [that I get to] do this for a living.
I think that our industry has—that is the same in so many other industries—a kind of hollowing out of the middle class that’s occurred, where it’s just harder for folks to float to the top. It’s a system that right now, especially with all the consolidation we’re seeing, is rewarding people who are already at the top way more than it’s providing an avenue for younger and aspirational folks. On the other hand, the Internet has afforded young and hungry entrepreneurial creators better opportunities than ever before. So, if I was just starting, I’d focus on how I get attention online.
ESQ: How different are you from your Game Changer host persona? Is that the real you on camera?
SR: I mean, it is. You know, I think that there’s a very nuanced distinction between Sam on stage and Sam in real life. I do think when I’m in presenter mode, and then I break because one of my players does something funny and I laugh, that’s sort of a quick jump from one Sam to the other. But I was raised on Monty Python and there’s something about comedy in a suit that’s always resonated with me. I love stuff that’s formal and a little surreal. There are a few episodes of Game Changer that require me to be a little bit more of a “straight man”. For those episodes, I do try to unnerve my players with my common confidence, my stoic-ness. In this last episode of Game Changer, I say, Sam says “Don’t flinch” and a body falls from the ceiling... I have to play that straight or the joke doesn’t land. But inside I’m giddy all the time. [laughs]
ESQ: One of your more famous catchphrases is "I've been here the whole time". It's something that you utter at the start of every Game Changer episode. Is there more to the statement?
SR: You know, there's a very pragmatic reason I say that. The original reason is because as the other players take the stage, I'm announcing the show as well and you wouldn't normally know that the announcer and the host were the same person. So, when the camera cuts to me, I'd say, "I've been here the whole time" as a sort of welcome.
But it has taken on a kind of a different quality as the show's gone on. I've introduced the idea of my great-grandfather magician counterpart, Samuel Dalton [from the "Escape the Green Room" episode], who exists somewhere deep in the lore of Game Changer. There's a Loki, god of mischief, quality to the phrase, "I've been here the whole time". I'm always watching. So I embrace it, even though it's not what I meant.
ESQ: But as the seasons go on—and I wish longevity for the show—is it getting harder to come up with themes for the show? Because one of the factors for Game Changer is, you know, the element of surprise.
SR: You’ve just encapsulated the stress of the show. Every season we back ourselves further and further into a corner where it’s harder to be original. And for a show called Game Changer, that’s the pressure. How do we keep reinventing the wheel? And every season we have to step a little further outside the box to find ideas that feel like they’re going to surprise, not only the cast but, also the audience of the show. And, by the way, remain true to, what I feel is, the show’s character.
ESQ: And what is that?
SR: For instance, I’m not super inclined to leave the set altogether. There’s more and more reason to do so [as demonstrated in] our two-part season finale, where we leave the studio for a completely different location. But it’s almost like when someone gives you a cardboard box and you have to put something wildly different in that cardboard box every episode but the box doesn’t change its shape so how do you do that? Every season we say, how are we going to top the next season? And every season we say, that’s next season’s problem.
ESQ: I can't wait to see the new season and what you have in the years to come. And also how you're going to get yourself out of the corner you painted yourself into.
SR: [laughs] You and me both. I think this next episode of Game Changer—the one that airs in two weeks—is a good one. And the one that airs two weeks from now is also one of my favourites we've ever done.
ESQ: It sounds like every episode that's coming out is the best one you've ever done.
SR: [laughs] The one coming out that I'm excited about is called "Bingo". You'll know when you see it.
ESQ: I’d assume the writing room for Game Changer is small.
SR: It’s small. Really small. It’s myself; my creative writing partner and head of development, Paul Robalino; it’s a writer whom I love and trust a lot, Ryan Creamer; it’s our head of production, Kyle Rohrbach, and my production designer, Chloe Badner. Recently, we brought in my director and editor, Sam Geer, early into that process.
Except for Ryan, the people who work on Game Changer lead departments on the show. That conversation is more of a production. It’s one part creative and another part logistical. I want those meetings to be practical. What’s the point of having a room full of creative folks if the moment I present my ideas to production we can’t do them?
What I did this past season is that I have 10 folks that I go out to for pitches. Then I take those pitches to the group. With them, we mull the pitches over; beat them up; cut ideas in half; sew two ideas together... that’s how we write a season. As the seasons wear on, I lean less and less on comedians and more and more on game designers. Now, the folks pitching the ideas are those with backgrounds in escape rooms and interactive experiences. I find their backgrounds are better suited to where the show is going.
ESQ: You're also a magician.
SR: Sure. But an aspiring one.
ESQ: Was magic something you took up during the pandemic or when you were young?
SR: It's funny, I was just reviewing some home VHS footage from when I was two and three years old and it was my first ever magic show. I've been into magic for almost my whole life. My school assignment was to create a coat of arms for myself. We had to come up with a sort of a [motto]; mine was "Imagination. Illusion. Humour. Art." I was seven at the time, just to give you a sense of how long this kind of stuff has been in my DNA.
During the pandemic, I found a magician offering lessons—Jason Ladanye on TikTok—and I started two years of training and some sleight of hand with him. It was really fun and really humbling because you learn fast that the stuff is not at all easy. It takes years and years to get good at. Jason is one of the best there is.
ESQ: What's your forte? Cards? Coins?
SR: Cards. I love the elegance of a simple Bicycle deck and this notion of portable magic, you know? Magic that you can take with you. Magic that you can do with someone else's deck of cards. Mentalism is interesting to me. I find it very intimidating and big stage magic like David Copperfield's kind of magic, I've no interest in at all.
ESQ: There's this weird crossroad with magic and humour that magicians often get made fun of by comedians. Do you get to perform for your peers?
SR: I do and people ask, for sure. I also think because they run in the same circle of performers, you'd be surprised about how little I get made fun of for magic as a hobby. It's like all of us here on the east side of Los Angeles are nerds and geeks. You have to be a particular kind of person to love and learn that kind of stuff.
I think it was Teller from Penn and Teller, who said, "Sometimes, magic is just someone spending more time on something than anyone else might reasonably expect." And that's how I feel towards Game Changer, where we put so much effort into creating the fun and surprises of it.
Do you know the Dimension 20 e-art puzzle in "Escape the Green Room"? Took me hours to figure that out. But the whole time, I was just thinking, oh, they'll love this. It's like a little gift for your friends.
ESQ: By the way, I loved that episode because I thought it was going to be a normal escape room. But then you added lore to it. There’s a storyline. I was like, Oh my God, he went that extra mile.
SR: Yeah. It’s pretty high. My creative partner on that episode was Tommy Honton an escape room designer and I learnt a lot from him. Tommy has a terrific escape room here in Los Angeles called Stash House and he told me that the most exciting escape rooms are the ones with background. So, that’s where the seed started.
And then he said, the biggest advantage we have going into this episode, is that it only needs to happen once. As opposed to a traditional escape room, which you can reset over and over again. At that point, it became, Oh, we can put breakables in the room. A breakable clock, a breakable guitar and then it all started to fall into place.
ESQ: It just shows the kind of mind to conjure up themes for Game Changer. It's almost akin to a supervillain's mindset where they set up elaborate death traps and schemes.
SR: If you go back and watch season one of the show, we were still figuring out its identity. [We only figured it out] until season four. If you were to describe the show as a cocktail, it's one part improv comedy; one part British panel show; one part prank; one part magic trick and one part avant-garde art project.
Part of this for me is education. As I'm out in the real world, I'm doing escape rooms or playing social deduction games or seeing theatre. I'm taking notes, Oh that's a really interesting fact. I bet that could be incorporated into the show at some point.
ESQ: What are you watching and reading? Do you even have time for that?
SR: I do. I read a lot of fiction. My favourite book last year was Sea of Tranquility. It's this perfect little time travel book. I watch a lot of mystery. I've been watching The Tourist on Netflix. It's awesome. Amazing performances, an engrossing mystery. The show manages to spin three plates at the same time. It's really good.
I'm also watching shows at the Magic Castle. I'm playing games... I've started playing Blood on the Clock Tower. Again, awesome. I've been seeing a lot of theatre shows again like last year's Fringe. Now that was instructive because people were putting up shows that I'd never considered. It blew my mind. I went to a show called Temping, where only one person can be in the room at a time. You sit in a cubicle and there's a computer in front of you. The "show" centred around the e-mails and the phone calls that you were getting as you temped for this actuary office. Totally outside-the-box stuff... that gets me so excited.
ESQ: Would you like to bring Game Changer to the Fringe?
SR: I would love to if I can convince my business partners that there's any good business reason to do that. And—spoiler alert—there isn't. It would be pure joy if I could. We're toying around with more live stuff in general.
ESQ: Do you watch Taskmaster?
SR: Of course, I do. Alex Horne (creator of Taskmaster) is actually a new buddy of mine. It's funny, I was afraid to watch Taskmaster because it was during the pandemic season of Game Changer and folks started telling me that I should watch it as the shows have so much in common. I didn't want to watch it because I was afraid to derive too much inspiration from it. I didn't want people to feel like I was ripping it off.
But I watched a few episodes, got totally hooked and now I've watched every single one of them.
ESQ: Can we talk about the pandemic? I know, it’s a period that many would want to forget-
SR: It’s still happening.
ESQ: I’d always thought that the pandemic started in 2020 and I realised that it’s called COVID-19... so it started a year earlier. We saw the smoke but we didn’t think the fire would reach us. Your Game Changer season set during the pandemic was amazing. The ingenuity that came out from doing episodes with everybody remotely working from their homes. Did you just want to pause the series during the pandemic or did you feel like doing something...?
SR: We needed to do something. We had a season of Game Changer and a season of Dimension 20 in the can but the clock was ticking and [these episodes] were going to run out and we needed to produce content. We’ve signed a deal with IAC to take over [Dropout] two days before lockdown in Los Angeles and we needed to satisfy these subscribers. In a way, coming up with that season was [brought to a bear] but, in another way, I’m a firm believer that restrictions help assist with creativity.
It’s easier to write poetry that rhymes than poetry that doesn’t. So, the restriction helps. We did episodes that we would have never done in the studio. Not nearly as many people have watched the remote seasons, I get it. Even when I go back to watch the stuff that was filmed over Zoom. It’s... triggering. Thank god, we’re not doing this any more but I am proud of it. There are a few of those episodes that are some of my favourites.
ESQ: You managed to get people like Tony Hawk and Giancarlo Esposito to guest on that season.
SR: That was a really rare situation insofar as no one had anything to do during the pandemic [laughs]. We have some higher-profile guests on next season's Make Some Noise, which is a short-form improv show that I'm excited about. Our experience has been that once people get a flavour of working with us, they will be excited to work with us again. Case in point, the drag queens from [Dimension 20's "Dungeons and Drag Queens" episodes] have been back a bunch. Paul F Tompkins recently started to play with us and he's been back a bunch. It's really fun to have the family expand in that way.
ESQ: You’ve cultivated a nurturing workspace. Your staff and performers look like they genuinely like one another. More family than workmates. In Singapore, it’s rare to see that sort of camaraderie in the workplace, let alone a CEO of a company putting his employees’ welfare before profits.
SR: I can’t take sole credit for this. This new version of the company meant that we could, sort of, start over. And we think long and hard about the kind of people that we want to work with at every level. Especially in a corporate environment, where there are many invisible powers, where [at Dropout,] it’s just us and that’s humbling. And I think that’s something people respond to; they are watching people who make that stuff.
There isn’t some sort of mysterious force behind us or the people who own the company that aren’t us... we are it. When you boil it down that way, we’re just human beings trying to make something and trying to get other people excited to make something with us. To do that, we need to show them—not only kindness and respect—but also reverence for their talent. And talent is really what powers the platform. The reason why Dropout is successful—and you can point to a lot of things like “the organic marketing strategy is clever” or “we’re making good decisions about finances” or “the P&L is well balanced... but the real reason why Dropout is successful is that someone comes out on stage and does something amazing. And for that to happen, you better respect it and have reverence for it.
I think it could be—and maybe it’s a little cynical of me—that in our industry, there are a lot of folks who get into content creation, they aren’t creatives. When you have too many people who get into our business from non-creative positions, meaning they were promoted through [fields that] aren’t like writing, directing, acting, etcetera. They don’t have quite enough respect for what it actually takes to make the product. I think that’s maybe the biggest difference in terms of our company’s DNA or how it’s set up: all of us at a high level are creative folks and we care deeply about other creative folks.
ESQ: We wanna keep to the theme of our discussion and incorporate a puzzle within this interview. Maybe readers who have come this far can figure out how to finish the rest of this url (http://esquiresg.com/_ _ _-_ _ _ _-_ _ _ _-_ _ _-_ _ _ _ _-_ _ _ _ ) and win a prize.
SR: Wow, very cool. You’ve permission to rewrite my responses [to fit the puzzle].
ESQ: Is there any point in Game Changer that you’d want to be a contestant instead of being a host?
SR: You know, truthfully, no. I know fans are so eager to see it happen. I’m nervous for whoever has to host instead of me. But I’m the show’s quality controller. If you take me out of that part of the creative process, it just wouldn’t be very hard for that episode to live up to the others. Forgive me if that statement is a little bit self-aggrandising but I feel so badly for the person who has to take on the stress of trying to come up with a Game Changer episode instead of me. It’s hard at this point. It is hard to come up with this stuff so I wouldn’t necessarily wish it on them.
ESQ: Hypothetically, if you could have someone to fill in as host, who'd it be?
SR: Folks have talked about who'd take on that mantle. Most specifically Brennan [Lee Mulligan]. A lot of people on Reddit want me to play in an episode and have my wife, Elaine, host it. But never say never. Maybe one day.
ESQ: I feel that the closest thing to you being a participant and getting pranked is on Breaking News.
SR: Breaking News has become where Grant [O’Brien] and the cast get their revenge on me. The next season of Breaking News, there are no less than three episodes targeting me. It is [starts laughing] wild. What they will do, I left to their own devices.
ESQ: One last question, how has your wife, Elaine [Carroll] contributed to the Sam Reich of today?
SR: This is an amazing question that I’m so glad I got the opportunity to answer. So, thank you. Being in a loving secure relationship for as long as I have has allowed me to focus on work and creative output in a way that’s extremely privileged. Elaine is unbelievably supportive and our relationship is so profoundly uncomplicated compared to what I often see in the world.
Because we live in a [time] of dating apps and the huge amount of choices they bring, I can’t recommend enough for falling in love and marrying young. [laughs] I think it allowed us to start building a life early, which contributed hugely to what I’ve managed to do now in my 30s—I’ll be 40 this year—yeah... it’s one of the best decisions I’ve ever made.
Game Changer, other originals and more are streaming at Dropout
Not to be all doom and gloom, but it appears we (and by we, I mean the tech bros running YouTube) have finally nailed the coffin shut when it comes to keeping the human brain focused for more than a mere handful of seconds, if not less.
YouTube – which is not just the new competitor against Netflix, but basically every single platform striving for human engagement – is experimenting with a new feature called “jump ahead”, which will allow members to skip to the ‘best’ part of the video. As if YouTube reels, three minute videos, nevertheless TikTok, weren’t short enough, this new feature will allow time sensitive or simply attention lacking individuals to skip ahead to the juiciest seconds of a video, and then move on to the next one. This evokes an image of the downloading sequence in The Matrix where Neo is plugged in and ‘kung fu’ is downloaded into his brain in a matter of seconds and voila, suddenly, in the words of Neo himself, “I know Kung Fu.”
This “Jump Ahead” feature may just be a “small experiment” to the tech giant, which is owned by Google, but its potential reach is gargantuan. Last month, YouTube surpassed 100 million Premium and Music subscribers, a number which includes those participating in a free trial. YouTube Premium, which is basically just ad-free YouTube, costs SGD 11.98, and as a standalone, YouTube music costs SGD 9.98.
Although many still view Netflix to be the undefeated champ of online streaming, YouTube does have more usage, although not more paying members, as Netflix has 260 million worldwide. Still, YouTube made more than SGD 41 billion last year in ad revenue.
Based on a recent study from Nielsen, the global leader in audience insights, data and analytics, YouTube represents 9.3% of TV and streaming viewership as of February 2024. Netflix came in second at was 7.8%, and Hulu and Amazon Prime Video tied in third place. But what is perhaps most surprising of all, is that standard, TV is still the most popular place to watch shows and movies at home. Streaming “only” made up 37.7% of the viewership pie.
Considering the “jump ahead” feature, one must also bear in mind that many YouTube videos contain 90% fluff, especially the guaranteed inclusion of “and don’t forget to like and subscribe”, which can become repetitively annoying, so the intentions behind this feature may not be as mind zapping as they initially appeared. For example, amongst YouTube fitness channels, many videos can reach up to 30 minutes with a title Best Bicep Workout.
As any avid gym goer can tell you, training your biceps does not require thirty minutes of explanation, and for those who subscribe to such channels, in recent years, many fitness YouTubers are making contrasting, shortened videos that get to the point much quicker, which isn’t due to lack of attention, but rather a more succinct explanation. And if you read the comments section, you’ll see an influx of reactions like, “thank you for immediately getting to the point!”
Depending on how you view the “jump ahead” feature, it can be seen as a force for good when considering the type of content you are watching, i.e. informative fitness channels. And with Elon Musk’s Neuralink raising eyebrows and interest across the internet – will it expand the possibilities of human cognition or destroy the human mind? – one thing is for certain: attention spans are dropping faster than interest in a Robin Thicke concert.
Originally published on Esquire ME
For the longest time Bassem Youssef was motivated by revenge. Not exactly of the arch kind—there were no cunning plans or dastardly schemes—this vengeance was career motivation, plain and simple. The way he looked at it, if he could succeed as an Egyptian stand-up comedian in the US—after everything he’d been through—he would prove everybody wrong. There was only one problem: He wasn’t actually very good.
“I started five or six years ago and, like anything new that you try, in the beginning you’re not good. So, yeah, I sucked big-time,” confirms Youssef via Zoom from his home in Los Angeles. “The problem was that I had come from a point of high expectations, especially from an Arab audience who had seen me on Al Bernameg. Many people would come to my show and be disappointed. I got it—I was disappointed too. I was in my mid-40s competing with kids in their 20s doing shitty open mics and stand-up comedy clubs. To be honest, it was a little bit humiliating.”
The move to stand up was meant to be Youssef’s big pivot. Well, his second one if you count the initial transition from cardiac surgeon to TV show host in 2011 (and you really should). But in 2014 he had cancelled Al Bernameg—his groundbreaking Egyptian show that dared take a satirical sideswipe at the country’s elite—as the pressure had simply become too great. The show had been a staggering success, regularly attracting 30 million viewers across a three-season run, but the country’s Mohamed Morsi-ran government was fragile in ego. In March 2013 a warrant was issued for Youssef’s arrest, claiming he had ‘insulted Islam’ as well as the current president. Four months later Morsi was deposed by military coup, but Youssef believed that his own fate was written, too. In 2014, for the safety of his family, he left Egypt for good.
When it came to stand up, Youssef got better. “Bit by bit things improved,” he says. “I became more comfortable with the material, and the nuance of doing the show in English.” But while the Arab audience was where his fame lay, there was a time when he refused to perform in Arabic at all. That choice feels like it stems from somewhere raw. Perhaps a subconscious kickback to the treatment he received on leaving his homeland.
“What happened to me in Egypt, when I quit for the safety of my family,” he explains. “I didn’t want to do it anymore because it was just too much pressure. But I was called a coward, a sell-out. The epitome of love [from the people] had turned into the depths of hate.”
But of course you can only deny self for so long, and eventually Youssef began performing in Arabic again. Now he tours two shows at the same time, one in English, one in Arabic. “It was hard to begin with,” he admits. “A couple of times they [the Arabic shows] didn’t go so well, but eventually I found my voice. But they are totally different, the Arabic show has nothing to do with the English one. Doing this is difficult.”
There’s a tension that often lies beneath the surface of the best comedians. A dark that fuels the light. You sense it in Youssef, too—and not just because he’s under the weather today and with a big show at the weekend. The experience with Al Bernameg almost broke him, being labelled the ‘Voice of The Arab Spring’ could do that for you. You still feel that a big part of him wants to speak out on issues surrounding the Middle East—his actions tell you that—but he hates it too. The pressure, the expectation. That kind of weight can be debilitating.
On October 18, 2023, Youssef was interviewed about the Israel-Gaza war on Piers Morgan: Uncensored. It would have seismic results.
“The producers at Piers Morgan: Uncensored had actually approached me to discuss [the situation in Gaza] twice, but at that moment it just felt like any comment would have been career suicide,” he says wearily. Youssef had appeared on the show some months earlier, speaking out on the Afrocentrism row that surrounded the Netflix docu-drama Queen Cleopatra, and had put in a typically indefatigable performance.
“But at that point it just seemed impossible to speak out against the narrative that was being told [on Palestine]. That changed when I saw Ben Shapiro’s comments going out on his show. I got very upset. When the producers called me a third time I said ‘yes’.”
The interview currently sits with 21 million views on YouTube (the most-watched Piers Morgan: Uncensored episode of all-time) and saw Youssef engage with a typically satirical approach, exaggerating all the points made before him. It was a tactical strategy that took guts.
This is how the conversation with his wife, Hala—herself half-Palestinian—went prior to his appearance on the show.
Bassem: “Hey, I’m going on the Piers Morgan show tomorrow to talk about Palestine.”
Hala: “Are you sure—what are you going to say?”
Bassem: “I don’t know.”
Hala: “Good luck.”
And then after the show (after he had joked how Hala, as Palestinian, was indeed ‘difficult to kill’)…
Hala: “Don’t do a second one.”
Bassem: “I’ll just do one more.”
Hala: “OK, do what you want.”
“This is why our marriage works,” he smiles. “We give each other the space to be ourselves.”
Youssef’s strategy was something approaching shock and awe. A first, slightly-over-the-top exaggerated first interview that would lead to something deeper; a face-to-face with Morgan which duly came on October 31.
“To be honest, the whole thing really felt like a lose-lose situation to me,” he admits. “I thought, ‘If I do well I could lose my whole career, and if I do badly I could be cancelled by my own people’. But I took a chance. For the first interview I wanted to make a splash. But for the second I worked with some amazing people around the world to educate myself further on the situation. There were so many nuances we don’t know, even though we’re Arabs.
"The first [interview] was sensation, the second was education. This approach was risky from beginning to end and I can’t sit here and say that I planned it all. I could have lost everything; but I got lucky. If you look at the videos, the first is on 21 million views while the second has 11 million, but the second has more clips being cut from it, and has been viewed far more.”
The fallout from the interviews has been mixed. “It’s been mostly positive from my people,” he says. “I’ve actually been selling-out shows because people saw it. But I’ve had to tell them that one has nothing to do with the other. On the negative side, I lost a couple of jobs in Hollywood. Movie roles that got cancelled, I’m still working out whether I want to make a fuss about that yet. On a personal level, people have been extremely nice. Although I did have a couple of incidents where some comedians I had worked with were a little nasty about me. I didn’t respond. Why give them any fuel?”
There were also other issues at play here. Since leaving Egypt in 2014, Youssef had made LA his home and is now officially a US citizen—something that he remains positive about the situation. “I haven’t really worried about my position here,” he says. “I’m an American citizen and I do believe in this country. Of course, like anywhere, there are problems. But I would rather live here than any other country. I think that the people growing up in the US can make positive changes. I still believe in the idea of America.”
“I’m not a news agency, I’m not a politician, I’m not an activist. I’m just a comedian that was in a position to serve a cause in some way.” BASSEM YOUSSEF
Inevitably, since the interview, there has been the inclination to push Youssef to the forefront of the conversation when it comes to Palestine. And to an extent, he has continued to highlight the plight of the people. Things like Instagram live check-ins with Palestinian photojournalist Motaz Azaiza, for example, show his desire to do something. But there’s a level of unease you see on his face when he discusses it. The shadow of that Al Bernameg pressure creeping back into his life.
“I’m not exactly sure what I will do next. It would really be up to people like Motaz—he has to figure out that risk,” he says before trailing off… “I don’t know if it’s even helpful.”
There’s a real internal struggle at play here. In our social media age, any perceived missteps are publicly called out. And the pressure heaped on high profile accounts can be unbearable for anyone. For Youssef it’s a frustration.
“I don’t like doom scrolling or posting. If you look at my feed I don’t really put horrific images there. Because, at the end of the day—and this is a problem with Arabs especially—we just want to be doom, doom, doom [mimics scrolling on a phone] and then we cry with each other. I’m not saying that people should stop doing this, maybe it is effective.
"But from my point of view, if people started unfollowing me because of that then it doesn’t matter what I’m posting, because it’s not going to be seen. I want to continue working, to become more successful, more vocal, so I will be invited and asked to talk at higher profile shows and opportunities… Piers Morgan, Joe Rogan… suddenly your message can reach a lot more people. But right now I have people cursing me, and judging me if I post about my upcoming shows. ‘You didn’t post about Gaza today’. But they forget that this is my livelihood.”
So the internal conflict continues. The desire to simply be himself, a comedian, and not have the pressures of a people, versus the knowledge that sometimes he cannot remain silent.
“I do what I do because you feel it’s the right thing,” he says. But then it comes: ‘you are our voice’. Basically you are putting all your expectations on a human being and, at a certain point, maybe they won’t be able to speak up. Maybe they’re tired, maybe they’re afraid. But people are so frustrated by politicians that they come to comedians, actors, footballers. There is a weight on us because people follow our work. But really, we don’t have the solution.
“At a certain point you start to become erased for it, too. For the cause. You’re suddenly responsible for talking only about this subject. I’m not a news agency, I’m not a politician, I’m not an activist. I’m just a comedian that was in a position to serve the cause in some way. Maybe I will do it again. This is life. Life is variable.”
The variable of Youssef’s life has certainly been evident since leaving Egypt; from Netflix documentaries to appearing twice last month in the UAE at COP28, to working his way up to become a successful—as he puts it—‘mid-level’ comedian in the US. But that profile has suddenly gone stratospheric. It’s an uneasy career boost, in all honesty. But he has too many years on the clock to take it all too seriously.
“Before Piers’ show I was doing well. I was filling theatres, shows in Europe, the Middle East, which is great, a good life. Then that show catapults you to a totally different level. But you remain humble. You don’t take this world too seriously. It’s better to enjoy what you have right now, and not to get too hung up about your achievements. Nothing stays forever.”
The sheer exhaustion felt by Bassem Youssef when he left Egypt for the safety of himself and his family over a show that would, anywhere else in the world, have presumably seen him honoured. How do you come back from that? The frustratingly simple answer is: with time. But the years only attach a band aid, they don’t erase. If you’re lucky, however, those scars can take you someplace else.
On November 17, 2023, Bassem Youssef’s stand-up show sold out the Sydney Opera House. Nine years, pretty much, to the day that he had left his homeland. It was a groundbreaking experience that followed a wildly popular extended tour of Australia. In those moments, when we actually get what we dream about, we’re often drawn into introspection and reflection. But when you ask Youssef if he misses Egypt you get a quick-fire “no.” Almost as if he’s trying to say the word before anything else slips out (although he does caveat it with Red Sea beaches and Egyptian mangoes). As for the haters, well those nine years have brought perspective.
“I’ve been on a lot of rollercoasters,” he says before quickly adding the word “emotional” to ensure we don’t think he’s been obsessing over theme parks all this time. “I think when I left Egypt there was a lot of bitterness and a lot of anger. I felt that I was treated unfairly, that I had done something spectacular for the Egyptian media and was punished for it. So, you want to succeed to show the people back home who doubted you, who celebrated your failure, that you’ve still got it. But you know what I found when I did it? Nothing. When you get to that good place, you really don’t care anymore.”
At the Sydney Opera House Youssef had once again done his research. He had spoken to the Arab community and was sad to hear that they felt the Palestinian flag was becoming synonymous with terrorism. Determined to do something special in their honour, he promptly learned a traditional Dabke dance; something to perform on the night at the end of his show. And so, he duly danced with Palestinian dancers in a rare moment of hope. “It was a way of humanising Arabs,” he explains, before pausing. “Maybe if they see some of our culture (before they steal it) they might actually respect us as humans and, hopefully, allow us to live.”
And there you have the complex realities of Bassem Youssef wrapped up in just a few lines. The funny and the fundamental, the gag with a sting in its tail, his art and identity combined. It’s an internal struggle that you feel could play out for some time. Ultimately, the man from Cairo might not want to be a hero. The truth is that he looks set to play the role for the foreseeable future.
PHOTOGRAPHY BY Amina Zaher
STYLING BY Laura Jane Brown
PRODUCTION BY Steff Hawker
SET DESIGN BY Yehia Bedier
H&MU BY Kasia Domanska
STYLING ASSISTANCE BY Christina Leighton
LIGHT ASSISTANCE BY Mostafa Adbu
PRODUCTION ASSISTANCE BY Sarah Kuleib
Originally published on Esquire Middle East
He hardly looks like a man with a green thumb, let alone a whole garden. Darren Loke, who is behind Omitir, Veblen Supplies and handles operations at Aa Furniture, collects plants—mostly aroids and caudiciforms.
His interest in them was first piqued during his time with his ex. She had plants, and in those heady days of romance, he lapped up her overspilt passion. He started his own collection; a few here and there initially. Until his hobby blossomed into an obsession. When the pandemic hit, he was plunged even deeper into his garden.
“Obviously, when you start a hobby, you want to explore and understand the craft,” Loke explains. “There are plants that grow around us but then you discover others from the highlands [ecosystem] or more temperamental ones like cold-loving plants that won’t survive in Singapore. It came to a point where I had to concede to only growing plants that can thrive in our climate.”
Before the use of hashtags, interest in plants stopped short of simply knowing their general nomenclature, not even their genus. When it comes to describing a tree, most can say that it has leaves and is covered with bark, but falter if pressed for specifics.
Then, social media made it easier to identify plant types. COVID brought about a heightened insularity that accelerated plant interest for shut-ins. “It used to be that any plant tips you get would most probably be from a US writer with knowledge about plants in their region,” Loke said. “Now it’s more varied.”
Loke had already developed somewhat of a monastic existence a year before the pandemic. He stayed in more, which resulted in an explosion in his plant collection. (Loke also runs an IG account detailing his green wares)
Ficuses are his jam. While commonly found in Singapore, a ficus plant has different subspecies; some hail from Myanmar, others from Japan. Loke is attracted to their forms, finding them “interesting”. Driven by aesthetics, Loke would pair a plant with the pot.
You may have heard people say that having a garden helps them relax. Not Loke. It’s the opposite for him. He used to enjoy tending to his plants whenever he returned from work but his obsession led him to constantly fret about them. “If you think about it, it can be a chore,” Loke says.
He has stopped counting but Loke reckons he has about 400 plant species. Then, catching himself, he adds a disclaimer: “But I’ve cut down a lot.” His current collection is stored in two places: at Aa Furniture showroom and Chwee Nursery in Seletar.
Plants at the nursery blossom due to the humidity. Once they are ready, Loke propagates them and transfers them to the showroom for display and sale. These plants are suitable for indoors and their presence helps customers to visualise, and inspires them to spruce up their own homes with a plant.
He waters the plants twice a week at the showroom and once a week at the nursery. Knowing that his plants are in an environment where they can thrive, assuages his fears about their survival. “I believe,” Loke adds, “that some plants thrive in neglect. Just give them the basics and let nature take care of the rest. In the end, they are plants, right? We shouldn’t be working for them.”
He tried growing a Pachypodium namaquanum but the species is found in dry rocky deserts and thrives in harsh conditions—extreme summer heat and wind. They can survive in a tropical setting, he says. “Think of it as a controlled situation. Air-conditioning with artificial grow lights just to maintain that environment but it’s not sustainable because, at the end of the day, these guys won’t reach their full growth potential.”
To Loke, a plant is only ready when it starts flowering. “That’s when the plant goes through a full cycle of growth, which means it’s healthy in that current condition. That’s something I definitely learnt. There are a lot of expensive mistakes.”
It is an expensive hobby to get into. The pandemic brought about a price inflation in the plant market, where the entrepreneurial and, depending on who you ask, the exploitative, took advantage by flipping plants for a higher profit. These days, plants are more affordable, the best time to get into the hobby, if you ask us.
Loke doesn’t refute that this can be considered an old man’s hobby. “Gardening taught me to slow down. For the tangible side of things, there are some rare plants that only a few importers can bring in. You’ll just need to make the right contacts. With enough money, you can get almost any plant you want.
“Even so these are life forms that will come and go,” Loke says as he plucked the leaves of a frankincense plant and crushed them between his fingers. With cupped hands, he breathed in the balsamic and woody fragrance.
From the ashes of the pandemic, the local plant community has grown ever larger. While some might opine that it’s just another consideration to create a space for a garden; think about this: it was all green before we intruded. Maybe, space can be made for both.
Photography: Jaya Khidir
