Four career women strive to achieve their ultimate goals – but these come with a price.

Although the female stars of Her Many Faces say the show is neither like Sex in the City nor Desperate Housewives, it definitely has enough of similarly juicy elements – extramarital affairs, romantic entanglements, unwanted pregnancies, office politics, underhand dealings – to spice up the proceedings.

The eighth joint production between Ntv7 and Singapore’s Mediacorp, it stars Singaporean actors Cynthia Koh and Alan Tern alongside Malaysians Lavin Seow, Wayne Chua, Phyllis Sim, Alan Yun, Kelvin Liew, Kyo Chen, William San, Josh Lai and Steve Yap.

The 25-episode series tells of the challenges faced by four beautiful young career women – Jia-wen, Shu-ling, Mei-shan and Ella – as they climb their way up the corporate ladder, and their endeavours to juggle their equally complicated love lives.

Jia-wen’s (Koh) dedication to work gets her promoted from salesperson to assistant brand manager at E-max but also results in her losing Zi-jian (Yun) to her good friend Shu-ling (Seow).

Woman power: (from left) Wayne Chua, Lavin Seow and Phyllis Sim star in Ntv7’s Mandarin serial Her Many Faces.

Her artistic friend Yi-ping (Chen) steps in to fill the void in her life but she is hesitant as he is younger. Jia-wen is also oblivious to Shu-ling’s many attempts to sabotage her at work.

Seow, who plays the vengeful Shu-ling, thinks it is very unfortunate that her character’s unbridled jealousy eventually takes her down the twisted path of the wicked.

“It’s very sad that she couldn’t control herself. There was one part where I had to dash around in four-inch heels trying to kill someone. I guess I wasn’t that much of a killer and you’ll have to watch the show to find out who’s the victim!”

Ella (Chua) is an ambitious woman with an unhappy childhood who is not averse to using unscrupulous tactics and devious means to get what she wants.

Her like-minded colleague Lin Zhi Technologies assistant brand manager Jimmy (Liew) appreciates her competitive nature and both use each other to achieve their respective goals.

Chua’s most memorable scene saw her character Ella running in tears by the river in an off-shoulder blouse with her ex-boyfriend trying to catch up with her.

“The director told him to grab me and when he did, my blouse was also accidentally pulled down. In panic, he tried to pull my blouse up, failing which he tried to cover me up by embracing me while we continued shooting the scene.

“What he didn’t know was that I actually had a tube top underneath so I felt safe enough to carry on filming like nothing had happened!”

Mei-shan (Sim) is a bubbly and naive woman who allows her colleagues to take advantage of her. She is also unable to extricate herself from the affair she is carrying on with a married man.

Sim had a challenging crying scene which took some 10 to 15 minutes and was told to hold her tears in order to separate the teary scene into three different stages.

“I was supposed to let the tears well up in my eyes, then let them drop one at a time, and finally cry uncontrollably. I told the director I’m not a water pipe. How can I control my tears like that? I couldn’t breathe or speak properly so we had to shoot the scene three to four times!”

With so much happening in these characters’ lives, filming the series was no doubt just as exciting for the pretty stars of the show.

Tune in to find out who gets pregnant, who loses her mind, who is stricken with cancer, who gets married and who lives happily ever after.

Her Many Faces airs on Ntv7 at 9.45pm from Mondays to Thursdays. Those who have missed earlier episodes may view them online through the Catch-up TV feature at ntv7.com.my.

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