Night Cream Rebecca Lim

It’s scorching out at Bedok Reservoir but Rebecca Lim still would rather spend a day dragon boating in the skin-burning, egg-frying heat than be out at sea in the comforts of a police boat. Did we mention that the actress she plays a police coast guard in the fifth installment of popular Ch 8 police procedural C.L.I.F.?

When we arrive at Bedok Reservoir on this Friday afternoon, where the cast of C.L.I.F. 5 is in the midst of shooting a dragon boat race scene, we spot Rebecca looking tense and keeping mostly to herself in a mini dragon boat. Her PA hovers close by, holding a umbrella to shield the star from the scorching sun in between takes. We figure Rebecca's uneasiness is due to our presence — her manager reminded us not to ask Becks anything about her personal life or social media. The latter we assume has to do with the fuss over how she unfollowed everyone on Instagram a month ago. (P/S: She has since started following 42 people again, including, yes, Ian Fang.)

It turns out we are being too sensitive, and Rebecca’s ashen face is attributed to her being really prone to seasickness. But more on this later.

It's going to be a long, long day. Rebecca, along with the rest of the cast, which includes Pierre Png, Shane Pow, He Yingying and Cynthia Koh, had started the day at 8am and filming is scheduled to last till evening. But thankfully we manage to get hold of Becks during her lunch break for a quick chat. 

8 DAYS: We hear this is your first time dragon boating, so how would you rate your dragon boating skills? 

REBECCA LIM: A nine out of 10. (Laughs) No lah, I have very good teammates so I didn’t really feel that I had to exert that much and (the boat could) still move. But I must encourage myself. Self-love. So it was not too bad. And also because we have professional dragon boaters on the same boat so it was much easier for us.

So how has it been joining the big C.L.I.F. family?

I enjoyed watching the first four seasons so when I knew I was gonna be a part of the fifth season I was very excited. But the excitement didn’t last extremely long 'cos about three weeks before we started [filming], I found out I was supposed to play a police coast guard. And I have severe sea sickness so that was why I was a bit nervous yet excited and apprehensive

How apprehensive were you? 

I think the apprehension got worse after the orientation, where we had to be on a boat for a few hours. I think I started to puke about two, three hours in. I was just hoping that the days on set will be a little bit better but they weren’t. We have like a score chart among the actors and the crew to see who pukes the most. And I’m number two. The number one is the sound man. It’s been challenging physically and psychologically as well, because I have a lot of lines to say whenever I'm on the boat — a lot of very formal, technical lines — so I really had to get my mind straight whenever I felt like puking.

Do you take medicine for your seasickness?

Yeah. I think it helps a bit psychologically. But it really doesn’t do anything. So far I think out of the one month that I've been out at sea, there was only one day where I didn’t puke. That day we had a little mini celebration when we were back on shore (laughs).

Rebecca in serious trouble! She'd facing being left out of the screen forever // She announces she is done acting