‘Live partners, not life partners’: Dawn Yeoh quashes rumours she’s dating Terence Cao

Two weeks ago, actress-host Dawn Yeoh appeared pregnant in a Facebook livestream for her e-commerce platform Sibay Shiok.

Co-owner and fellow actor Terence Cao wrapped his arms around her abdomen, hugging her from the back.

While many viewers were quick to congratulate them, the pair confirmed at the end of the two-hour sales stream that it was merely a joke.

This didn’t stop the media from asking the 37-year-old again if she was actually dating Terence, 55, in a press conference for upcoming movie King of Hawkers on Friday (Sept 30).

Dawn said: “Don’t take it seriously, it’s for show. I told Terence that I’ll be playing a mum in a new movie, and when he heard ‘mum’, he thought I was pregnant and suggested we could use the idea for publicity.”

She added that they had also seen the news of Rebecca Lim being four-and-a-half months pregnant and had wanted to spoof the pregnancy announcement to congratulate her.

Dawn also shut down any possibility of a future relationship, saying that she saw Terence as an older brother and that they even had a familial relationship with each other’s parents.

“We are live partners, not life partners,” she added.

In an interview with AsiaOne, Dawn also confirmed that she is not only single but also “available”.

‘You really feel like you’re on MasterChef’

Set for release next Chinese New Year, King of Hawkers stars Dawn as Zhang Nala, a newly divorced woman who returns to Singapore from Hong Kong to take over her family’s bak chor mee stall as its third-generation owner.

“The movie tries to depict how generations want to pass on their legacies to the next generation, but so many people don’t want to take over the hawker stalls due to personal reasons,” Dawn told AsiaOne.

The movie also features Das DD as Raja, a hawker who runs the stall Bestest Indian Food, and Hong Kong actor Hugo Ng as Liu Derong, who operates Ah Lau’s Cantonese Cuisine.

The hawkers are faced with challenges, including the government wanting to relocate the stalls in the hawker centre to a new location. A multinational corporation also organises the titular King of Hawkers competition, pitching their top chef against hawkers in a bid to buy over their recipes and businesses.

While Dawn cooks at home, she said that she was not a “real chef” and was trained to portray her role accurately.

“[You have to be] very precise, from the ingredients to the cooking methods to even the cooking time,” she explained.

“The chef (John See, food director for Crazy Rich Asians) was literally timing me and saying, ’10 seconds left, five seconds’. You really feel like you’re on MasterChef.”

While she couldn’t show her internal emotions while filming, Dawn added that “deep down, I was panicking”.

Although the actress didn’t have to directly lift the heavy pots for cooking bak chor mee, she said dealing with “the boiling heat” was a challenge.

“There were four pots that were boiling together,” Dawn added.

King of Hawkers also stars veteran singer-actresses Mimi Choo and Liu Lingling as well as Gini Chang, Asher Su and Filipino actor Kimson Tan.