M'sian ex-beauty queen turns her love story into a film

Not every love story makes it to the big screen. But film producing couple Rachel Tan and Dan Mark are making sure their whirlwind romance will.

The Los Angeles-based pair behind King Street Pictures has released the biographical film Sight, which is showing in Singapore cinemas and based on the real story of Dr Ming Wang (Chinese-Canadian actor Terry Chen), a Chinese immigrant to the United States in the 1980s who became a renowned eye surgeon. They served as co-producers on the movie.

And they are already hard at work on their next project, Worth The Wait, which is in post-production. They hope to release the movie in 2025.

The couple, both 42, bill the film as an “Asian Love Actually”, referencing the 2003 British ensemble romantic comedy that strings together several love stories.

Worth The Wait does the same with an all-Asian cast. And one of the love stories is inspired by Tan and Mark, who met in Hong Kong in 2010 and got engaged after just seven months of a largely long-distance relationship.

They married in 2011 and now have a nine-year-old daughter and two-year-old son.

In a video call from Kuala Lumpur, Mark – a Chinese American born in California – tells The Straits Times: “In life, sometimes you wait for a really long time for something to happen really fast.”

Tan, who is Malaysian, adds: “We never even watched a movie together before we got engaged.”

Mark had been visiting Hong Kong, where Tan was working, when the two met at a church event in 2010.

He says: “Apparently, I pushed the pastor out of the way to sit across from her and talk to her at our first meeting.”

That connection sparked not only a romantic partnership, but eventually a business one as well. 

Tan, a Seremban-born former beauty queen, is the only Malaysian to win the Miss Chinese International Pageant organised by Hong Kong broadcaster TVB.

She clinched the title in 2003 and signed with TVB after winning the pageant that year. After her one-year contract was up, she finished her undergraduate studies and Master of Laws at the University of Sheffield and the University of Cambridge in England respectively.

In 2006, she returned to Hong Kong and was signed by Hong Kong movie star Jackie Chan as an artiste under his agency, and began modelling and acting.

While she did not have many memorable gigs then, being on film sets sparked her interest in behind-the-scenes work on movies. 

“I would hang around directors on sets and be an assistant to the producers and directors. I would go to script meetings and act as translator for the Hollywood producers and the Hong Kong film-makers – that’s when I really fell in love with the art of film-making. I prefer being behind the scenes than on camera,” she says.

She moved to Los Angeles after marrying Mark – who was an entertainment lawyer for a major movie studio then – and the two began working together as entertainment lawyers.

This eventually segued into a career in film producing. Their first film was the romance movie Always (2015) – about a Hong Kong lawyer (Derek Ting) who falls for a Shanghainese heiress (Danni Wang) – and they set up King Street Pictures in 2016. 

Since then, Tan and Mark have always focused on producing movies with Asian cast members that highlight the Asian-American experience. 

Sight, for instance, traces Dr Wang’s difficult journey from impoverished Chinese boy to successful doctor in the US. 

Mark says: “Things he experienced in the US were things that struck a chord with the immigrant and Chinese-American community, that my parents are a part of. Your whole family pitching in to buy you a one-way ticket from China to the US, or working at a restaurant to put yourself through medical school – so many Asians who came to America in the 1980s came from almost nothing.”

The pair also wants to highlight Asian stars of different backgrounds. Vietnamese-American actress Lana Condor and Singapore-born American actor Ross Butler will play out Tan and Mark’s romance in Worth The Wait, but against the backdrop of Kuala Lumpur instead of Hong Kong, in a bid to showcase Tan’s home country. 

The movie also features half-Japanese British actor Andrew Koji, Korean-American Sung Kang and Taiwanese-Canadian actress Karena Lam, making her American film debut, in various interwoven love stories.

It also stars Singaporean ex-couple Lim Yu-Beng and Tan Kheng Hua, though the actors do not share scenes. The pair divorced in 2017 after 25 years of marriage. 

Lim plays the father of Butler’s character, while Tan is involved in a different storyline as the mother of Lam’s character. 

Rachel Tan says: “(Yu-Beng and Kheng Hua) filmed all their scenes separately, but we all had dinner together recently when we were in Singapore. They’re still on great terms and we loved having them in the movie.”

While making films with an Asian focus can still pose a challenge in Hollywood, Mark says the momentum has been building since the Asian-led romantic comedy Crazy Rich Asians (2018) became a hit, and continuing with Oscar winners Minari (2020) and Everything Everywhere All At Once (2022).

“There’s been great strides and all the Asian Americans working in Hollywood are trying to keep this window of opportunity open and make sure it doesn’t close again.

“I think Asians in the East and West should be more connected and be more of a singular market. When I first met Rachel, I was surprised to realise we all knew the same pop culture references – we’re actually very connected culturally.”

• Sight is showing in Singapore cinemas.