If you want to take stock of the ratings queen of the entertainment industry, Charmaine Sheh is the one who has to be mentioned.
Compared with those native mainland actors, it is not easy for Charmaine Sheh to squeeze into this ranks.
After all, Deng Cuiwen, Zhang Keyi, Myolie Wu and other TVB Hua Dan, who were once smash hits, are obviously not as popular as before, and many have even been kicked out of the ranks of the protagonists and can only be matched.
Among the TVB actors who went north, only Charmaine Sheh continued her former glory.
In 2018, Charmaine Sheh shined with the role of Concubine Xian in "Yanxi Raiders", and gained a firm foothold in the mainland entertainment industry in one fell swoop. The blackening process that does not rely on smoky makeup and the clips of cutting her hair and breaking her love make people see her good acting skills.
In 2023, a "News Queen" will once again put Charmaine Sheh in the limelight, and the role of Sister Man has become her new signboard.
The two fires after going north proved that her success was not because of the big tree of TVB alone, but because of her vision and acting skills in choosing scripts.
And she, who can choose scripts, recently released a new drama - "Today's Them".
After watching sixteen episodes in one go, Mr. Tomato felt that Charmaine Sheh had made the right bet again this time.
The show has been broadcast for more than half of the time, and it has been firmly at the top of the list of urban dramas since its inception, and many plots around Charmaine Sheh have also sparked national discussions, and the popularity is very high.
Charmaine Sheh plays an older career-oriented woman in the play, and in the eyes of outsiders, she plays Liang Qingran with a good image, strong ability, wealth and power, and is simply a winner in life.
But the characters who go well only exist in fairy tales, and the characters are destined to be flat, and the reason why the role of Liang Qingran can impress Charmaine Sheh is because she also exposes the embarrassment faced by many older career women today.
1. The embarrassment of older single women
Liang Qingran is the boss of the Sichuan branch of an investment company and the only woman in the branch.
When she was young, she was preoccupied with her work and wanted to get ahead.
It took more than ten years for her to finally achieve a position in the company above 10,000 people under one person, but this does not mean that she has no troubles, her troubles are that she is 40 years old and still single.
"I've been strong since I was a kid, I have to make myself different from others, and the older I get, the more I want to be like others. ”
This is Liang Qingran's original words, and it is also the voice of many older unmarried career women. Seeing that their peers are getting married and having children at the age of thirty or forty, and some children are starting junior high school, that sense of urgency is estimated to be shared by many older single women.
In the eyes of some people, they are strong women with successful careers, but there is a voice that always surrounds them: "What's the use of being successful?
Of course, there is an unpleasant sour taste in this sentence, but it is actually the true thoughts of many people.
In the eyes of many people, a man's career success is a great achievement, and a woman's greatest success is to manage a good marriage, have a husband and children, otherwise no matter how glamorous the job is and the salary is high, she will be regarded as a failure.
And when falling in love, a strong person like Liang Qingran who calls for wind and rain in the workplace must also put down his body, try his best to accommodate the other party, and even cater to him.
Her new boyfriend likes a woman who can cook, so as a novice cook, she asks her friends to come to her house to help cook, or order takeout and put the food from the crisper to the plate and pretend to make it herself.
But disguise will always be revealed, and once before the takeout came, my boyfriend came first. But this also made Liang Qingran decide to have a showdown, because she was already pretending to be very tired, and she was destined to be the kind of woman who washed her hands and made soup, so she decided to let herself go.
Tomato Jun believes that many women must have struggled like Liang Qingran when they reach a certain age, trying to change themselves to integrate into the world, some people succeed in having a family, and some people finally choose to be themselves, and continue to be single until they find someone who knows how to appreciate themselves.
Either way, happiness is the most important thing.
Second, the embarrassment of too much success
Liang Qingran's second embarrassment as an older career-oriented young woman stems from being too successful.
There has always been a saying in China that the man marries low and marries high, which means that the best configuration of marriage is that the man's comprehensive strength is slightly higher than that of the woman.
Therefore, it is even more difficult for a strong woman like Liang Qingran to find a partner.
After saying goodbye to her ex-boyfriend who likes a virtuous wife, Liang Qingran soon started a new relationship.
The new boyfriend is funny, humorous and emotional, and will prepare flowers and gifts to send surprises, and he doesn't care that Liang Qingran is a very ambitious woman, the two seem to be a match made in heaven.
Unexpectedly, halfway through, he still killed Cheng Biting Jin, which is the man's mother.
Because her boyfriend's surprise to Liang Qingran included a diamond necklace that he bought with three months' salary, after her mother found out, she immediately killed Liang Qingran's company, saying that she confused her son and made her son spend money indiscriminately.
The old lady's words made Liang Qingran can't help but roll her eyes, and when the old lady said that she wanted Liang Qingran to stop harming her son, she immediately agreed, just to send her away quickly and not to be embarrassed in front of her colleagues.
This little thing is actually the dilemma faced by many successful women.
You must know that some men live in the shadow of a successful wife for a long time, and their self-esteem will be infinitely inflated, and in the end they will either find a woman who needs to rely on themselves, or they will become very sensitive, and anything can touch his poor self-esteem.
And even if the man himself really doesn't care, his family and friends will have pimples in their hearts, just like the mother in the play, who will use her son's income as the standard, and all kinds of picky women spend lavishly, even if the woman is fully capable of bearing these expenses.
In the entertainment industry, Ma Yili, Article, Li Xiang, Wang Yuelun, these divorced couples all prove that the partnership between strong women and weak men is destined to be difficult to go long in China.
This also means that it is more difficult for successful women like Liang Qingran to choose a mate than ordinary people, because they can often only find a better man than themselves, otherwise after marriage, they will always pay attention to the self-esteem of their husband and his family, and it is also a very tiring experience to lower their living standards in order to accommodate.
3. The embarrassment of being a family "blood transfusion package".
In addition to her love life, Liang Qingran also embodies another embarrassment that career women often face, that is, they are often used as a "blood transfusion bag" at home.
There is a plot in the play, Liang Qingran received a call from his mother, and asked her for money, and it was 1 million, on the grounds that her younger brother was about to get married and wanted to buy a house, and she had to support her as an older sister.
The most infuriating thing is that the mother's tone on the phone is not a negotiation request, but an order, and it seems that it is natural for Liang Qingran, who makes a lot of money, to take out a huge amount of money to supplement his son.
In the end, the money was about to arrive, and in order to take care of her younger brother's self-esteem, her mother also explained that Liang Qingran had to say that she gave it voluntarily.
In the play, after the mother asked for the money in an indifferent tone, the father used a kind tone to appease Liang Qingran, and also made excuses for his mother, saying that it was because his younger brother and girlfriend were too pressed that he had to open this mouth.
Many people will think that their mother is cold-blooded, but their father is still good to Liang Qingran.
But Tomato Jun didn't think so, if it was really good to Liang Qingran, he wouldn't let his wife make this call, instead of waiting until the money to appease his daughter. In fact, this is the old routine of the husband and wife singing red face and white face, but unfortunately the routine is used on their daughter's body, which is really scary.
This paragraph is really suffocating, and it is also the real dilemma of many successful women now.
Many parents still have the mentality of raising children to prevent old age, and feel that their daughter's future is just water spilled out, so they always want to get more oil and water on their daughter for their son, so that they can be regarded as keeping the money at home.
Fan Shengmei in "Ode to Joy" and Su Mingyu in "It's All Good" are all people who have suffered from it.
In recent years, as the marriage rate continues to decline, more and more women have become so-called "older leftover women", and a large part of them do not get married because they are not good enough, but because they are too good.
Like Liang Qingran, they have their own high-income careers, and many emotional values do not need to be satisfied through family and children, and they have a wonderful life by themselves.
But behind these glamorous and beautiful shadows, there are also a lot of bitterness and sadness that are not humane to outsiders.
The role of Liang Qingran is to say all the troubles that this group wants to say but can't say, this role can be said to have grasped the tide of the times, and it is bound to resonate with many women, so Tomato Jun said that Charmaine Sheh made the right bet again.
(Movie Rotten Tomatoes Editorial Department: Yang Jing)