When Ayesha Erotica sang “sell your soul for the Hollywood dream”, she didn’t have to explain what it meant for us to get the implication. The Hollywood industry is known for its toxicity, with past stars revealing their abuse and mistreatment. The most recent being Britney Spears’ tell-all, for example.
But the Hollywood industry can seem so far away from our Little Red Dot, so it’s hard to imagine anything remotely similar happening to our entertainment industry. To most of us, Singapore is pretty safe — how bad can anything be?
For Vanessa Ho, who started off as a commercial model at 15 and eventually went on to pursue her dream in the entertainment industry, she never thought that things could take a dark twist. Here’s her journey through navigating the industry in Singapore, and how she was instead harassed and propositioned multiple times.
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Growing up, Vanessa never imagined herself to join the entertainment industry. At 15 years old, she first came across an advertisement for The New Paper New Face, a modelling competition in Singapore, while reading the newspaper. On a whim, she decided to try it out — after all, you only live once right?
“Back then, I didn’t have that self-confidence to even imagine putting myself out there publicly. Though I didn’t win the competition, I made it to the top 20 out of around 1,200 people.”
It was through this competition that kickstarted Vanessa’s journey into the entertainment industry. With more visibility on her in the media, she started picking up media gigs and took on calefare acting roles, eventually even gaining the attention of multiple media agencies.
Vanessa discovered herself more through this experience — “I realised that I enjoy being in a crowd, putting myself out there, influencing and connecting with people. I love public speaking too, as I felt that it was a way of self-expression.”
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With her newfound passions in mind, Vanessa was determined to get more gigs as a side income. She trained in different aspects of acting, modelling and hosting, and dreamed of becoming a radio DJ or TV presenter one day.
Vanessa then went on to participate in many other competitions, and came out top 10 in 987 Star, a radio competition.
With these achievements, Vanessa felt her self-confidence growing. Things such as competing with other talents, fighting for jobs, tedious audition processes and getting rejections — she described them as all part of her “character development”.
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Eventually, Vanessa got signed to become an artiste after winning modelling competition Face of Singapore — she was only 17 then. Being young with big dreams was an exciting period of time for her, and things were starting to look up.
After her contract with her very first agency ended, a reputable local agency in the music space scouted Vanessa and invited her for an interview with the boss. It was as if the stars aligned in that moment, since Vanessa was just looking to join a new management.
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As someone who was still fairly new to the industry and didn’t know how to work with clients yet, Vanessa wanted to navigate the space well and saw this interview as her opportunity to do so.
But the interview process was made up of “very long meetings in the boardroom”. It was just her and the boss alone, which was already highly intimidating.
“The conversation started off with questions about my background, but it slowly became very personal. Each meeting went on for about two to three hours, and he started asking things such as ‘do you have a boyfriend? What’s your body count?’”
Vanessa was only 18 then, so despite thinking “how are these questions even related to making me a better actress or talent?”, she still wanted to impress him and work in this reputable agency.
Each and every interview was extremely pressurising and Vanessa would come out of it feeling very distressed. A lot of his conversations revolved around this main question: “what would you sacrifice to be on top?”
“He told me that he only wanted to invest in talents that would be number one, and I had to give up a lot of things for it. He quoted examples of how people in other countries sleep around to get casted for roles. And then eventually, some of the conversations led to this shocking proposition: would I sleep with him to be “on top”?
It wasn’t just one meeting that he asked. He insisted that he needed to see how hungry and motivated I am, and there were some evenings where he called me up to ask me where I am or what I am doing.”
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It’s easy for us to look from the outside and think, “why didn’t she just say no?” But Vanessa was only a teenager then, and it’s hard to imagine how one would stand up against him if we were in her shoes. He was, after all, a well-known boss who held a lot of power.
Plus, Vanessa felt passionate enough to continue meeting him for these interviews. She was already pursuing this career so actively, and getting this spot felt like a big step forward for her in the industry.
The boss hounded her with more inappropriate remarks, such as saying that he wants all of his artistes to be single and have no religion to hold them back. Every time Vanessa came out of his office, she would burst into tears because of how scared she felt.
Not wanting to keep this dark secret any longer, she told her close friends about her experiences and they were always there to comfort her. Eventually, they advised her to give up on her dream, and Vanessa agreed to forgo signing the contract.
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When asked if she had any regrets, Vanessa shared, “the only regret I had was that I was so naive — I still went back meeting after meeting. I knew how torturous it was for me mentally, and I could have stopped taking the meetings with him. There are other agencies out there, but I didn’t know better. I wanted to seal the deal and be an artiste in this company.”
As quoted from Bojack Horseman, “when you look at someone through rose-coloured glasses, all the red flags just look like flags”.
Thankfully, Vanessa didn’t push herself to sign the contract as she understood how dangerous her situation could have been if she ignored her friends’ advice.
In 2019, Vanessa joined Star Search, a MediaCorp TV series that scouted for local talents. She was in her first year of university then, and didn’t even tell her parents that she signed up.
“I didn’t want them to be worried because I was doing decently well in school. I know they would still want me to prioritise my academics, so I wanted to prove to them that I could juggle both my academic grades and media successes before telling them anything.”
One can only imagine the shock her family members felt when watching her on TV. Vanessa even hilariously shared that her parents and sister went out to watch a movie and saw her in a commercial that they didn’t even know about. Oops.
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Moving on from her initial disappointments, Vanessa was soon scouted to join a DJ agency and did gigs around two to three times a week. She also hosted a lot of events on the side, while still studying, which took up most of her time.
Through Star Search and MediaCorp, she saw what a proper agency looked like. Sure, there were a lot more restrictions, but they ultimately are a large organisation that’s particular about their artistes. Over time, Vanessa could really realise the red flags in her previous interview.
Vanessa didn’t have any evidence or proof to report on her case either — “it felt like there was nothing I could do. I knew that what the boss did was wrong, but there was also a chance of a potential lawsuit, or that other agencies would then be afraid to work with me eventually.”
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In fact, Vanessa was offered to sign a contract as a full-time actress, but she turned it down to pursue another career instead.
Now that she’s 24, she has graduated from university and works a full-time job in a tech startup as a business development executive, on top of investment work for startups. That’s not to say her passion for the media industry has wavered — she still hosts and does content creation as a side gig. That’s not all — Vanessa also runs an entrepreneurship podcast, Hatch & Hustle.
“Right now, if I were to do anything in the entertainment space, it must give me value in the business world or my branding.”
This new passion is a stark contrast from when she used to DJ at clubs, bars and festivals.
“I realised that being a full-time artiste in Singapore is really a struggle. And I’m someone who’s always hungry to not just live off simply, but I am eager to make good money. I realised the path to that was through other avenues such as tech and investment.”
Looking back, Vanessa still acknowledges that her experience in the media entertainment industry has been good despite the harassment from that one agency. She enjoyed meeting new people and many of them gave her the encouragement to grow as an artiste.
But does this mean her dream is squashed completely? Vanessa disagrees.
“Right now, it’s difficult to pursue both business and entertainment at the same time, so my prioritisation will definitely be on the business side. If the time is right, I’ll be interested in hosting more for business content, and eventually TV presenting.”
Till today, Vanessa is still pursuing content creation and hosting, and hopes to share her story to shed light on the dangers of the entertainment industry.
And for those who may be afraid to chase their passions, Vanessa reassures that it’ll always be okay in the end. “Our career paths don’t always have to be linear. Find a good support system to help you through tough times, but also know when to be firm and say no if you’re not comfortable.”
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