Fallout from the make-out sesh that broke the Hong Kong internet continues to, well, fall out, with one of the people caught up in the purported love rectangle breaking his silence.
Actor Kenneth Ma spoke to reporters outside TVB City in Tseung Kwan O yesterday evening to defend his girlfriend, actress Jacqueline Wong, who was caught by a hidden camera getting frisky with married pop star Andy Hui in the back seat of a car.
The release of the footage has easily become the biggest celebrity scandal to hit Hong Kong in recent years, prompting not only high-level hand-wringing over privacy issues, but also a social media stampede on the part of everyone from Mr. Peanut to the Buildings Department seeking to piggyback off of the media interest to promote their products and initiatives.
Given the magnitude of the hullabaloo, Ma was surprisingly calm in his remarks to reporters.
“Actually, after I found out about the incident, my anger quickly turned into worry; I was worried about the people involved in the incident, and I don’t hope for anyone to get hurt,” he said.
Ma and Wong are both actors for the broadcaster TVB, and Ma is currently filming the second season of the network’s show Exorcist’s Meter (which is about a ghost-fighting cabbie — just wanted to point that out).
Ma added yesterday that he had spoken to Wong, and told reporters that she wanted to speak publicly, but there were concerns from TVB that she was emotionally unstable.
“I can only say she’s still very young, and still has a lot to face in the future ahead of her. So I hope everyone will her her some space. As for me, there’s no need to worry about me. I will continue to concentrate on my work and carry on filming my show, and I don’t want this to impact my filming schedule,” Ma continued.
“Andy has already spoken, so I will not comment on the situation, because I think the only person qualified to do so is Andy’s wife. So I hope things will settle down as soon as possible.”
Ma also urged the media to leave his family out of the drama after reporters doorstepped his mom to ask how she felt about the scandal. She professed not to know what was going on, and described Wong as “ordinary.”
“If my mom suddenly has a lot of microphones pointed at her, she’ll get scared and will start saying the wrong thing. I hope everyone will not take my mom’s words and blow them out of proportion,” he said.
“Please don’t scare my family, they’re not part of the showbiz community.”
After he ended the interview, Ma was asked by a reporter about the status of his relationship with Wong, but said he had “nothing else to add.”
Ma’s remarks come shortly after Wong said in an Instagram post that she was sorry, that what she did was “unforgivable,” and that she was “ashamed and full of guilt.”
“I have made a such a serious mistake, I can’t face myself, and I don’t know how to face my family, Kenneth, friends, the company, and my colleagues,” she wrote.
“I don’t dare ask for everyone’s forgiveness, but I do urge everyone to give the people involved a little space.”
The scandal has proven so explosive in Hong Kong thanks, in part, to the involvement of Andy Hui — the man Wong was filmed kissing — whose relationship with Cantopop queen Sammi Cheng was seen by many as a real-life fairy tale. Both became pop stars as teenagers in the early ’90s, carrying on an on-again-off-again romance for three decades before marrying in 2013.
On Tuesday night, Hui gave a tearful press conference in which he called himself a “scumbag,” and announced he would be taking a break from work.
Cheng, meanwhile, has yet to publicly respond to the scandal, but Ming Pao reports that she has moved out of the couple’s Repulse Bay home and into her family’s house.
