Unknown baby upstages Aniu in 'Wedding Diary II'

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Unknown baby upstages Aniu in 'Wedding Diary II'

Elanne and Aniu are happy to let a baby do all the hard work.

BY CHEW WAN YING

A 10-month-old baby is threatening to upstage Mandarin pop singer Aniu and Hong Kong starlet Elanne Kwong in the upcoming sequel to the hit comedy The Wedding Diary. The boy plays their son, following the two main characters getting together at the end of the first movie, which opened in January this year during Chinese New Year.

Having their pint-sized co-star steal the show isn't a problem for the lead actors—in fact, they're banking on him to help them repeat the box-office success of the first movie. That's a lot of pressure on Lee Wei Xuan, but according to Aniu and Elanne, the little guy is a natural in front of the cameras.

"People are going to faint when they see his megawatt smile," Elanne told reporters at a wrap party for the movie, adding that the crew nicknamed the toddler Wei Wei. "Wei Wei's a genius. He knows how to react to the camera as soon as it's rolling. Whenever we call him [by his character's name] Heng Heng, he turns around."

Elanne and baby Wei Wei work the camera.

Single lady Elanne, 24, was so charmed by her pretend child that parting with him after their 23-day shot proved somewhat emotional. For Aniu, however, not so much as he often had to do take after take, repeating scenes "for 10 to 20 times" so that director Adrian Teh could capture "that perfect expression" on Wei Wei.

"It was kind of cruel to me that Adrian had no sympathy for me at all," said Aniu with a mocking sigh. "He would say 'Good take' and then say 'One more, please'."

But the 35-year-old divorced dad had a few tricks up his sleeve, having raised an 11-year-old daughter with his ex-wife from Taiwan. (Aniu had been separated from his former missus for several years but only talked about it this year. Their girl now lives with his family in Penang.)

"To make things easier I would play with Wei Wei before shooting a scene, but yeah, the same tricks wouldn't work on him after a few times," he said, adding that the baby's granny was always on the set to supervise them.

Though The Wedding Diary II opens next February only, Aniu and Elanne are already in talks for a third movie. "The studio bosses told us that if this movie does over RM6 million at the box-office, we'll get to do another one," they said.

Published: 15th August 2012