Vivian Lai’s foray into the entertainment industry when she participated in and won the Star Search talent competition in 1999. She was also crowned the All-Asian Star Search ’99 champion and later debuted in Knotty Liaisons (2000).

After a bout of acting in productions such as Holland V (2003) and Double Happiness (2004), Vivian Lai pivoted to hosting with her first gig in the 2006 Property Classified. She’s arguably more known for her hosting prowess with her last credit being A Gift For Mum 3 (2020).

Finding someone who hasn’t heard of Vivian Lai will be difficult. Besides her two-decade-long career, she has also won the Star Awards‘ Top 10 Most Popular Female Artiste 10 times, earning her the title of All-Time Favourite Award in 2015.

In 2014, Vivan Lai set up the social media and production company 3x Media Production with fellow host Quan Yifeng and hairstylist Addy Lee.

In a 2018 interview with 8days, this was what Vivian Lai had to say about the endeavour, “We set up this company ’cos we wanted to try out new things. We’ve been in this industry for so long, and we have our own ideas. No matter what, [Mediacorp] is still a TV station and there’s a format to follow for every programme. So we don’t have the liberty of doing whatever we want to. On social media and online, we have a lot more freedom with the things we say or do.”

The bubble tea brand is called Teabrary and was created in September 2019. At its pre-Covid-19 peak, Teabrary had three outlets islandwide before being forced to shutter to its only location left at Le Quest in Bukit Batok. The circuit breaker announcement was also tough for the business as Vivian Lai had to personally deliver bubble tea before the restrictions were imposed as they weren’t allowed to operate.

In 2021, Vivian Lai shared that she was looking to take a step back from the entertainment industry to focus on Teabrary and caring for her children and their studies.

On the former, she stated, “What I’m focusing on now is my business. We’ve been open for about three years and it was an uphill task to get ourselves off the ground. I also have a lot of loyal staff who have done a lot for me from the start, and that’s why I want the business to do well and grow so that it’ll benefit these staff members in the future too.”

In 2018, Vivian Lai’s husband Alain Ong was caught in a scandal following an internal audit at beverage company Pokka where he was the chief executive officer. This raised questions about Vivian Lai’s ambassadorship of the beverage brand, in which she was the face of the label for over a decade, and the possibility of a conflict of interest. There were also discussions on whether she was paid higher than her peers due to the connection, which both Mediacorp and Vivan Lai had refuted.

Call her a skater girl. Vivian Lai joined Zoe Tay to learn skateboarding in March 2021 for the series #JustSwipeLah. She wasn’t “interested in skateboarding at all” but “did it for my kids”. What made her participate? Because she found the skateboarding instructor handsome.

In 2018, Vivian Lai gave us a glimpse of her three-story semi-detached house. Located in central Singapore, the house is estimated to be worth $8 million and fulfilled her “longtime wish of owning a piece of landed property”. Rooms include a soundproof karaoke room in the basement.

Imagine having random bouts of numbness that left half of your body unable to feel even a needle prick. That was what Vivian Lai endured five years ago when she felt that the left side of her body felt weak and numb. Fearing a stroke, Vivian Lai consulted a doctor and discovered that it was a slipped disc. Surgery only offered her a 50 percent chance of getting better so she took the alternative approach with traditional Chinese medicine using acupuncture and bojin massage treatments to slowly get better.

Text: Ho Guo Xiong/HerWorld

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