In July this year, Mediacorp actor Zhang Yaodong had his reputation dragged through the mud when a netizen accused him of being a serial cheater. She also shared of picture of him asleep in bed.
The netizen later alleged that the 46-year-old actor also has a long-term girlfriend, with whom he has two kids.
Yaodong did not respond to the rumours, and the incident has been swept under the rug since.
Until recently, when Yaodong was probed about the scandal at the press conference for his new car-racing movie Oversteer.
According to a Malaysian media, Yaodong was stunned when he was posed a question about the incident, and did not respond.
Local actor Aden Tan, who plays Yaodong’s son in the movie, tried to ‘rescue’ the actor by telling reporters: “We’ll only be talking about the movie today”.
The movie’s director Derrick Lui, however, spoke up for the actor in an interview with Chinese media zaobao.sg.
He clarified that the press conference was held in a large cinema and that the reporter did not ask the question through a microphone, which explains why Yaodong failed to catch the question.
“He wanted to ask the reporter to repeat the question, but the host interrupted and told the reporter to only ask about the movie. We didn’t expect the article to end up alluding that he was trying to avoid the question,” he argued.
Derrick also said that other people at the venue can all attest to that.
“Yaodong also told me afterwards that his conscience is clear. If he was trying to run away from the scandal, he wouldn’t have turned up for the press conference,” he added.