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Charlene Choi, 22, and Gillian Chung, 23, may not be twins in the true sense of the word, but the pop duo decided to call themselves Twins when they first set foot in the Hong Kong entertainment industry three years ago. Hey, and it works judging from the steady rise of the pseudo twins’ popularity in the Canto-pop scene.

They just came up with a Chinese New Year offering – a spoof movie entitled Protégé de la Rose Noire which co-stars Ekin Cheng and veteran Teresa Mo. In the film, we see the girls’ transformation from unemployed goofballs to successors of former heroine Black Rose (played by a still youthful Mo). Choi and Chung relayed their set experiences in Cantonese via a telephone interview from Hong Kong recently.

Gillian Chung (left) and Charlene Choi play goofballs who become a superhero duo in Protege de la Rose Noire.

Do you think this movie was tailor-made for both of you?

Choi: It so happened that the movie needed a pair of girls, so we thought “why not?”. Usually, we just sing as a duo but in other aspects of entertainment such as acting, we have both tried to develop ourselves individually and not as a duo. I guess what made me do this film was because of the fun factor of the movie. I wanted to be in a happy show, furthermore I love doing fight scenes (laughs).

What was the best part about filming the movie?

Choi: Of course it was great working with Ekin again. This is the third time we have worked with him so there was already an established camaraderie with him. We were always joking and chatting with Ekin. We feel very comfortable and there was none of the initial awkwardness when working with a person you are meeting for the first time. Teresa was great to work with as well. She is extremely nice and pampered us a lot. We also learnt a lot from her. Donnie Yen (who directed the movie) has taught us a lot as well and was very direct with us, and in turn we could be very direct with him. This is the second time we are working with Donnie so we could now be more honest about what we can or cannot do. We were initially very intimidated by him during our previous collaboration.

Is this the most action-intensive movie to date for the both of you?

Choi: Actually, I think our previous movie, Twins Effect, was more physical than this. Perhaps it is because Twins Effect was more an action movie whereas Protégé is more of a feel-good, laugh-out-loud movie thus the comedy element is more important. For example, I have to do the Drunken Master kung fu style and Gillian has to imitate the Snake style. It is meant to be hilarious (laughs).

Did you have to do a lot of research on how to execute your kung fu moves in a convincing manner?

Choi: Well, actually we grew up watching lots of Jackie Chan movies so we were mostly just playing from memory. As we went along Donnie guided us and refined our movements.

Did you laugh a lot during the filming of the movie?

Chung: Initially filming was done in a very fragmented way so most of the time we weren’t sure what was actually happening. The filming was not done in any particular sequence thus we did not really get the drift of the story initially. We were filming the ending at one moment and the next moment we were filming one of the earlier scenes. However, when we viewed the entire film we were laughing almost hysterically.

Which was the most difficult scene to film for you both?

Chung: The bath tub scene was most difficult. In that scene, Charlene and I were supposed to be submerged in a tub full of bubbles while chatting away. It was really hard because first of all we were actually placed underneath some wooden boards and the bubbles were just on the surface of the boards. The bubbles kept disappearing so we had to re-shoot the scene over and over again. Also, the place where the filming was done did not allow us to take a bath after filming so my skin was stinging from all those bubbles, and I couldn’t even take a bath to get rid of the suds.

Choi: For me the hardest scene was the part whereby Gillian and I were hung on opposite ends of a pole. Initially Donnie wanted to make things easier for us and just do a close-up of us. But we thought it looked too artificial and we insisted on an actual scene of us hanging from the pole. It was really difficult but we thought it would be much more realistic if audiences were to see the actual thing.

There are criticisms that the Hong Kong entertainment industry nowadays is based on packaging and looks rather than talent. What do you think?

Choi: I think that Hong Kong is a very diverse market whereby different people have differing tastes. So I guess as long as there is someone out there who likes a certain type of artiste then you would have to cater to that market. Also, I think it is important for an artiste to develop herself in different ways such as through acting in order to grow.

Is this the peak for Twins?

Choi: Of course we don’t hope that this is the best we can be (laughs)! This year we will be working much harder to improve ourselves. There are so many things that we have not done and so hopefully this will be the year to do some of that. For example, we would very much like to come up with a Mandarin album. We just hope to get better with each new year.

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