A Woman We Love
Paula Malai Ali
In our October Brain Gain Issue, our Woman We Love was ESPN Star Sports host Paula Malai Ali. With the Formula One season winding down, we had an honest, no-holds-barred time with Paula, as she shared openly about her life in the spotlight. (Over wine, which helps.) Here's an excerpt:
Have you ever met the shaman of fame? Charming fella. Wears a bowtie, unshakeable grin, only speaks when spoken to. His voice is a steady monotone, never rising above the sound of a car engine. When you get him going, he can’t stop. But all his conversations with you end the same way: with an outstretched hand, an invitation to answer this very crucial question: Do we have a deal? He particularly loves teenagers.
Fame only asks one thing from you: your self-confidence. But in return, he promises you magazine covers, prime time on television, your name whispered on the tongues of ordinary pakciks in Ipoh kopitiams. Go ahead. Take it, it’s yours. In the dead of the night, with the consent of Mum and Dad, many dreamy twenty-somethings make the secret handshake, hoping that the shaman can paper over any cracks in their soul. Paula thought that anyway. Lust is blind.
So here we are, poolside of a posh club in the outskirts of K.L., and we’re toasting with a bottle of Cloudy Bay wine. To the years before, and to the many good years ahead. To the company of friends along the journey. And oh yeah. To the shaman.
“Cheers, big ears.”
Glasses clink. “Long day,” she says, hiking up her yellow tube-blouse, folding her naked legs into the chair. Paula’s finished her photoshoot, and the day is ending with a reunion. A high-flying corporate G.M. is here, and so is Lina Teoh, former Miss Malaysia World, currently a documentary producer. Lina and Paula go way back, fifteen years, when one called the other looking for a break into theatre. At that time, Paula was a fixed name in the scene, rising to the top on the strength of Shakespearean and local plays conducted with Instant Cafe Theatre. “She called me, and I was like, “That’s so random.” Then this girl,” Paula says, nodding towards Lina, “becomes the biggest beauty queen in the country. I’m like, “I better be nice to her.” They laugh as they skip back in time. I’m just a fly on a table, invited into one of life’s guilty pleasures: hearing famous people talk to each other as they slowly become more sloshed.
“Not many people know we are good friends, right?”
“We are like two guys.” Paula pulls out her first Marlboro. She talks fast, words glued together at the syllables to form an indistinguishable stream of thought. “If someone stole my phone, and saw Whatsapp, they’ll just see “Dude”. They won’t know it’s Lina. She would stay with me in Singapore when she comes down. And we both got jaded at the same time, for different reasons.”
“Yeah,” Lina says. “Yeah we did.” More titbits arrive on a spoon, and Lina turns to talk to Adeline.
“It’s been a really rewarding year. I know that sounds so twee, but...” And Paula starts to speak, and it’s like listening to a music score. The ebbs and flows, crescendos after a gradual climb, the swift prestissimo of pancaked sentences when she gets excited and motions like a conductor, the spitfire staccato, throaty ha--ha--has. Then, the semibreve rest. She takes this often. A pause, an indeterminate length of time where she doesn’t speak. Instead, she thinks. Remembers. Takes five, ten, fifteen seconds to walk down the hallways, glance at her memories, wondering how best to tell you exactly what she thinks of that exact frozen image of her past. Anyone can see them. If you ask nicely.
And let’s not get started on that accent. Layered, the English city over a local Malay twang and maybe a dash of American flavour for good measure? Accents like these spoken by the hottest girl in the room are special. It hints at a deeper story behind her.
Twenty-eleven has been important for Paula. She’s still doing the same old—entering her fifth year as a presenter for ESPN Star Sports, mostly for F1 and tennis-related shows—but also, because she has a new son, Zane. At six months old, his personality is showing. “He’s getting vain, I’m thinking, this is really embarrassing. At immigration, he saw his face in the mirror, and he starts to pose, I was like, calm down. Suddenly, he’s got attitude dude.” Now, as new moms can tell you, Zane is the master of her universe. She gets tired from the three o’clock wake-up times, has to adjust to this crying, pooping introduction to the world. Has to reach home by the evening to bathe him and “if I miss my mandi time, I’ll be like goddamitbollockssh**.” Lot of times, however, babies offer perspective. Shift your priorities, knocks the self slightly off kilter, a new page in a new chapter. “I was telling my twin (Brunei radio D.J. Jenny Malai Ali), if I didn’t have Zane, at my age, thirty-seven ... I really would be a bit aimless. Still working, but just working. I mean, I’ve been working non-stop since I was twenty.”
She never went to university. Couldn’t. Parents split up, and book smarts don’t come cheap. So four days after her twenty-first birthday, Paula arrived in Kuala Lumpur, met the shaman, and started her career. “I wanted to be famous. I wanted that recognition, all those things. Absolutely,” she says. “And Malaysia is one of those perfect places, one of those seductive countries, where fame does come by quite easily. And if you’re Eurasian, I’m sorry, but it really helps man.” She stops to stare at a mirror in the hallway of her imagination. “The look works.”
The look landed her a cover of Men’s Review. Anointed her the ‘it‘ television presenter - hey there, you mixed eye-candy!—she hosted music shows like Nescafe Hot Ones, modelled for Avon, was a stage starlet. Then she landed the job of her life before the job of her life: VJ for music channel Channel [V]. Her star rose, like a supernova. The demographic would tune in to see her presenting music videos against a green screen, because “girls want to see what you’re wearing, and the boys want to see if you’ve got your tits out.” Shaman kept his word. The journey was moving along rather swell.
Even if supernovas explode in space after travel.
Read more about Paula - how she dealt with the Oprah fiasco, and marriage in general - in our October Brain Gain Issue, out in newsstands now. Words by Jon Chew. Photographs by Steve Koh, and produced by Image Rom. Hair and grooming by Shawn Goh. Clothes: DKNY. Maserati Gran Cabrio by Naza Italia.
October 11th, 2011