Daughter & Sense

SHAUN CHEN is about to become a father for a second time. But before he jumps back into a brand new cycle of baby-induced sleep deprivation (not that he ever got out of it), he talks to us about his year of breaking dad in this exclusive cover shoot with his 17-monthold “mistress” NELLIE.

- Jonathan Fam

If you want to learn how to ease gracefully into fatherhood, look no further than this story about Shaun Chen. But first, the 38-year-old actor has to make it to our cover shoot. 

We’re at Oakwood Studios Singapore, an ultra-hip serviced apartment located just off Orchard Road, and Shaun is nowhere to be found. We drop him a call, not to tell him that we’re waiting for him, but rather, to let him know which room we’re waiting in. (Okay, maybe a little part of us wanted to tell him that he’s late.) He doesn’t pick up our call but our phone rings minutes later. 

Hello? 

“Eh, Jonathan,” Shaun says in his instantly-recognisable chilled-beer tone. “Sorry ah, bring the small one out very troublesome.” And just like that, every unfounded assumption we had about him being tardy goes out the window faster than a kid picking up a cuss word.

The ‘small one’ he’s referring to is Nellie, his one-and-a-half-year-old, or as Shaun (and all other parents) would say, “17-month-old” daughter. Over the past year, Shaun has been doing some other very dad things. He’s been coaxing belches, battling sleep deprivation, cleaning baby poop… you know, basically going from Star Awards-winning Best Actor to amateur bedtime story performer. So what better way to celebrate this journey into the dad-lands then with an 8 DAYS cover shoot with his daughter for Father’s Day?

So yes, the shoot. The first person we notice when Shaun turns up isn’t the actor, or Nellie, but his 28-year-old wife Celine, who is now (or at least at the time of the shoot) seven months pregnant with their second kid. The couple had originally planned to wait three to four years before having another child, but just like their first pregnancy, “It just happened,” according to Shaun.