Fantastic Five

For this Heroes Issue, guest editor Benjamin Kheng leads a fabulous retinue of next-gen local talents in a conversational roundtable never before seen in Men’s Folio. Meet Nathan Hartono, Joel Choo, Alexander Yue, and Ayden Sng as they discuss their roads to the big time.

- Yong Wei Jian

BENJAMIN

The hero of this story is undoubtedly Benjamin Kheng, a member of The Sam Willows and star of the Dick Lee biopic, Wonder Boy. He is commonly mistaken on the street for Nathan Hartono, to which he obliges with a gleeful “Yes, I am!” (Hartono, on the other hand, gets misidentified as Joseph Schooling). Kheng got his start in radio at the now-defunct Lush 99.5FM. He auditioned really hard to get into The Royal Central School of Speech and Drama in London, and just as he was about to enter, he started picking up work in theatre. He was also busy doing “YouTube stuff” then, during the golden age of online cover songs. “So I thought I’d take a gap year, and it has been seven gap years since,” he jokes.

The detour ended up being quite a scenic route. Kheng has kept himself busy these past years, earning his stripes as a true multi-hyphenate. In this issue, he adds another title to the list with his guest editorship at Men’s Folio, and one of the things he immediately set out to do was organize a roundtable with our five cover stars (himself included). During the discussion, he leads the others with ease – a frontman, through and through – gamely tackling issues he deems relevant and important to his generation of local talents; the conversation ranges from building lasting legacies in an age of instant fame to whether their good looks define their self-worth.