'I don't think I'm filial': Sharon Au admits to putting herself before mum

Mother-daughter relationships are often heralded as sweet and beautiful, but for Sharon Au, hers has been complicated, if not rocky.

Appearing on local actress Jeanette Aw's talk show JA Unscripted for the second time, the former host-actress spoke about her struggles with vulnerability and confidence.

While Jeanette talked about her memories growing up with strong familial figures, the conversation segued into Sharon's own lack thereof. 

Sharon has publicly shared about her struggles as a child of divorce, especially having been "abandoned" by her parents to stay at her relatives' homes when she was younger.

While she and her mother are close now, she admitted in the Nov 9 video to having hated her in the past.

"It's because I chose to take the first step. I didn't want to wait for her to come and reconcile with me.

"Back then, you would definitely hold so much hatred and think, 'Why did the world abandon me?' You wouldn't think it was your problem. You would think that it was these adults who were the problem, and resentment would be all you felt.

"Later, when I realised I was the one who began holding this hate first, I felt that I should be the first one to open up and accept this mother-daughter relationship."

With her efforts, their relationship mended. But despite the common impression these days that the 50-year-old is "very filial" now, she thinks otherwise.

"I don't think I'm a filial daughter.

"So even when I say things like, 'Oh, my mum is 76, I should [move] home', I feel some sadness saying it."

She admitted to still putting herself ahead of her mother, getting chided by friends for relocating to Paris.

She recalled an occasion where her mother asked her to clear her schedule and come home to accompany her, but she rejected the request.

"Actually, I would only come back once a year. Every time I came back, it's because of a job or performance, so I was always in a busy state. It wasn't the kind where I could just spend time with my mum every day. I always set myself up this way - if I don't have a project, I won't come back."

Using her own story with her mother as an example, Sharon advised: "Parents, never abandon your sons or daughters."

Seeking closure with parents

Sharon lamented on the talk show about being still "tormented by [her] childhood".

As a child, she was constantly shuffled between relatives and was always living under "someone else's" roof.

With her parents absent and different family members constantly entering her life, she recalled: "Every day, I had to pay close attention to the person who took care of me and see if they liked me, because I was so afraid that they would pass me over to someone else again."

In an episode of the Mediacorp talk show Hear U Out in 2019, Sharon had recounted constantly asking her relatives at home whether her parents called for her and hoping they would visit her.

Eventually, she grew tired of asking because they "never did and never would".

Furthermore, she told Jeanette, in some years, she had to constantly rotate between different relatives' homes.

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"Maybe it's because I wasn't pleasing. I didn't have a cute face. So I wasn't the very lovely, cute kind of child," she ruminated.

Sharon shared that she only began living with her mum when she turned 17, because she had "no other choice".

Although they lived together, their relationship was still strained. It was only years later after a near-death experience on her air stewardess job that Sharon decided to reconcile with her mother.

Speaking to Jeanette, she said she still struggles with her relationship with her late father.

"Before I ever got the chance to seek closure to ask him a thousand bunch of questions, he passed away. So in this regard, it will always be kind of a pity, a regret."

Her father, who died in 2023, had another family and would visit her once a month to have fast food together.

In the previous episode of JA Unscripted, Sharon spoke about her struggles in landing a job in Singapore.

In 2005, she took a sabbatical from showbiz to pursue a degree in Japan's Waseda University on a Mediacorp scholarship and graduated with a bachelor's in liberal arts.

She did not return to acting and hosting, as having graduated at the top of her cohort, she wanted to contribute to the company behind the scenes.

"I was very confident at the time and firm in the path I wanted to take. A month after saying that, I regretted it. I checked my bank statement and it was so much less."

Sharon will next appear in actor Qi Yuwu's directorial debut Cendol, a short film premiering at the Singapore International Film Festival on Nov 29.

She plays an award-winning interior designer who returns to Singapore to visit her mother and reminisces about how much she and her city have changed.

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kristy.chua@asiaone.com