After spending 12 hours a day for six months filming in prison, local actor-entrepreneur Tommy Wong has one thing to say: “Don’t commit crimes.”
The 40-year-old and founder of Nothing But Cheeseburger (NBCB) plays inmate Chan who is behind bars due to involvement in gang activity in the new English drama Yes Captain!.
The 65-episode serial follows three fresh graduates — Kheng (played by Clement Yeo), Sani (Zhin Sadali) and Charlize (Tasha Low) — who join the Singapore Prison Service (SPS), each driven by different goals.
“There are days when I film for two weeks straight. Every day we had to be there at 5.30am to clock in and we only saw the moon when we got out,” Tommy told AsiaOne in a recent interview.
He would usually be done with filming by 6.30pm but getting through the layers of security took up to 40 minutes.
We asked how it was like filming in a prison.
“I cannot say it’s comfortable… We can’t even bring anything electronic in. What we had was our scripts. I read it at least 30 to 40 times,” he said.
“I wouldn’t say it’s enjoyable lah, but I’ll say, having been there for six months and even though I get to go home every day, don’t commit crimes.”
One thing he came out with was “newfound respect” for prison officers.
“To sign on and do this job, it’s really about the passion because nobody in their right mind would want to work in an environment where you’re stuck perpetually at this place,” he said.
“They are there for their entire shift. They don’t get out from that 100-metre zone where they are in… They go and eat outside, which is their canteen, and they go back to where they work. It’s a day-in day-out thing.”
‘I’m lucky I didn’t make the same mistake’
Tommy also spoke about Chan’s story, and how he struggles between “loyalty and family”.
While he couldn’t reveal spoilers, Tommy tried to tell us a vague picture.
“He knows what’s the right thing to do, but he feels that to do the right thing, he has to betray something or someone,” he said.
Chan also grapples with admitting his wrongdoings.
“He has things he wants to achieve, especially [in relation to] his family but he doesn’t want to go about doing it,” added Tommy, who relates to Chan’s struggles in placing his priorities.
“Chan is in an environment where he didn’t have a very good upbringing, he had no one to guide and mentor him. I feel that I, too, was rebellious at one point of time. I’m lucky that I didn’t make the same mistake, but I can definitely see myself going that way if I had made the wrong decision. That’s why I feel like I feel a lot for this character,” he explained.
Speaking to real-life convicts for the role
Tommy made his acting debut in the 2024 movie Money No Enough 3.
He starred in his first TV role in 2025’s Provocative and this year, he played one of the lead roles in the movie 3 Good Guys alongside Mayiduo and Simonboy.
Yes Captain! marks his second role in a TV series. To prepare for it, Tommy spoke to friends who had been incarcerated in the past.
He said most of them felt guarded and didn’t know who they could trust in prison.
They also experienced solitude: “Because at the end of the day, you are the one responsible for your punishment and the mistakes that you did, so there was no real avenue to release your guilt.”
He added that the environment affected them too.
“With a lot of guys, the mentality is that ‘I cannot look weak. I need to look like I’m very comfortable. I don’t want people to take advantage of me.’ That takes a very big mental toll on a lot of inmates,” he said.
While filming in the same environment for 12 hours a day was “very torturous”, Tommy said it still could not compare to being there for real.
“I cannot say that I can imagine sleeping in a small cell with three other people sweating it out,” he explained.
Hearing real-life accounts gave him a glimpse of what inmates would think about, which helped him understand Chan better.
Tommy also had the chance to meet a few inmates in the prison, and what surprised him was the camaraderie between some of them.
“Some of them actually become lifelong friends. If you have two similar-minded people who are looking to really change their life, having someone beside you helps you a lot. So I think that was one thing that I didn’t expect,” he explained.
“When we met some of the inmates and ex-inmates, their answer would always be, ‘Without him, I would have gone back in.’ So that was something that surprised me a lot.”
With the stigma surrounding former convicts, Tommy said it’s important to not judge a person based on “labels”.
To him, Yes Captain! does exactly that. “It’s about removing labels, looking at a person based on their actions, their stories and their past, and seeing whether they are doing something, a small minute action, to make their life better on the daily basis. And if they are, we should encourage them.”
Yes Captain! airs from Mondays to Thursdays at 8.30pm on Channel 5. It is also available on demand for free on Mewatch.
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