PUBLISHED ONOctober 22, 2026 1:30 PMBYYeo Shu HuiPaige Chua found her competitive streak for sports again after being introduced to pickleball by her netballer friend in 2025.
The 45-year-old local actress told AsiaOne in an interview recently: "We are all retired from netball, so we wouldn't play competitive netball anymore. Someone started playing pickleball and introduced the sport to the rest of us.
"We started playing once a month last year and slowly some of us, including myself, began to get competitive and we started going for training, hiring a coach and went for social play.
"I am semi-professional already; except I haven't been to any competitions yet."
She told us that she plays the sport as frequently as four times a week and at least once a week if she is on a tight work schedule.
Paige is also looking to play in some competitions, but due to her busy schedule, the plan is currently on hold.
"The motivation to compete and hopefully win some medals is very alluring," she laughed.
She subsequently introduced pickleball to her celebrity friends, including actor Jeremy Chan, whom she worked with in their upcoming drama Sooner or Later which wrapped filming recently.
"I passed the pickleball virus to him. At first, he thought the sport was very juvenile, but now he is totally addicted to it," Paige shared.
Together, they formed a celebrity pickleball team named Lights, Action, Dink, with Paige as the founder and 45-year-old Jeremy as the president. They even have their own team T-shirts.
Members include Guo Liang, Jesseca Liu, Bryan Wong and Sheila Sim, as well as directors, producers and camera crew from Mediacorp.
According to the Play! Pickle Singapore website, a dink is a shot in pickleball which involves the player hitting the ball softly into their opponent's non-volley zone.
"We actually asked ChatGPT to come up with fun names for our team, and we chose this name among all the others because it is the most interesting and relatable one," Paige explained.
She added that their team continues to welcome more members to play together: "It's really very fun, I'm jio-ing (Hokkien for inviting) everybody who is interested, I can teach them. Once they are familiar with it, we can all play together."
Paige's passion for pickleball extends beyond mastering the skills; she would also look for shoes, outfits and suitable paddles to ensure she is able to perform her best during each training and game.
She revealed she has spent at least a four-figure sum in total on pickleball gear and merchandise, adding: "I have 11 paddles... I try not to [buy anymore], but you never know, I always say this is the last paddle but when a new paddle with a new colour is released three months later, it's a bit hard to resist sometimes."
She would also purchase pickleball-themed trinkets, including keychains, as gifts to friends.
Paige was chatting with AsiaOne while promoting her new local drama Keep It Down, where she plays urologist Tang Yijun.
In preparation for the role, she started reading about this profession six months beforehand.
"Prior to playing Yijun, I had very little idea of what a urologist does... The challenging part for me was to memorise the jargon and medical terminology and I had chunks of it," she recounted.
Keep It Down tells the story of Yijun who struggles with physical intimacy after a traumatic encounter in the past with serial exhibitionist Ong Khe Hui (Bryan).
She works closely with psychotherapist Zac Lee (Romeo Tan) and gynaecologist Lam Weikang (Desmond Tan), trading insights on interdisciplinary cases. After navigating treatment and surgery with Weikang who is diagnosed with testicular cancer, Yijun finds her friendship with him gradually developing into something more.
By a cruel twist of fate, Khe Hui becomes Yijun's patient after he is diagnosed with life-threatening penile cancer. As she suppresses her trauma to operate and provide him with professional care, Khe Hui realises that Yijun is one of his former victims and launches a medical malpractice lawsuit against her.
Paige also said that every scene she shared with Bryan is memorable for her.
She said: "In person, I love Bryan so much [as a friend and colleague]. But in the show, I have to treat him as my archenemy, as someone I really hate, but I have to be professional towards him because he is my client and patient.
"Whenever I saw Bryan [on the set], I had to control my laughter and put aside my personal feelings towards him and focus on how I felt towards his character in the show.
"When he brought his villain energy to the set and me trying to curb my affection for him, that's always very memorable."
Playing a traumatised character also required Paige to portray a lot of suppression on screen, which she pulled from her feelings in daily life.
She recounted: "I had to draw from so many places, including the fact that I am suppressing my exhaustion. I really want to play pickleball, but I can't; I want to have dinner with my family but our schedule clashed. I drew from these and turned it into a kind of suppressed emotion and used them for the scenes...
"It can be exhausting, but as actors, we do have to tap on such things, it's all part of our job. But after that, we are all zen."
Keep It Down is now available on demand for free on Mewatch and shown on Channel 8 on weekdays at 9pm.
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