Singaporean actress Dawn Yeoh does not look a day over 30.

But in the new local movie King Of Hawkers, the 37-year-old bachelorette plays the mother of a 20-year-old, portrayed by Mediacorp starlet Gini Chang, 29.

Yeoh tells The Straits Times at the film’s press conference at Sands Expo & Convention Centre on Feb 20: “Yes, since the casting, this has been a bit of a controversial decision and something everyone comments on.”

King Of Hawkers, which opens in Singapore cinemas on Feb 22, stars the actress in the leading role as a divorcee who returns to Singapore with her daughter after years living in Hong Kong. She helps to revive her estranged mother’s (Liu Lingling) bak chor mee stall.

This is Yeoh’s first lead role on the big screen. The Chinese-language drama is directed by local film-maker Kelvin Sng (Taxi! Taxi!, 2013; The Fortune Handbook, 2017).

She says: “I’m definitely not his first choice. I think perhaps his ideal was someone who is already a mother. But technically, I am the age of someone who can be a mother. I was eager to play a mum since that is something I’ve never done before.”

But Sng, 49, is not worried about his casting being seen as unbelievable or distracting.

“In this era of TikTok, where you see mothers do dance challenges with their daughters, being a mum doesn’t mean being an ‘auntie’. We didn’t cast the characters based on the actresses’ real ages and we made it clear that Dawn plays a very young mum. One of our actors, Ryan Lian, has a line of dialogue where he comments on how they look like sisters,” he explains.