This Singapore showrunner was told she'd never be a good director. Now she's behind award-winning dramas

On a Thursday morning, Ms Jean Yeo welcomed me into her office dressed in a bright orange top – vibrant and impossible to ignore. Orange, like the colour of ochre (pronounced oh-ker) that is the name of her production company, Ochre Pictures.Pointing me to a seat, the 56-year-old showbiz veteran carried herself with something more than confidence: the complete clarity of someone who knows exactly who she is and what she wants. A male industry peer once dismissed Ms Yeo as someone who could only make romantic comedies or "women's stories"."So now, I do hostage thrillers, I do everything," she said with an unrepentant laugh. "I just want to shut them up."Her unique brand of driven defiance has defined her nearly four decades in the industry: a refusal to remain confined by expectations, even when doing so came at considerable cost.

Today, Ms Yeo is one of Singapore's most established showrunners and the founder of Ochre Pictures, which she started in 2000, the year she turned 30.Her body of work includes The Last Madame – which won Best Asian Drama at the Busan International Film Festival's Asia Contents Awards in 2020 – as well as Third Rail, Lion Mums and Sisters of the Night, a prequel to Last Madame. Long before streaming platforms and prestige Asian dramas became commonplace, Ms Yeo had already made her mark with The Leap Years. The 2008 romantic drama, which she wrote and directed, still holds the record as Singapore's highest-grossing domestically produced English-language film.However, she is less interested in celebrating these successes than in the stories she has yet to tell."I'm a bit crazy," she admitted good-naturedly. "I used to get pissed off when people said I was a workaholic, but I've since realised they're right."GROWING UP WITH CREATIVE PLAYEven as a child, Ms Yeo gravitated towards writing and performance, from storytelling competitions in kindergarten to drama clubs and essay competitions in primary and secondary school.One of her most vivid memories was staging a gongfu version of Romeo and Juliet for a performance during a secondary school assembly, where she enthusiastically directed her classmates through dramatic sword-fighting scenes.Later, at university, she took it upon herself to secure a journalism internship. Such opportunities were still relatively uncommon in early 1990s Singapore, but she managed to get a six-month unpaid stint at The Business Times.