SINGAPORE – A failed rocker sporting smoky eyeliner and clad in leather jackets, with strained familial ties to boot.

Peng Lai is a hot mess of a character and that was exactly what drew Chinese actress Yao Chen, 43, to the drama series Rock It Mom, which is available on iQiyi International.

She plays the protagonist, who returns home in middle age after the death of her ex-husband, and attempts to revive her music career and reconnect with her estranged teenage daughter Bai Tian.

Here are five things Yao told The Straits Times about the series over e-mail.

1. Selfish, rebellious leading woman

Yao was drawn to the script because of the unique characters.  

“I’ve never seen a female lead with such a horrible background. I thought about her a lot after reading the script, so I had to admit I was drawn to her. She’s so off the beaten path, so far from an ideal mother,” she says.

In the series, Peng Lai walks out on her young daughter after an ugly divorce and disappears to the United States for 12 years.

Yao says: “I think many people want to be selfish, but they don’t dare to do so. She does. She’s very honest, she doesn’t define herself or structure her life in some specific way. She’s very free and that freedom, in turn, gives her a lot of pain.”

2. Hanging with rock musicians

To prepare for her role as a rocker, Yao looked at footage of artistes such as Chinese rock singers Wei Hua and Luo Qi, as well as American rock icons Joan Jett and Patti Smith. She practised playing the guitar with young underground musicians, and hung out with Chinese singer Xu Fei as well as Chinese indie rock band Hedgehog’s drummer Shi Lu.

“I asked Shi Lu: ‘What do you think of rock? What is rock music? How can I play a rocker convincingly?’ Her answer was simple. She said: ‘Rock is expressing whatever you want to.’

“It made me realise that Peng Lai doesn’t have to mimic anyone. She has her own life so she has her own way of expression.”

3. Refraining from exercise

With flashbacks scenes in the series set in the early 2000s, when Peng Lai was a promising young rocker on the rise, Yao says she and the production team put in effort to portray the state of the character at different stages of life. The costuming included leopard prints for the younger Peng Lai and slouchy jackets for her older self.

Yao says: “I imagine her in middle age as someone with a sort of depressed vibe to her. I even consciously avoided working out so that the muscles in my face and body would droop, so that Peng Lai would look less vivacious. 

“As for the make-up, we experimented with a bit of a smoky eye. I imagine that to be something the character did every day when she woke up for 20 years. The world may change, but not her eyeliner. ”

4. Co-star was too respectful

To play out the mother-daughter conflict in the series, Yao had to work to change co-star Zhuang Dafei’s attitude towards her. Zhuang plays her daughter, Bai Tian, in the series.

She says: “Zhuang is a young actress and, of course, she was very respectful to senior actors when she joined the production. But Peng Lai and Ba Tian are very combative and hostile to each other.

“What I needed to do was to tear down the deference and respect she showed me. The fastest way to do that was by getting close to her so she relaxed around me.” 

5. A mother’s tears

While Yao thoroughly enjoyed playing Peng Lai, she could not condone what she did – being absent from her child’s life for so many years. 

The actress is married to cinematographer Cao Yu and has a son and a daughter.

She recalls: “We filmed a scene of Peng Lai imagining herself seeing her daughter again. That day, the apartment set’s lighting was so dreamy. A young Bai Tian in pigtails was playing with her back to me. The moment I saw that, I just bawled.

“I realised I could never be someone like Peng Lai. Knowing how much pain it would cost my child, I could never make that choice even if you killed me.”

Rock It Mom is available on iQiyi International.