Gladys Bay<\/a>.<\/p>\n“It was my first notable venture into acting, as they say, you’re transitioning or crossing over to another playing field. It is something that was adventurous, bold, something that takes a lot of courage,” he says.<\/p>\n
“You never know how it’s gonna go, so to be even seen and nominated for this category, I’m truly happy about that already.”<\/p>\n
He was also “not at all” disappointed when the winner was announced.<\/p>\n
“I guess all I felt was, yeah, this is a reminder to myself that at least you’re being recognised,” recalls Zeliang.<\/p>\n
To him, getting nominated is enough proof that he’s\u00a0putting himself out there and showing people that he’s capable of doing more than what I started with, which is radio.<\/p>\n
“After all, this is not my first rodeo, you win some, you lose some. You know, go to bed, wake up the next morning, get back to the hustle, life goes on.”<\/p>\n
Still, Zeliang, who humbly denies that he was a hot-favourite, notes that, if he had won the award, it would have been a bonus to tell people that: “Hey, this guy is more than just a radio DJ.”<\/p>\n
For now, the jock believes he just has to wait for the right timing, the right project, and to make sure he has the right skills when the time comes.<\/p>\n
“So before that, I will continue to work in the right direction,” he avers.<\/p>\n
When asked for his thoughts on losing to Gladys, who is undeniably more junior than him, the jock remained magnanimous.<\/p>\n
“Hey, good on her. I think it is absolutely wonderful that we have more juniors coming in. It means we are creating an environment for newcomers, for people who are younger, to learn to grow, to shine in the same industry,” he tells us.<\/p>\n
“Imagine we don’t have anybody new or more juniors coming in, the industry is gonna die, right?”<\/p>\n
While Zeliang didn\u2019t stay long after the awards, he did linger briefly to chat with a few people and congratulate some of his showbiz pals he met backstage.<\/p>\n
He then went to grab some takeout food before heading home.<\/p>\n
“Finally got some nice fried food, chicken nuggets, and chicken wings, [I was] very happy,” he recounts.<\/p>\n
“Went home, got a nice cold drink with my snacks, sat down in front of the TV and finally caught one or two episodes of the show I’ve been wanting to watch for the longest time.”<\/p>\n
Before you ask, no, it was not the highly-raved Chinese drama,\u00a0Pursuit Of Jade, but\u00a0American satirical superhero television series, The Boys.<\/p>\n
Despite his losses, Zeliang did get a massive shout-out before the ceremony when Love 972 DJ Dennis Chew<\/a>\u00a0openly named him as “the only younger DJ [he] has high hopes for” in a Wah! Banana’s podcast.<\/p>\n“Absolutely a confidence boost, and I will work in hopefully the right direction to not let him down, and to make him, perhaps one day, say: ‘Hey, see, I told you so. I told you about this guy’,” he chirps.<\/p>\n
The jock also gushes over how great it feels to be recognised by someone who is highly respected in the industry and someone he looks up to.<\/p>\n
“I mean, he’s one of the very first radio DJs who’s able to do both TV and radio, and he’s somebody that I wanna learn everything from and sort of become,” he explains.<\/p>\n
“Well, of course, we try to have our own unique personalities, our ways of acting or hosting, but skills set-wise, an idol for sure. So, thrilled to be mentioned by him.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"No part of this story can be reproduced without permission from 8days.sg. For some, the more awards you…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":631778,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[64,63,134,136,261951,305973],"class_list":{"0":"post-631777","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-music","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-entertainment","11":"tag-music","12":"tag-star-awards-2026","13":"tag-zhu-zeliang"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/631777","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=631777"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/631777\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/631778"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=631777"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=631777"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=631777"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}