Celina Jade returned home to Hong Kong to shoot The Season — an English-language revenge thriller she filmed while pregnant, navigated intimacy direction for the first time, and rediscovered childhood places like Discovery Bay and the Star Ferry.
Celina Jade did not just return to Hong Kong for The Season; she returned to a city that still feels, in her words, like home. Speaking to Resonate Voices, Jade shared how the project became a rare convergence for her: an English-language production after years of working mainly in the mainland, a Hong Kong story shot in Hong Kong, and a shoot she carried through while pregnant.
“For starters, you know, I’d been working all across the mainland since I moved here, and I hadn’t done an English production in a very, very long time,” she said. “I also hadn’t shot in Hong Kong in a very long time. So when I first got the script and found out that this was a Hong Kong production, a Hong Kong story, and that it was being shot in Hong Kong, I was super excited.”
For Jade, that excitement was about more than geography. After years of working mostly in Mandarin and building a career in the mainland, The Season offered a return to the place where she grew up and a chance to step back into English-language work at a point in life when family had already changed her priorities. The role felt personal before shooting even began, and it only became more so once production got underway.
A production shaped by pregnancy
Jade’s account of filming while pregnant is striking not because she dramatizes it, but because she doesn’t. She says she told production early, fully expecting that they might decide to move on without her.
“Yeah, I was pregnant through the entire shooting,” she said. “I don’t know if you were aware, but… completely understand if you guys don’t want to use me.” Instead, the team adapted around her, shifting wardrobe fittings and moving more revealing scenes as early as possible.
That accommodation allowed the production to stay practical while also keeping Jade comfortable. “We kind of got all the intimate scenes or the bathing suit scenes as much as we could,” she explained.
“We got them out of the way as early as possible before I started showing.” She even joked that the baby deserved credit: “I always say it needs a credit for the youngest actor in the world… in my belly.”
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The physical side of the experience still came through in her stories. A restaurant scene, in particular, turned unexpectedly difficult when octopus was served after a long day of filming. “It really affected my appetite,” she said. “I was laughing about it because there were scenes where we were shooting at a restaurant and they served octopus. Octopus, you know, when it comes out, is great, but after 11 hours of shooting, it was very hard not to want to throw up.”
Intimacy with boundaries
If the pregnancy added one layer of complexity, the intimate scenes added another. Jade said The Season was the first time she had worked with an intimacy coordinator, and she found the process both unusual and reassuring. “For me, I’d never done anything with an intimacy coordinator, which I guess is popular in Hollywood,” she said. “So I found that interesting.” The system itself was simple but effective: actors marked what was okay and what wasn’t using green and red.
Her memory of that process is funny because it is so human. During the conversation around boundaries, she said, the awkwardness broke into laughter.
One of the co-stars was chatting politely, asking whether she had kids and whether she wanted more, before she replied with the detail that made the whole exchange almost comic: “Well, you know, now I’m pregnant.” She laughed as she remembered telling him, “Don’t worry, it’s not going to fall out, you know.
That awkwardness, she said, never felt unsafe. If anything, it helped break the ice. “It was just awkward, but I guess that broke the ice,” she said. And that was the larger point she kept returning to: the coordinator’s role mattered because it protected everyone involved. “The intimacy coordinator was so great in terms of protecting everyone, which I think is a good thing,” she said.
Coming home to Hong Kong
What gives Jade’s account its emotional weight is how closely the production was tied to place. She was born and raised in Hong Kong, and even after moving to Beijing, she still describes the city as home. “I’m originally from Hong Kong. I grew up there. I was born in Hong Kong. I grew up there, and now I’m in Beijing,” she said. That sense of returning to familiar ground shaped the way she talked about the shoot from start to finish.
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Some of the most meaningful moments came from filming in places that already lived in her memory. She grew up in Discovery Bay and Lantau, and she brought her daughter to the set so she could enjoy the downtime too.
“I brought my daughter with me, so while we were shooting, she was up at the jacuzzi having fun and swimming,” she said. The Star Ferry was another emotional anchor. “To have the Star Ferry to yourself and just seeing that beautiful skyline that I took for granted for so many years as a child,” she said, “it’s like home. It really is home for me.”
That homecoming came with the practical frustrations of a packed city. Hong Kong’s small streets make production more compressed than in larger cities, and Jade noted that it is often impossible for every actor to have a trailer. “You don’t have the space for every actor to have a trailer, for example. It’s just impossible,” she said. But the tight quarters also created a sense of closeness among the cast and crew. “Being in one room together was really nice,” she said. “We all have photos of each other sleeping.”
Even the more glamorous locations carried their own hidden strain. Shooting on a yacht looked luxurious from the outside, but once sound requirements forced the engine off, there was no air-conditioning. “There was no ventilation or aircon, and when you’re shooting inside, you’re literally drenched in sweat,” she said. It was, in its own way, a perfect metaphor for the production: elegant on screen, exhausting in real life.
A story of status and survival
Jade described The Season as a revenge thriller set in Hong Kong’s high society, built around power, status, and hidden agendas. Her character, Carrie, is one of the show’s most emotionally layered figures: a self-made woman trying to carve out a place in a world that was never designed to welcome her.
“It’s a story about status, power, and hidden agendas,” she said. “So the story is about her as a self-made woman surviving in Hong Kong’s high society, wanting to cement her place, but realizing… that she’ll never quite fit in.”
That tension fits neatly with Jade’s own reflections on the project. The Season gave her a chance to return to Hong Kong, but it also asked her to navigate a set of contradictions: public glamour and private discomfort, home and distance, professionalism and pregnancy.
She came away with what sounds like genuine affection for the whole experience. “I have all praises for the entire shoot, for the people,” she said. “Very grateful.”
For Jade, that gratitude extends into a broader way of moving through her career. “I try not to do really specific goals,” she said. “I kind of just go with whatever door opens for me. And I always find that I’m pleasantly surprised.” In The Season, that openness led her back to Hong Kong, into a demanding role, and through a production that became as personal as it was professional.