IN the midst of the typical backstage detritus of any ostentatious show – boxes of mineral water bottles (mostly empty and discarded), colourful gaudy stage props that glint in the bright fluorescent lights overhead, rolls of tape, clothes piled carelessly on chairs – sits Jaclyn Victor calmly. The scene is chaotic with anxious stagehands, annoyed artistes and weary dancers milling around the narrow corridor behind the stage. But Jac, as she’s fondly known, remains unperturbed.
“Interesting, isn’t it?” Jac comments drolly. Her immaculately constructed outfit of striking red strapless gown, glittering earrings, immaculate make-up seem incongruously matched with her pair of worn slippers (I was in a rush, she protests laughing). “It’s long enough to cover my feet,” she adds placatingly while smoothing her gown down.
She’s more concerned about memorising her lyrics. “It’s the hardest thing for me,” she confesses. It’s a Tamil song – a complicated one at that – but she’s willing to give her best shot anyway. Brows furrowed, she tucks her headphones back into her ears, and resumes practising, her voice ringing through the corridor. It’s a long wait for her turn on stage, but she doesn’t complain.
Suddenly the mise-en-scene makes perfect sense: surface glamour underpinned by more than a hint of down-to-earth realness is very much Jac’s MO (modus operandi), and has been since she emerged a decade and a half ago, winning the first season of Malaysian Idol while it was still an untested reality-singing curiosity on this side of the ocean. The diminutive singer with a big voice bulldozed her way into the public’s consciousness on Oct 9, 2004 with an unforgettable finale performance that sealed her fate as a singing force to be reckoned with.
Jac represented the aspirations of every small-town girl with gilded showbiz dreams. After all, the ballsy girl from Kepong made it good – keeping to the uncanny prophecy made by 8TV chief executive officer Ahmad Izham Omar who, when promoting the reality singing competition, mused: “Who knows, somebody in Bukit Kepong could be the first Malaysian Idol.” Her mother read his words in the newspapers the next day and insisted she audition for the competition, Jac tells me, chuckling.
She punctuates her sentences with either a smile or a raucous laugh, and when I suggest an interview, she’s keen to make it clear that nothing is off limits. “What do you want to know?” she says, beaming. After all, we’re friends. “It’d be a lot easier to talk to you,” she muses, shrugging her shoulders.
We became acquainted about a year ago during a trip to the Royal Belum rainforest. An unlikely setting for a journalist and a singer to meet up – much less be friends – but we soon got on like a house on fire over shared off-the-cuff flippancies, laughter and exuberant chatter. That’s Jac for you. She’s the girl-next-door-turned-megastar you want to hang out with, have a laugh with, possibly talk about boys and share make-up tips with.
HARD TIMES
This is the point she emphasises throughout the interview later: she has little interest in fame or being a celebrity. She never dreamt of being a star and she doesn’t go out seeking the limelight. She’s just not that kind of girl. “Literally, my career is happenstance,” she insists, spreading her arms and with what sounds like astonishment in her voice. “I work very hard, but I always wonder how in the world I got there,” she exclaims, referring to her spot in the finals. “It was a surreal experience,” adds Jac softly.
One gets the impression that her sense of self is hard won and highly prized. “I had to grow a thick skin from a young age,” she agrees, referring to a childhood defined by family breakdown and financial hardship. Jac’s story is a unique take on the Malaysian dream. Born Jaclyn Joshua Thanaraj Victor almost 41 years ago in Kuala Lumpur, she was the eldest of three boys and a girl, and a self-confessed “black sheep” daughter who preferred sports and music to studying, much to her mother’s dismay.
Money was tight in the household, and she remembers moving frequently before finally laying down roots in Kepong. The family of six survived on a modest income provided by her odd-job labourer father. “We came from very humble beginnings,” she reveals candidly, adding: “There were those days when my father would bring back a big bag of bread crusts from the bakery for us to eat.”
Her eyes widen with recollection as she describes “…the large chunks of bread in a bag!” with barely-concealed glee. She chuckles at my reaction, reassuring me that it didn’t make a bad meal. “We made do with what we had,” she remarks, with a shrug.
There were also warm recollections of the times her father would come home with rare treats whenever he earned extra money. She blithely checks out each item on her fingers, reeling out: “Soya bean, Cornetto ice cream, curry laksa and chee cheong fun!” The early years were hardscrabble and things took a turn for the worse when her father was involved in a tragic accident. Jac was around 10 at that time.
He’d followed his best friend on a trip to Singapore and the car they were travelling in, crashed on their way back. “My mother had a premonition of sorts and begged him not to go,” she recounts, shaking her head. “He insisted anyway… and we never saw him alive again.”
What do you remember most about your father? I ask. “That he loved me very much,” she replies unhesitatingly. One of her fondest memories is one of him carrying her out of the room and allowing her to nap with him in the hall because he didn’t want her to be uncomfortable in the stifling bedroom during the afternoon heat. “I was probably around four to five years old then,” recalls Jac wistfully, saying: “We’d cuddle up in the hall where I’d pretend to sleep while he watched television!”
The worst part of his death, she adds with glistening eyes, was seeing her mother suffer. “I watched her fall apart at the news of my father’s death,” she says heavily, adding softly: “I had that kind of white noise panic in my head but couldn’t grasp the enormity of my father having died. Barely a day goes by when I don’t think of him. There’d be so much to tell him, impossibly much."
She goes quiet for a while, murmuring: “I’ve never talked about this for a long time.” Her voice trails off, and she sighs, before continuing thoughtfully: “Those were terrible times. I prayed to God that if He should decide to take any one of us, He must take us all at once. I didn’t want my mother to go through that terrible pain again.”
Shares Jac: “In an instant we were all alone, and my mother was suddenly thrusted with the role of breadwinner.” The young housewife took on several jobs to keep the family afloat. She worked in factories during the day and washed dishes at a Chinese restaurant at night. Women are amazing creatures, muses Jac. “When push comes to shove, they’re willing to do just about anything to ensure that their children are well taken care of.”
Just as you’re doing for your own children, I offer – referring to her two children, Jonah, 4 and Molly, 2. She nods, smiling. “I learnt a lot about resilience and hard work from my mother.” A pause and she adds fervently: “And yes, I’d do anything for my kids!”
Times were hard, but no more difficult than when her father was alive. "I know a lot of people go, 'Aww,' but it wasn’t really that situation," she explains of their poverty. "I think if you don't grow up with it, it's hard to miss something you never had."
TUMULTUOUS RELATIONSHIP
Something she never had at the beginning was a close relationship with her mother Maggie during her formative years. She was hard on me, admits Jac freely. “I couldn’t understand then why I never could have the same amount of freedom as my brothers did.” She wasn’t a bad kid, but she wasn’t academically inclined either, reflects Jac. “I preferred playing hockey and hanging out with my friends to hitting the books!”
“I hated her at one point,” continues Jac sheepishly. “I chafed under her strictness and desperately wanted to escape.” She readily admits that she was quite a handful when she was growing up, remarking: “I was rebellious!” Only because she couldn’t really understand the tough love her mother was showing her.
Her mother, she maintains, is an amazing woman, but there were plenty of times Jac didn’t grasp her reasoning. It wasn’t clear to her then why her mother would lead her to independence only to keep her on what felt like a short leash. “When I was growing up, I didn’t understand that to her I was everything,” she explains, her voice catching.
It took few years for the rift to heal. “I realised how incredibly difficult it must’ve been to raise me,” she recalls softly, adding: “I remember being in a church camp and having that awareness wash through me. I felt so guilty for resenting my mother. I wept and wept.”
She apologised to her mother profusely, but admits it took a while for their relationship to build. As she grew into adulthood, their relationship improved dramatically. But motherhood, says Jac, made her appreciate her mother more.
“When my first child was born, a sudden knowledge came to me. I became aware of what my mother felt as a parent,” continues Jac. It settled over her, an instant clarity of sorts. “Oh,” She remembered thinking shortly after Jonah’s birth as she held her son and looked into that tiny perfect face. “Now I get it. This is what it means to be someone’s mother.”
ROAD TO STARDOM
Singing was her ticket out of poverty, she decided. She and her schoolmates formed a band, and soon after that, they scored gigs. That marked the beginning of her singing career; a move, she says that helped pay the bills and support her family. At 18, she began singing in clubs and hotel lounges. It was a steep learning curve, she recalls.
“I was painfully shy and I really didn’t know how to take control of the stage. I only knew that I loved singing!” Nothing like rowdy patrons to keep you on your toes, she quips, chuckling. But that’s how she learnt. “Everything I know about performing, I learnt during this period,” she confides.
In 2004, the open call to audition for Malaysian Idol came in. She wasn’t really interested, she recalls, but her family was adamant that she tried. Along with ten thousand others, Jac auditioned for Malaysian Idol. The judges Roslan Aziz, Fauziah Latiff and Paul Moss put her through to the next round. Upon landing the final 33rd spot, she performed Superwoman live, becoming the seventh person to reach the top 12. And the rest, they say, is history.
Jac became one of the show’s few discoveries with staying power. But perhaps more remarkably, she has remained a major player without checking the usual pop-star boxes.
She isn’t a social media chess master or an international style icon. She’s not known for dancing, splashy tabloid drama or sparring with others. She’s simply known for her tremendous voice along with the vulnerability and relatability of her performance. Singers like her who have made music for more than a decade are consistent and beloved, defying a music industry that routinely over values the new and young.
It’s been exactly 15 years since Idol, and the vocal powerhouse shows no signs of slowing down. “I learnt early in life that I had to work hard to get what I want,” she muses. And that, she says, is exactly what she’ll continue to do for as long as she can. For her, the drive to achieve is rooted entirely in the prayers she voiced while growing up. “It’s not about money or fame,” she insists, concluding with a smile: “It’s about being able to provide a decent living for my family. My happiness comes from seeing them live without struggling while doing what I love to do… which is singing.”
Her words ring true, as I recall her finally getting called to perform after an hour of waiting patiently backstage. Holding on to her red gown, she turns to me, dimples flashing: “Wish me luck, babe!” She doesn’t really need luck. Jaclyn Victor simply does what she loves doing best – singing – with a lot of heart thrown in, while the rest of us are content to watch on the sidelines cheering her on.