Not everybody is excited to jump into reality TV.
Cherie Chan and her fiancé, Jessey Lee, were hesitant to jump into Netflix’s new series “Bling Empire,” but they’re glad they joined.
“I was thinking maybe I shouldn’t do this show, I need my family’s permission first because a lot of Asians are very private about our lives,” Chan told Page Six of her initial reaction when she was asked to join the cast. “We don’t expose anything and let alone ever be considered to be on a reality show. So for us, it’s a big deal. And for him, it was very hard to convince him.”
“Bling Empire” follows a group of wealthy Asian and Asian-American friends based in California. Christine Chiu, Kane Lim, Kelly Mi Li and Kevin Kreider also filmed for the series in Beverly Hills.
Lee agreed, saying: “We were really skeptical as far as from my side.”
But Chan saw the opportunity as a way to share her cultural values.
Luckily for Lee and Chan, the show wrapped before the coronavirus pandemic hit.
![Cherie Chan](https://pagesix.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/3/2021/01/Cherie-Chan.jpg?quality=90&strip=all)
“During the filming and when we wrapped, we didn’t know what COVID was,” Chan said, noting that she first heard about the virus in late January and advised Lee not to fly to Asia for a business trip as he had planned.
She explained, “I told him, you better cancel your trip to Asia. You’re not going there. If you go there, you’re going to be stuck there. And then he was like, ‘But I gotta go work’ because he has another business there. And I was like, ‘No, you can’t!’ And I’m not — I’m never want to tell him, like, ‘Cancel, don’t go or go.’ So he was like, ‘Oh, she’s telling me to cancel. It must be serious.'”
“Bling Empire” is now available for streaming on Netflix.