- Michelle Yeoh appeared on Friday's episode of "The Graham Norton Show."
- Yeoh, 60, recalled being a teenager when her mother chaperoned her dates.
Michelle Yeoh said her mother once got unexpectedly close to her date.
Yeoh, 60, recalled the moment during Friday's episode of "The Graham Norton Show" while discussing her relationship with her mother.
"And what age were you when she insisted on coming on a date with you?" Norton asked, prompting the "Everything Everywhere All At Once" actress to share the story.
"Now, you have to remember moms are very protective, right, for all the right reasons," Yeoh said. "She always went on a date. Always – until I went to England to study. I don't know why she even let me go to England."
Yeoh said her mother often chaperoned her dates as a teenager, which sometimes involved Yeoh sitting between her mother and her date. When she was 17, Yeoh said there was an accidental mix-up.
"One time I was sitting like this," Yeoh said, crossing her arms. "And I suddenly realized, 'Why are there two hands on my leg?"
"It was his hand on my mom's hand," Yeoh added.
In the same interview, Yeoh said her mother encouraged her to perform on stage more and, at one point, secretly signed her up for the Miss Malaysia competition.
"I did it to shut her up. Because she wouldn't stop about it, so we had a deal. If I do this, you will never do something like this again," Yeoh said.
Norton noted that Yeoh won the competition that year.
In January, Yeoh made headlines after winning a Golden Globe for best actress in a motion picture, musical, or comedy.
"It was a dream come true until I got here," Yeoh said. "Because look at this face. I came here and was told, 'you're a minority, and I'm like, 'No, that's not possible.' And then someone said to me, 'You speak English. I mean, forget about them not knowing Korea, Japan, Malaysia, Asia, India. And I said, yeah, the flight here was about 13 hours long. So I learned as time went by."
That same month, Yeoh became the first Asian best actress Oscar nominee for her work in "Everything Everywhere All At Once."