Tall Order

Melissa Karim is an entertainment all-rounder, turning her hand to everything from radio, screenwriting for TV and film and now as part of the panel of a popular prime-time magic show. What she lacks in stature she makes up for in tenacity and drive to get ahead of the pack. She talks with Bruce Emond.

The long and the short of it is that Melissa Karim is short. Tiny, even. Roll out all the ego-massaging PC terms you want – vertically challenged, height lacking, diminutive, a little person, Lilliputian – but the plain truth is that at a height of 148 cm, even the pair of high high heel boots that she is wearing on this Saturday afternoon cannot elevate her into the ranks of averagedom.

Although people can be cruel, judgmental or insensitive in their comments, they no longer faze the 31-year-old, who faced up to the fact she was not going to be of supermodel proportions a long time ago. “I know I’m short – live with it!” she exclaims in one of her frequent bursts of excited chatter.

In fact, she is the first to bring up what she calls her “physical challenge” – from a family of average to above-average height, she blames childhood asthma for stunting her growth. It’s being a short person that fuels her determination to succeed among the big boys and girls, she says.

“It’s not just in my work, but also in sports,” she says of her drive. “I have such a high energy level that I have to do cardio every day or I feel like a vegetable. It’s always been like that. So I wanted to be on the basketball team even though people said I couldn’t – hello!”

The other short part of her is her temper; she admits it is clear to everybody around her when she is not in good sorts.

Regardless of her height, or short and fiery personality traits, she also has the good looks that are essential in the entertainment business. She has stunning, almost translucent skin and, something common to all TV and movie stars, a commanding presence (she is also a product ambassador for L’Oreal Professionel salon products).

“I always think that God is fair,” she says. “I may be short, but I have good skin. And He gave me a big voice even though I’m short.”

From her start in radio as a gopher for the big names of the late Indra Safera and Indy Barends, she went into TV hosting, acting in several films (including Berbagi Suami, Gara-Gara Bola) and then joined Kalyana Shira Films, run by producer Nia Dinata, first as a scriptwriter for a TV series and later in marketing and production.

Most recently, she was the dialogue coach for the animated film Meraih Mimpi and hosts a current affairs talk show on Metro TV, where her husband, TV anchor Ralph Tampubolon, also works. She is also one of the panelists – the token female voice of reason among the jostling male egos – on the hit TV show The Master.

It’s a prominent position for a Chinese-Indonesian, and could be taken as showing that, with a whole group of young new artists – Agnes Monica the foremost among them – Indonesia is becoming one big harmonious we’re-all-the-same melting pot.

Melissa, who grew up in what she describes as a “typically Chinese family” of a father who was a used car salesman and a mother who runs a small home catering business, does not go for that naive if well-intentioned viewpoint.

“For me, we are different. When I’m with my close friends, most of who are Malay, they’ll say, ‘Hey you Chinese’, as a joke. I used to get mad when people would call me Amoy [a term for ethnic Chinese women], but the thing is I am Amoy. It took me some time to realize it ... I was made to feel inferior many times when I was younger. But now it really depends on ourselves, and how we react to it, whether it is sarcastic or from ignorance. Educated people won’t say things like that – they realize we’re different, so what?”

Even the most impressively detailed CV only tells part of the story; it leaves out the struggle involved and the identities of those who help us along the way. Melissa credits much of her success to the late radio DJ and TV emcee Indra Safera. He was a pioneer in many ways; he brought in the camp style of hosting TV infotainment shows that has become the norm, was proficient in English (also a must for the new breed of hosts) and hosted one of the first modern talk shows on Indonesian TV in which, unlike so many hosts, he was willing to let his guests talk.

Indra, who died suddenly in 2003 at age 35, also was known as someone who did not suffer fools gladly. So he must have recognized the nascent potential in the young, then overweight, college student, or perhaps a kindred spirit of someone with smarts and sass.

He took her under his wing at Hard Rock FM and smoothed out her rough edges as his assistant at his event-organizing company. He eventually put her in front of the TV camera, helping take her career to another level.

“Basically that was where I learned everything,” says Melissa, who slimmed down through yoga and dieting. “I learned about writing scripts, the formula for putting together a show. When TRANS TV started nine years ago, we got the job to do an early morning show, and he made me the head of the creative team and a presenter.”

She calls his death a “tragic loss to me”, and she speaks more slowly and softly when she talks about him, although she is not someone to choke up in public, and definitely not with a reporter she has known for all of 15 minutes. She tells a funny anecdote about him teaching her the importance of image.

“I was doing my running away from home thing at the time, and living in the Kebon Kacang low-cost apartments. He told me, ‘Don’t you dare tell clients you live there, it’s too embarrassing, just say you live in the Peanut Garden apartments if they ask.’ And most people would say, ‘Oh, there is one, I didn’t know.’”

In 2005, she moved on from radio, and met Nia, who offered her the job of scriptwriting the Arisan TV series, a spinoff from the successful movie about the travails of Jakarta urbanites.

Again, she learned on the job.

“I was puzzled in a way, because I have no background whatsoever in writing. I mean, I love writing, but my only experience was writing emcee scripts for Indra or sometimes articles. I said, ‘Well, if you’re willing to teach me from minus 10, and you have the time and the patience, I’m willing to learn, because I always want to learn something new’.”

She read up on the art of scriptwriting and, with the help of Nia, whom she calls her second mentor, she was able to pull it off.

“I’ve been so lucky that I’ve had the best mentors. Indra was the person that everybody wanted to learn from. And then Nia. I’m very blessed.”

She learned well; she penned arguably the two most powerful stories in the four-segment Perempuan Punya Cerita (Women Have Stories) in 2007. One told of a small-town dangdut singer who becomes involved in the murky world of human trafficking and prostitution, the other of an HIV-positive housewife who must soldier through discrimination to care for her daughter.

“For my films I do research and stuff like that, and that’s something I know I could never do,” she says of sex workers. “I salute them as having the courage that I don’t. It’s not that I approve, but when you talk to them, you find out that they’re not doing it for themselves – they’re doing it for their kids, their parents, always for others.”

It’s that motivation to know more, the person who gives her all in doing what she believes in, or 150 percent as she says.

“I always want to learn something that is my passion. I’m very high energy, and I’m very committed. I don’t sleep a lot, so I read, do a lot of research, I’m basically a workaholic.”

The Master, with its viewer-friendly mix of magic and personalities, is a hit for now. But Melissa is realistic about the fickle business of TV. She was on Silat Lidah (Razor Tongue), a panel discussion of women hosts similar to the US TV show The View that was suddenly canceled despite a positive response.

“I’m used to it after being in the business for 10 years. On TV, there isn’t much security. It depends on the ratings, whether the people like you.”

She married Ralph, who is 30 cm taller than her, after a four-year relationship because, she says, they were ready for the commitment.

“He was the only survivor,” she jokes. “We’re mature enough to realize marriage is a partnership, it takes a lot of work to make it work ... If it was hard for my friends to imagine me getting married, even Ralph. When we fight, he’ll say that I’m like a wild horse ... It’s hard work.”

For the future, she wants to have her own show that will speak to the hopes and dreams of Indonesians today, and not just be a rehashing of a foreign program. Asked about what she would do if she could change one thing about herself, it would be, naturally, to reach new heights of a model-tall 175 cm – “so I could just walk and not talk”.

She still thinks of Indra Safera, the man who set her on her way to where she is today. Practical, focused and to the point on most matters, she is short and sweet when asked about her thoughts on her mentor. “Wherever he is, I just hope he’s having a blast,” she says.

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