Senior Stars in Nickelodeon Show, Graces This Week's 'TV Guide'

On this cable-TV-deprived campus, chances are that you have not seen senior Irene S. Ng '97 on her hit Nickelodeon show "The Mystery Files of Shelby Woo." But this week, as you're passing through the Square, you might just get a glimpse of her on the cover of TV Guide.

Ng, a 23-year-old Currier-House resident, is the star of the show, which premiered with the highest ratings ever for a non-animated show on the youngster-oriented channel.

In addition to its popularity with viewers, "The Mystery Files", according to Ng, has been showered with attention. She says that "from the beginning, the show has gotten an unprecedented amount of press."

Ng, who played one of the leading roles of The Joy Luck Club, said that last year, TV Guide picked up on a trend in television: shows that featured strong girls as their main characters. Other magazines, such as Time, ran stories about the trend, too, and now TV Guide wants to follow up on its discovery with a cover story titled "Nickelodeon's Leading Ladies."

Nickelodeon has, in large part, fueled this trend with shows such as "Clarissa Explains It All" and "The Secret World of Alex Mack"--which will share this week's cover story with "The Mystery Files."

Ng says that TV Guide's story will also address how her own life--not least her attendance at Harvard--and personality contribute to Shelby's role-model-status for young girls.

In Ng's case, though, her character is unique not only by virtue of her gender or her strong personality.

Shelby is Asian-American, and Ng notes that Shelby "is not a particularly good student. She's an average girl, not interested in getting straight A's." Ng says she is proud to portray Asians as "real people...not geeks, not nerdy."

In fact, originally, the show's title was "The Mystery Files of Shelby Wink," and the lead was designed for a Caucasian. It was only after the show was taped with a Caucasian lead that it turned out not to be to Nickelodeon's liking, so the station opened the casting to all ethnicities.

Ng auditioned for "The Mystery Files" the summer before her junior year here at Harvard and took the following semester off to tape 13 episodes.

Because of the show's popularity, Nickelodeon envisions it as the successor to "The Secret World of Alex Mack," which, though popular, has ended its run on the station.

Ng describes her character as "inquistive" and "adventurous." Shelby is an intern at a police station, and "despite the warnings of her detective boss," conducts her own investigations, narrowly escaping danger, sometimes solving the case, other times not.

"The Mystery Files" plot-line is a curious reflection of Ng's actual life. Just as Shelby's life is a series of narrow misses and close calls, so is Ng's life an ongoing balancing act of her acting career, studies and all they entail.

The only difference is that while Shelby only cracks the case some of the time, Ng seems to have solved the great mystery of how to keep up with her double life.