‘PEOPLE GET
INTIMIDATED BY MONEY.
THEY HATE YOU FOR IT,
WITHOUT KNOWING YOU’
Christine Chiu, Shay, Cherie and Kelly Mi Li in Bling EmpireThe Times Magazine 23Allen Shay, who took over as chairman and
CEO of her father’s company. In 2006 the
siblings sold the company to Lockheed Martin
for a reported $1.2 billion, splitting the money
- which is why her net worth is often reported
as $600 million (£460 million). Shay says
today she has “no idea” what she is worth.
Her parents were devoted to each other
and Shay has struggled to emulate a
relationship like theirs. “Psychoanalysing
myself, I think that’s why I’ve been divorced
four times. When you put your parents on such
a high pedestal, it is hard. My father was my
hero so, without consciously saying, ‘You are
not measuring up to my father,’ one day it’s
like, ‘Oh my God, I believe it’s time to divorce.’
“But I don’t think I’ve had a bad divorce,”
she adds. “The parties were amazing.”
Her first two marriages did not count, she
says. “The first one, Connor, he was British.
We were in school. He needed a green card.
I married him secretly and my girlfriend
married his friend. My father somehow found
out and he said he would handle it. I said,
‘OK, but don’t deport him. I do love him as
a friend.’” How did he handle it? “I never
asked,” says Shay. “He told one of his people
who knew what to do and where to go [to get
the green card].”
She tells me a complicated story about
her second marriage – which seems to boil
down to this: she was in Bangkok with some
American navy friends who were arrested
over some marijuana that fell from a crate as
they loaded it on to a ship. So Shay found
them an attorney. Somehow it was helpful if
she married one of them. So she did. Which
meant his jail sentence was reduced from
seven years to two years and she would visit
him every weekend in jail in a naval brig on
Treasure Island, in San Francisco Bay. Her
parents found out about that one too. “My
mother said, ‘Oh Anna.’ I said it was an
emergency circumstance. My mother said,
‘You must get divorced,’ and gave me $10,000
[to give to him]. So he signed the paper, I gave
him the money and said, ‘I wish you the best
that life can give you.’”
Her third husband was Irish. She was
staying in the Plaza hotel in New York and as
she came out of the entrance with a girlfriend,
he was passing in a horse and carriage. “He
said, ‘Hi, give me your hand.’ And he pulled
me up.” Did he propose to you then? “No,”
laughs Shay. “It wasn’t that romantic. He had
to get divorced first. The third marriage was
really the first one. I did love him.”
But it only lasted three years. Then she met
her fourth husband, an American called Ken
Kemp, the father of her son. That marriage
lasted nearly five years. Why did they break
up? Shay looks thoughtful: “I think really
honestly – and I’m not being stupid – but
he couldn’t be bothered to deal with the LA
traffic.” So he divorced you because of the
traffic? “Yes,” says Shay. “But I also think it
must be hard for a man to marry a woman
from a different class. My parents never put
that pressure on him but he put the pressure
on himself.”
She checks herself. “You know, you’re the
only one I’ve talked to about my husbands...”
Would she marry again? “Would you help
me find my next victim?” she deadpans. Her
mistake, she says, was to give her son power of
veto over any boyfriend. “I told him, ‘You say
the word and he’s gone.’ Thereby I haven’t
been married in 25 years. I haven’t been outwith a lot of people but every time, he’s
like, ‘Mom, I don’t like him.’” But he is in a
relationship now and has a child of his own –
surely he can’t mind any more? “That’s where I
made my mistake,” says Shay. “I said ‘for ever’.”
Bling Empire – on the surface at least- follows the successful formula of showcasing
an unimaginably wealthy group whose
ostentatious excess defies belief. But the show
also touches on the tensions between a gold-
trash LA lifestyle and deeply rooted Asian
traditions: the strength of family bonds;
the shame of having a child when you are
unmarried; the shame – when married - of being unable to produce an heir. In this
instance the woman feels forced to pretend
to her husband’s disappointed family that she
has the fertility issues, not her husband.
Central to the show is the feud between
Shay and Christine Chiu, the show’s token
villain and wife of a Beverly Hills plastic
surgeon. “New money,” says Shay dismissively.
So is the hostility between Chiu and Shay
real? “Yes,” says Shay emphatically. “I don’t
dislike her. I just don’t think about her. She’s
not in my circle of people.”
Chiu, she says, used to be a lot more
natural and bubbly “when she had less plastic
surgery”. Shay herself happily admits to doing
“Botox, Juvederm and Restylane” but is
fabulously vague about whether or not she has
ever had plastic surgery. “I don’t think so. No,
I think I did something...” She had a friend
who needed plastic surgery for a droopy eyelid
following a dog attack, but her husband
wouldn’t pay for it. So Shay said she would
fund it and would accompany her to the
appointment. The friend never turned up
so Shay ended up taking the appointment
instead. “The doctor asked me what I wanted
to do and I asked him what he would do if he
were me.” The doctor, inevitably, listed several
enhancements. “I know I had my eyes lifted
and I think there were two or three other
things. They were so minor that you couldn’t
even tell. I still don’t know exactly what I did
but I do look younger.”
Does she ever wish she hadn’t been born
wealthy? “I can’t think like that. I don’t know
any other way.” She looks downcast for a
moment – then she twinkles. “Come on,” she
urges for the third time. “Let’s go shopping!”
At that moment, though, a VIP specialist
from Alexander McQueen appears at the front
door with a selection of clothing, accompanied
by a dapper assistant who produces a silver
tray of flute glasses which he fills with
champagne. The price tag on one of the
dresses reads $34,000. Shay claps her hands
in delight and says she will try it on. When
you’re as rich as Anna Shay you don’t need to
go shopping at all. The shop comes to you. n
Bling Empire returns to Netflix on May 11