The grand dame of Malaysian cinema returns with not one, but two box office releases for 2025.

Maya Karin is the gift that keeps on giving. With a robust list of well-rounded and iconic characters under her belt—and forever etched into our memories—the award-winning actress returns to the silver screen and welcomes us into a new horror universe. In theatres now, Telaga Suriram marks her sixth outing alongside critically-acclaimed director Osman Ali, and it has been a multi-year effort for the troupe.

What was conventionally a six-week shooting schedule was upended by the pandemic and unfavourable weather that left locations submerged. A fatalist would have packed up and left, but the cast and crew persisted, and here we are today with a testament to their unwavering commitment to the craft. For Maya, it has been a highly physical endeavour.

“Horror is hard in general, but more so when you’re the main character. It involves a lot of running, screaming, and wrestling,” she says. And we’re inclined to agree. What plays out in a split second could very well involve take upon takes to get the perfect shot. She continues matter-of-factly, “You work a lot at night, and get back home in the morning after a night of rolling around in weeds and jumping into a freezing lake at five in the morning.”

As the leading lady, her character suffers the loss of a daughter, and the film follows the investigation of the case. The character itself, though, did not cause Maya to break a sweat. This, of course, can be chalked up to her calibre, but she also played an active role when Osman was creating Telaga Suriram. “I was so familiar with it that I didn’t really have to prepare for the role,” she recounts. So much so that she opted out of the acting classes. “I don’t want to disrupt whatever I already had in me for Rohaya.”

After all, this is not her first rodeo. In fact, Maya’s illustrious career is marked by more than a dozen fan-favourite heroine roles, with several in the horror category. As she lists down her favourites, “Bella from Pisau Cukur, Meriam for Pontianak Harum Sundal Malam, Luna Latisha from Cun!” you can see her pride for all that she has accomplished. Smiling, she emphasises, “Every single one of them is so special, and I managed to flesh them out. That’s the whole point of acting—you’re not supposed to act; you’re supposed to be that person and make them real people.”

When asked if she has any pre-shooting rituals to get into character, Maya vehemently disagrees with the entire concept. “For any film, the character has to always and already be there. For [Telaga Suriram] it was like she had always been there. I wake up as Rohaya.”

Aside from her acting chops, she also lends her hauntingly beautiful voice to the film. What was meant to accompany the end credits now made it to parts of the film. “When I was recording the ‘Suriram’ lullaby, I offered to record it in character. And it only took us a couple of takes!” she says. “Because Rohaya still lives within me, the emotions were there, and it didn’t take us long at all.”

Though she has yet to experience motherhood herself, she plays a maternal role for the children in her life—particularly her friends’ and family’s. “I also am the eldest daughter, with a younger brother and sister, whom I had to half ‘mother’ myself. We moved around a lot, being an expat family, so I just took it upon myself to do so,” Maya points out.

Ever the unflappable person, she cuts straight to the chase. Graduating from the roles of the ingénue to that of a mother is not an easy transition for many actors. But Maya takes it head-on. “Obviously, I am also getting mature,” she starts. “I can’t be playing the young woman forever.”

“But the good thing is that there will always be a need for mothers, and then grandmothers. There will always be opportunities to act. You can give me any role, provided that it’s a fully-fledged character, with their own journey and story,” she says.

This is, of course, an antithesis of the cliche matriarch, who, most of the time, is a stand-in for the voice of agitated concern. The star will entertain no such roles for herself—Maya laughs at the very idea of it—and why should she? Including herself, women grow more and more multidimensional over time, and mothers doubly so. It is only right to portray them as such without watering them down to stock characters that lack personal development.

She takes the same strategy when choosing scripts to work with. “The first ten pages are so crucial. If they do not catch my attention, then I’m lost, and chances are, so will the audience. The director is equally as important, and the production house too. When all those three are good, I don’t worry as much about the work,” the veteran explains.

For Telaga Suriram, it struck a chord with the mystery lover in her. “Was it an accident? Was it a murder? If so, who had the motive?” she lightheartedly pokes, clearly steering clear of spoilers. Maya also reveals that her inclination towards the mysterious is something she shares with her mother and sister. While those two are hooked to the genre through TV shows, the scream queen turns to books instead. “Unless it’s CSI: Crime Scene Investigations—I love to tune in to those!”

Maya is also set to reprise an iconic and titular role for her second film of the year, Duyung: Lagenda Aurora, 17 years after the first Duyung came out. And instead of another horror, this will be a fantasy romcom. In the sequel, you will again see her in a maternal light as Puteri, a mermaid, is now a mum of two children, a boy and a girl. Without divulging too much, the actor does give us a heads-up about what’s to come. “Well, my hair and outfit do change, so keep an eye out for the reveal,” she teases.

Throughout her entire decades-long career, her philosophy remains the same. “Why not?” she would ask herself at every opportunity that presents itself. As we are stuck in rush hour traffic heading towards her residence, she expounds on this principle. Much of her success can be attributed to this tenet. She speaks of the time when her mother signed her up for beauty pageants. “Out of the 13 beauty pageants I entered, I won 14 awards in total,” she beams. “I started at the age of 14, and was already doing advertisements, catwalks, and TV commercials in Indonesia.”

But when she arrived in Malaysia, she was happy with any job. “I was content to just dust bookshelves as a bookshop storekeeper, or bake Japanese cheesecakes every Sunday just for some pocket money,” Maya says. “I never really set out to become an actress, anyway.” Gasp. “But an agent saw me working as a cashier and approached me with a modelling offer,” she continues. And that was how she broke into the Malaysian scene. By 19, she started hosting a show called Wavelength. By 20, she scored her first movie. At every juncture, she found herself asking, “Why not?”

“And then it just became a journey that keeps snowballing, and before I knew it, I realised that I actually like it. Sure, I have turned down many roles, but only when there is a reason to. Otherwise, I just go with the flow. In fact, there has been a period in my life, four years of it, when I didn’t shoot a single movie. But then I came back with a vengeance with Munafik 2, and it became the highest-grossing Malaysian film,” she elaborates, celebrating the fact that she went on to star in a Syamsul Yusof film that raked in RM48 million at the box office.

At 45 years old, Maya has long lost her rose-tinted glasses. The glamour has worn off, and she sees the plights that have industry-wide repercussions. There are very few provisions in place for practitioners, cast and crew alike. She cites household names that once stood glorious in the 80s and 90s, and are now getting by with meagre support.

“We are on our own. There is no social security, no retirement savings schemes, and definitely no royalties for a lot of us,” she sighs. “We’re lucky if there is a collective insurance for everyone on set. Which is why I have been making sure that I get a personal one.” There is no bitterness to her tone. The actress just watches the cars passing by, perhaps slightly defeated, but she does not let on. The problems are too heavy for just one person to tackle, after all.

All this will not put a damper on her trajectory, though. She still looks at the bright side of things, revealing that she once dreamed of taking on a warrior princess role. “I have been wanting that for years and years. But I know now it’s a slim chance. I might have to be a queen now,” Maya says with a cheeky grin. If prospective producers are reading this, she has some notes.

“It will need a huge budget, an epic like that. We’ll need elaborate sets, horses, elephants, all that stuff to really make it happen,” she continues. With streaming services getting more and more comfortable with creating original regional content, we say that it can become a reality in the not-so-distant future.

As we get closer to her home, we circle back to the conversation of vocation. For this, she calls back to a chat she once had with her father as a child. “My father once pointed out that I am a good people person. ‘Anywhere you have to mingle with people,’ he said.”

We also inquire about her interest in potentially directing her own picture, since it has such a weightage in her decision-making. She bluntly says no. “I know I’m not good at it,” she admits. “But I think the closest I will come to it is producing. I can manage people well. I can head so many departments. It’s a people-facing job. I get to seam it all together, whether it’s technical, makeup, art, or wardrobe.” Maya smiles at the
notion of this.

In many ways, that may just be her third matriarchal role: nurturing a team, bringing the collective effort to life, and sharing it with the world. What could be more motherly than that?

As we roll into her driveway, we are left with the feeling that the version of Maya we just experienced is far from the ones we have seen in her earlier works such as Pisau Cukur and Sejoli. The fluffy and diaphanous exterior is no more than just a figment of the memory. Now stands a more resolute woman who knows exactly what she wants and will not beat around the bush for it. With her “Why not?” way of life, it will not be long before she gets exactly what she goes for.

Perhaps now that we have witnessed the sheer grit and perseverance that Maya has had all her life, her future roles can finally reflect that. Perhaps, sooner rather than later, we may just see the warrior queen Maya envisioned on screen. We will not be surprised if she is the one to actualise it—heck, she might even have a heart-wrenching vocal performance to accompany it.

And perhaps, again, she will be breaking yet another highest-grossing local film record, just as she did all those years ago. Like Rohaya, that version of Maya, too, has always been there.

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