SINGAPORE — The dark theme of cyber-stalking and manipulation is nothing new for the cast of MediaCorp Channel 5’s new thriller drama series, Zero Calling.

Or so said veteran actress Cynthia Koh, who has had personal experiences with something similar — getting her social media accounts hacked all at once, and having a mysterious person pretend to be her online.

“I had my Facebook account hacked and I couldn’t log in — even my Instagram got locked,” she recalled. “It’s kind of scary because all my pictures were inside and my Facebook is for really close friends. I was afraid (the hackers) would ask me for money. I couldn’t go online at all to say ‘Hey, that wasn’t me’.”

Koh’s run-in with hackers didn’t stop there. She was also a victim of credit card fraud. “It was funny because just that morning I wanted to check my Internet banking account and I saw funny numbers being charged in — hundreds and hundreds of dollars — and I didn’t know where these came from.

“Thankfully the guy was caught in the end,” said Koh.

Koh’s co-star in the show, Hayley Woo, who plays her daughter, also had her fair share of social media-related problems, when someone assumed her identity on Instagram, and started asking for actors Ben Yeo’s and Kimberly Chia’s mobile numbers.

“It’s kind of scary what people do to get to other people sometimes,” said Woo.

Getting to other people is exactly what happens in Zero Calling. The crime thriller — which comes on the heels of other popular crime-related shows like Point Of Entry and Code Of Law — tells the story of David (played by Pierre Png), who gets a call from a mysterious person named Zero, who ends up manipulating and controlling Png to do his bidding, after threatening the safety of his wife Julie (played by Koh) and step-daughter Maddy (Hayley Woo).

“It is a little different from the rest of the Channel 5 line-up,” said Koh. “There’s going to be a little bit of suspense and thrills and I would say it is pretty dark. We’re kind of breaking the mould for a lot of conventional dramas, pushing the envelope a little bit.”

And there’s that little thing of doing a love scene with Png too. “That was a pretty big test for me as on Channel 8 we rarely get to do such stuff, so it’s a little bit different this time round,” said Koh of the experience.

Zero Calling premieres on Feb 16, Sundays, 10pm on Channel 5.