After captivating audiences as the glamorous Astrid in “Crazy Rich Asians,” Gemma Chan was sent quite a few scripts with dignified but unhappy wives. She sensed trouble ahead. “There’s a danger of being typecast,” she said. “But I’m still a work-in-progress pushing back on that. I want to do something different and show something different and tell a different story.”
Her new film, “The Actor,” directed by Duke Johnson, checked those boxes. Chan plays Edna, a costume designer in a factory town and the romantic interest of an amnesiac.
She had loved Johnson’s haunting animated movie “Anomalisa,” and she responded similarly when she read “The Actor.” “Then I spoke to Duke about how he planned to shoot it, which was in quite a different way to anything that I’ve shot before,” she said. “Quite experimental, bringing elements that were quite theatrical and quite stylized.”
Chan has also wrapped “Josephine,” with Channing Tatum, about an 8-year-old who witnesses an assault. And she is producing her own work: an adaptation of the “Rise of the Empress” fantasy book series for Amazon Prime Video, and an unconventional history of Anna May Wong, considered to be the first Chinese American movie star. “As an actor, you often come in quite late in the process and you are part of fulfilling someone else’s vision,” she said. “That’s been really exciting, getting to choose where I want to put my focus.”
Source link
