Joan Chen has always been a movie star. Hollywood is finally catching up.
Wang couldn’t imagine the film without Chen. “My first meeting with her was over Zoom. She spent 20 minutes trying to figure out how to turn on the camera,” he says fondly. “But she was prepared, and she asked a lot of deep, thoughtful questions about the character that really pushed me and challenged me to think deeper about both the story and her character—how to make it the most layered, rich, nuanced version of it.”
In the editing process, this meant cutting out a lot of Chen’s dialogue—because she’s so fully inhabited Chungsing that every emotion, every range, is in her eyes. “They convey longing, regret, pain, and love,” Wang says. It’s an ineffable quality she’s brought to films since she was a teen sensation in China, and one that’s rarely seen in American films.
Young filmmakers are now seeing Chen, writing for her, and giving her space in ways that feel different. In a truly full-circle moment, Chen recently wrapped production on Lee’s upcoming remake of Wedding, Directed by Fire Island‘S Andrew Ahn. She plays a mother who happily accepts a lesbian daughter (Kelly Marie Tran) The early years of parenthood are not very open. It’s a funny, wonderfully silly, but sometimes sad role.
“The first time I met Andrew on Zoom, he talked a lot about his mother to convey the relationship between me and my daughter in the film,” she says. These directors “can be more honest, more authentic, more genuine about their own experiences—not selling what Hollywood calls the accepted version of what Asians should be like.” Wang agrees: “Hopefully, the result is more roles for people like her, because now people like me are looking at my parents like, ‘Oh, they’re not only our parents.'”
Chen is feeling the impact. She’s shocked that Oscar buzz is following her, after nearly four decades in Hollywood without it. She’s found interest in her past at the same time her present is finally gaining traction. She recently did a special screening Xiu Xiu at the San Francisco Film Festival, and streamers started asking her about putting it on their platforms. “I was like, I don’t even know where to find it. negative cut?” she said with a laugh.
Honestly, the excessive noise makes her nervous. “It’s too much,” Chen said. Still, she’s willing to help. Went in whatever way she can—if not with media training, then with a few social media posts. “My daughter just resurrected my Instagram, and yesterday she said to me, ‘Mom, you haven’t touched it in three weeks!’” Chen says. “Maybe I’ll take care of it tonight.” It’s a start.
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