RUBEN CHAMORRO

BY NOJAN AMINOSHAREI

PHOTOGRAPHS BY RUBEN CHAMORRO

THE YEAR HAS ONLY just begun, but The Brothers Sun has already staked its claim as one of the most fun shows of 2024. Netflix's action-comedy-family-crime-drama is never having more of that fun than when it's mashing up its contrasting themes; one scene will break out into an elaborate, large-scale fight sequence, and the next will settle into a family dinner lovingly sprinkled with small details of life in the Asian diaspora. This all helps to keep things not only filled with thrills, but also to feel intimate and lived-in.
At the show's heart are its two biggest contrasts: the titular Sun brothers, played by Justin Chien and Sam Song Li. Chien plays Charles, a Taipei mob scion who flies to Los Angeles amid an international gang war to protect his estranged mother and brother. He arrives to find that his mother, played by reigning Best Actress Oscar winner Michelle Yeoh, has kept their family's bloody roots in organized crime a secret from his brother Bruce, played by Song Li.
Charles, raised by their kingpin father, is a legendary enforcer, a stoic, tightly-packed ball of kinetic energy. Bruce, after a lifetime of being coddled by their mother, is a lanky, well-intentioned screwup who dutifully studies for med school when his true passion is, much to his family's horror, improv comedy. Neither appreciates the tempest brewing in their matriarchy.

RUBEN CHAMORRO

The relationship between Charles and Bruce makes up for much of the show's buddy comedy stylings. Chien, who's trained in Muay Thai boxing and Brazilian jiu-jitsu, spends much of his time on screen brawling his way through the show's lengthy, tightly-choreographed fight scenes. The sequences are chockablock with eccentric surprises thrown at both Charles and the audience with whiplash speed: an ambush by assassins in inflatable dinosaur costumes at a kid's birthday party; a marathon melee at a golf driving range; a tag team in a Korean spa; a battle royale in a dim sum parlor. For his part, Song Li studied physical comedy greats—from Charlie Chaplin to Jackie Chan—to master the art of "running around like a chicken with its head cut off."
Their dynamic shines in person, too. Together with Men's Health, they reflect on the creation of the show's grueling hand-to-hand combat scenes, being mentored by the one and only Michelle Yeoh, the show's depiction of Asian-American family life—and how one comment on your looks from an Asian mama can be more powerful than a punch in the face.

Men's Health: You guys have amazing brotherly chemistry on screen and off. What did you think of each other when you first met?

Justin Chien: We met during the final callback of the audition process, and when I first saw Sam, I thought I was screwed. I thought I wasn't getting the part because in the original script, he's described as this scrawny, dorky kid. But Sam walked in, and he was big and handsome and taller than me.

Sam Song Li: I have a very similar story. When I walked in, I thought, Aw, crap. We both had a hunch that we were each really good for our parts respectively. But we got in our heads about our physicality. There's this great photo from that day where we're standing next to each other—

JC: —and I'm trying to make myself as tall as I can.

SSL: Looking back at it, there's a kind of charm, something very silly about that physical paradox.

JC: After we booked our parts, we grabbed a meal, traded stories, compared our experiences grinding in Hollywood, and realized we have a lot of very similar sensibilities.

SSL: Developing chemistry was the easy part. The hard part was playing into our differences. In the show, we couldn't be more different; it's all about the collision of personalities.

Justin—the fight sequences on the show are wild and non-stop. What were you particularly focused on when preparing for them?

JC: My pet peeve is being able to see when an actor is pulling a punch. That was something I discussed very early on with our fight coordinator, Eric Brown, who worked with Keanu Reeves in John Wick. I think of this character as a skilled brawler. I would compare him to the UFC fighter Justin Gaethje or the boxer Gennady Golovkin. Very aggressive, but still very technically skilled. And I wanted to show that in the way he fights.

The other thing I wanted to show was the accumulation of damage. So that was something we were mindful of in the fight choreography, but also something I was conscious of in the scenes set after. I wanted to make sure I looked like I was feeling those injuries. I think that for a fight scene to be believable, you have to be accountable to the strikes that you do take.

You already have experience with martial arts. How much training did you do on top of that?

JC: I've been doing Muay Thai for almost a decade, on and off, and I've been doing jiu-jitsu a lot more consistently for the last four years—I got my blue belt last year. For the show, we trained for about three months. At its peak, we had 10 or 11 sessions a week, which included martial arts training, taekwondo, karate, kali, which is Filipino knife or stick fighting, firearms work, learning the choreography, weight training, and cardio training. There's one particular fight sequence set in a driving range that required really long takes, so for that specific sequence, I did a lot of cardio in order to put in my max for however long the longest would be. I was doing cardio around the clock for that one.

How much choreography and preparation went into the fights?

JC: The longest I had learned the choreography for a fight was the giant fight scene at the end of the season, which was just over a week and a half. I only had one day to learn the "dinosaur fight." That weekend, I went up to Big Bear and I practiced it on my own, picking up sticks and rocks to emulate the props. I did a lot of training in my garage and at a park just by myself—shadowboxing, running the choreography by myself. And the shortest amount of prep time I had was for a section of the Korean spa fight sequence set in the clay ball room. I learned that right before we shot it.

Sam—you may not have been throwing a lot of punches, but there's a very real physical comedic art to being chased around. How did you manage that controlled chaos without falling and cracking your head open?

SSL: I had major FOMO watching everybody kick ass from the sidelines. I knew that there was going to be a lot of running around, a lot of looking frantic. So I went back to the performances throughout history that really drew me in with their physical comedy. I went as far back as the silent film era and watched Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton. I watched a lot of Jackie Chan. They're all amazing at physical storytelling. When you look at someone like Charlie Chaplin, he's obviously not doing a lot of fighting—he's doing a lot of being chased—but there's so much comedic effect to his physicality. So I studied actors like that and added my own flair.

RUBEN CHAMORRO

Scenes from The Brothers Sun on Netflix.

JC: In the first episode, when Michelle's character looks at me and says, "Your beard looks terrible." My parents say that to me all the time! Word for word. That one by far hit me the hardest.

SSL: I saw it on your face in the scene!

I was going to ask about that that line specifically! It felt so devastatingly authentic that I couldn't tell if it was written in the script or if Michelle improvised it.

SSL: I know the answer to this—it was improvised!

JC: Yeah, I think so! I don't think it was in the original script.

SSL: Michelle threw that at you, and your reaction on screen is your natural reaction.

JC: Yes! And I'm very proud of my beard! I'd say, "Mom, this is part of my job. This is what the character needs." But every time I saw her, she would ask, "So when are you gonna shave?"

Justin—your mom appears on the show in the scenes where you visit the gossipy mahjong aunties looking for information. How did it feel to have her on your turf for a change?

JC: She was much more…"cooperative" might be the word. [laughs] But she had a great time. For so long, my family has understood on some level what I do as an actor. But if I was visiting home and had to prepare for an audition or film an audition tape, they'd be like, "No, no, do it later. It's fine, it won't take you that long." But now my mom has gone through the entire process from beginning to end. I helped her tape her audition. And when she was on set, she got to see me performing some of my hardest scenes. And I feel like now she really, really understands it.

The best part is that the whole time, I could tell she was trying to keep her smile contained. She was giddy. Normally she's very dignified, very self-assured. And at the premiere, seeing her meet Gwyneth Paltrow [the Oscar-winning actress is married to showrunner Brad Falchuk] and Michelle Yeoh, I saw a side of her I don't normally see, an almost child-like excitement. Being able to share this with her was by far the highlight of this entire experience.

What was it like working with Michelle Yeoh, Oscar winner, martial arts legend, and mother to us all?

SSL: I was very intimidated when I filmed my first scene with her. She's a global icon, she's a larger-than-life figure. But I adapted very quickly, because she's a really generous actor. She gives so much in a scene, and I feel like everybody who was in a scene with her would agree that our best work came when when she was alongside us.

She taught me a lot about what it's like behind the scenes as well—outside of who you are in front of the camera, but who you are behind the camera, how you treat people on set, how you collaborate with the writers and directors. It was the best kind of mentorship I could have asked for.

JC: Her kindness is the thing that I was the most impressed by. She has this gravitas, but there are big name actors who can create gravitas on the screen, but might not actually be all that good on set. I've heard of so many famous actors who show up and don't even know their lines. But Michelle has the gravitas that comes from time and experience, but she has a substance to back it up.

Whenever I shot a scene with her, I could look into her eyes and see Mama Sun. I would know in the moment that she is there with me. Michelle doesn't play the character, she is the character. That helps bring out the best in me, like Sam said. And when she's back to being Michelle, she shows you nothing but that kindness and support. After our first scene together, she gave me a fist bump.

SSL: She loves a fist bump!

JC: And in that moment, you think, Michelle Yeoh just gave me a fist bump. I guess I'm doing okay.

Michelle is famous for being very engaged in her projects. She's known for offering notes to actors, writers, and directors that are transformative to the process. Did you experience that?

JC: I remember that a lot of the notes she had would be about the characterization of her character and how she would interact with our characters as her sons. I remember in the second episode, there's a scene where she's scolding me, and the script called for her to slap me in the face. And she was adamant that the character would never do that. It later became a smack on the back of the head, but she was really hesitant to do that as well. She would always talk through what she thought would be accurate to what she would do.

SSL: A good mentor doesn't necessarily tell you want to do. A good mentor will just know that you're watching and listening to their example. That's what Michelle expected of us. She didn't have to say, "Pay attention to what I'm doing." Just seeing her give notes and have discussions with our showrunners and directors got us all thinking about how we can improve our characters and performances. That's why all of us have such a great relationship dynamic off-screen that really pops on-screen.

The show features food as a recurring visual theme, with many scenes set in restaurants or kitchens or at dining room tables. What was it like being around all that food, especially when you're on special diets for all the show's action sequences?

SSL: I learned a lot about the dangers of unlimited food on a film set. Listen, as an actor, you've got a lot of time on your hands on set, and one of the ways you can kill that time is through the food.

JC: Someone saw me walk up to the Crafty cart, look at it sadly, and then walk away. People were a little bit concerned for my my happiness because food is a huge part of my my joy and my energy.

It was a balancing act of staying strong and healthy and also looking the way I needed to look. There are times where I look at the footage and think, I could have gotten more of a pump there. I could have been bigger. But I also know that I was doing everything that I could do. I might be shooting a shirtless scene for half a day. I would do a pump before every shot, but I just had no energy. So by the time I did my first few pumps, I couldn't lift the weight anymore and just had to go lighter and lighter.

Luckily, I didn't have to shoot any shirtless scenes right before or after shooting a fight sequence, so for the fights I felt strong and nourished. But for the shirtless scenes, I had to go into a deficit to look cut. The hardest part of that, the necessary sacrifice, was going without salt for several days in preparation. A few days before a shirtless scene, I would cut out salt, and I quickly realized was that removing salt also removes any remaining joy you get from eating. As a chef, I learned how to flavor food without salt, but even that only makes back 30% of the flavor you lost. Salt makes a difference!

RUBEN CHAMORRO

The show's writers' room was made up of writers from various parts of the Asian diaspora—some are immigrants, some are lifelong Americans, some are adoptees. How did that affect the show's authenticity to your own life and experience?

JC: I remember reading the script for the first time and getting chills. What I appreciated the most is that these little tidbits of our culture were sprinkled in, all these little things that are a part of who we are.

SSL: It's authenticity to the Asian American experience without being too on the nose. If you have an Asian family or you've been around Asian friends, there are moments that will catch your attention. And if they don't catch your attention, you won't feel like you missed anything. You won't even think about it. If you know, you know.

JC: I think that's because we had a roomful of people that knew. So when they wrote a scene, the details that fill out our lives and experiences were just there. It just is. We just are.

SSL: It's uniquely Southern California as well. You see a lot of the the landmarks, the bakeries, the restaurants of the San Gabriel Valley. The whole churro bit, the conversations about KFC versus Taco Bell. We even shot a scene, which I don't think made the final cut, where [the mob boss] Sleepy Chan flies in from Taipei and the first thing he does when he lands in L.A. is go to In-n-Out.

The mob figures on the show have great gang names: Sleepy Chan and his son Drowsy Lee, Blood Boots, The Rolodex. What mob nickname would you give each other?

SSL: Oh, I already have one for Justin. I call him J-Money.

JC: He does. My last name, Chien, means "money" in Mandarin. For Sam, I think I'd call him… Baby Face Killer.

SSL: It's true, I do have a baby face. And I'm a killer.

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.

Grooming for Justin Chien: Natasha Leibel; Grooming for Sam Song Li: Ruth Fernandez

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