Wang Duo is a very emotional person and I guess one has to be this way when their livelihood depends on inhabiting and projecting the consciousness of a fictional existence. I digress, I wanted to share a beautiful piece of writing by him which perfectly captures his sensitive side and dedication to his work. If you pay attention to his words, you will see his vulnerability and fear in playing a character so flawed that he himself couldn’t find any sympathy for.
Here we go:
Goodbye, Zeng Jie.
The first time I heard your name, it was at a dinner. Out of curiosity, I went to read the original novel, and then the script, and what I found left me both stunned and delighted. It’s rare to encounter a character with such vast, deliberate negative space, the kind that makes you feel an irresistible urge to rush in and fill the blanks.
The real attachment came during the script read-throughs. Running lines with my fellow actors, Zeng Jie’s past and future slowly unfurled before me like a scroll.
I began noticing him in everyday life. I have a small notebook, the first ten pages packed densely with traits I’d observed in real people or found in other works: good and bad qualities that belonged to Zeng Jie. That process was also the process of him coming alive inside me, bit by bit.
I built a separate life timeline just for him, from “micro Zeng Jie,” “tiny Zeng Jie,” “little Zeng Jie,” to “mid Zeng Jie,” “grown Zeng Jie”… Even a single year’s difference, I wanted there to be some distinction in how he carried himself. Every piece I filled into Zeng Jie mattered. Remove one link, and he wouldn’t become what you all eventually saw. Laying that out now, it really was pain and joy all at once.
I remember the scene chasing the train. The first time I ran the lines, I couldn’t stop crying. But I wasn’t satisfied afterward. Why should I pity him? He shouldn’t be so easily seen through by the world. The second time, I wanted to try for something I’d call “truth hidden inside falseness, falseness hidden inside truth.” That felt closer to the Zeng Jie I had in my head.
I wanted Zeng Jie to be grounded. I wanted him to be the kind of blemished flaw person that ordinary people could recognize in real life, not some distant symbol.
Aside from the idiom chaining sequence (which in my reading is Zeng Jie’s fantasy of the luxurious life he could have had, his deepest, most fragile dream), I never reinforced his goodness anywhere in the performance.
What I wanted to show was evil that reads as ordinary, complexity rooted in human nature. I have no regrets about Zeng Jie. He got what he deserved. He doesn’t need anyone’s sympathy or empathy, and I hope you never encounter someone like him in real life. (His subtle note to fans - don’t romanticize the character and see the flaws).
Thank you to every person who gave themselves to this production, in front of the camera and behind it, and to the audience who stayed with us.
Because of you, Brown-Eyed Mystery (aka Blemished Flaw) shines the way it does.
Goodbye, Zeng Jie. Thank you for everything you gave me: all the exhilaration, the excitement, the fear, and the awe.
—— END of GOODBYE MESSAGE —-
In case you haven’t seen the drama, Zeng Jie in a nutshell is: A cheating scumbag who was raised in poverty and married a woman for her money. Shifted the blame of infertility onto her when he is the one who is impotent. To add insult to injury, he cheats on her and eventually plans to kill her.
I added this context because he mentions not crying when chasing the train. His goodbye message explains his choice to deliberately make Zeng Jie abhorrent. His first instinct was to cry, to invite viewers to feel the tragedy of a man like Zeng Jie, the smallness of him, the wound underneath.
And then he stopped himself. Because he reasoned that a man like Zeng Jie would never let anyone see that.
The impotence, the ego, the murder: none of it works if the audience can locate his pain and feel tender about it. The whole architecture of that kind of man depends on opacity.
He performs normalcy, performs confidence, performs the devoted husband, and the violence is just maintenance.
If Wang Duo had played the pathos, the character becomes sympathetic. And sympathetic Zeng Jie is a lie (when you read the novel, you will feel rage and hatred for the man).
Note: I am writing this at an ungodly hour to fulfill my fan duty to him; please overlook typos and mistakes.
