Playing a forensic expert on the Taiwanese crime thriller The Victims' Game (available on Netflix) was physically and emotionally draining for leading man Joseph Chang.
The 36-year-old actor says he felt dizzy after filming some scenes in the drama, which premiered in April.
"In one scene, I had to say a chunk of technical medical jargon really fast. After that scene was done, I felt dizzy because I couldn't breathe smoothly during filming," he says in an email interview.
It was this level of dedication and immersion in his role that impressed his co-star Tiffany Ann Hsu.
She plays a dogged investigative journalist who teams up with Chang's character Fang Yi-jen to solve a series of mysterious deaths, which he suspects is linked to his estranged daughter.
The duo previously also starred in the 2011 idol drama Love You.
In a separate telephone interview, Hsu, 35, says of working again with Chang: "You can feel how committed he is to his role. He understands characters with more depth and breadth than before."
She adds that he has also changed after he married and became a father in 2018.
Notoriously tight-lipped about his personal life, Chang admitted to being married with a son last year.
Little is known about his wife, who is not in the entertainment industry.
Hsu says: "In the past, when he was free on set, he'll listen to music or play games on his mobile phone. Now, he'll watch videos of his son."
Both stars did plenty of homework for their roles in The Victims' Game, which landed in the top spot of the most-watched Netflix series in Hong Kong and Taiwan when it premiered on April 30.
Aside from shadowing forensic professionals, Chang also read up on Asperger syndrome – a form of autism which his character has.
He explains: "There was one scene in which Fang asks about his daughter's whereabouts in a club and when the director said 'action', I just unconsciously twitched the muscles around my eyes and my glasses would move. The director liked it and kept it as a tic of the character.
"Fang's tendency to have outbursts of emotions while alone in an enclosed space was not in the script initially, but I kept thinking about how he would deal with the intense stress and felt like that's what he would do when he's overloaded emotionally and needs to vent."
The realistic set helped his performance too. He filmed some of his scenes in a real autopsy room. Once, the team had to pause shooting for two hours while an actual autopsy took place.
"When we went back in, the room had been disinfected, but because the autopsy involved a drowned body that was not immediately found, the smell lingered and that scene felt real," Chang recalls.
While Hsu's on-screen work was less macabre, she spent time with a crime reporter.
"She told me how on her first day on the job, she was asked to get these archival photos of gory crimes and how she often ate and slept in her car while chasing stories," says Hsu, whose character Hai-yin engages in morally questionable tactics such as lying and stalking to get the best stories.
"I wanted Hai-yin to be even more ruthless, but I was told it was enough."
Hsu adds: "As celebrities, we have an understanding of reporters' jobs and their struggle between work and life. Perhaps they do certain things for views, but they can also be torn about the rights and wrongs of what they have done."
Besides Hsu and Chang, the series also stars other who's who of Taiwanese entertainment – Taiwanese-Hokkien drama actor Jason Wang, actress Ruby Lin, actor River Huang and rookie Moon Lee – in supporting roles.
Hsu, who has been good friends with Lin since they starred in romance drama The Way We Were (2014), gets only one major scene with her in The Victims' Game – a confrontation across a thick glass panel.
Hsu says with a laugh: "It was only one scene, but it proved how much chemistry we have because that glass panel was effectively soundproof. We could not hear each other at all. I watched for her mouth to stop moving before I spoke and she did the same."
Despite the sombre subject matter, Hsu is glad the script came her way.
She says: "It's relevant to our lives and many social issues today. Many people just want someone to listen to them, but don't have an outlet for their voices and some of them end up choosing extreme ways to get people to listen to them." – The Straits Times/Asia News Network
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