James Wen on Working with Alyssa Chia for HBO Asia’s “The World Between Us”

By addy April 10, 2019

HBO Asia TV drama The World Between Us <我們與惡的距離> stars Alyssa Chia (賈靜雯) and James Wen (溫昇豪) as a grieving couple mourning for their deceased son, who was a victim of a mass shooting at a movie theater. Unable to move on from the pain, Alyssa becomes easily irritable and is unable to hold back her anger while James develops depression. The couple often fight, and they struggle to maintain their marriage.

“We didn’t need to do much work to make the characters dimensional,” explained James. “The script was compact and we all just followed the flow of the narrative. In the story, my wife is someone who grieves openly, while I am someone who holds down my emotions and grieves in silence. I need to appear strong to protect the marriage, and we also had another child to take care of. He may appear strong, but he is actually in a lot of pain. As actors of this story, we didn’t need to find a way to show you what our characters are feeling. We just followed wherever the script took us.”

To perfectly capture the emotions of a grieving family, James was asked if he would imagine his own family going through the same pain. The actor, who has a five year old daughter, said, “I will not. This is too sad. As actors we would not associate our families with the performance. It is neither human nor moral to do so.”

The World Between Us is written by two-time Golden Bell winner Lü Shih-yuan (呂蒔媛) and directed by Lin Chun-yang (林君陽). It premiered in Taiwan on PTS on March 24, 2019.

“The World Between Us” Trailer