Derek Tsang on directing Netflix’s viral sci-fi series ‘3 Body Problem’ and why Wong Kar-wai is his hero

While Tsang would be responsible for only a quarter of the eight episodes, taking on the first two meant he would set the tone and context for the rest. Adding to the challenge was the fact that the series opens during the Cultural Revolution, one of the most controversial chapters of Chinese history, when intellectuals were persecuted; Ye is a scientist, as was her father. It was the latter’s being brutally whipped to death by the Red Guards that set off Ye’s quest for vengeance, which in turn sets off everything that follows.

“It’s a very powerful scene and amazing opening for a story,” Tsang says. “My responsibility was to be as truthful to the book and as authentic to that era as possible, so that people who are familiar with or went through that part of history can say, ‘Oh, wait, this is quite close to what happened.’ That was what I really wanted to achieve.”

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While the Hong Kong-born, Vancouver-raised 44-year-old wasn’t born until after the Cultural Revolution had ended, he says it has “always been a very fascinating part of our history that I’m very familiar with. When I was young, I would hear stories about what happened during that time from my grandma, who’s from Shanghai. She has friends who have been through that era.” There is also plenty of research material, of course. “A lot of good films were made in the 1980s and 1990s that were about the Cultural Revolution. I grew up watching those, and re-watched a lot of them [ahead of filming] to immerse myself in that era and get some of the historical nuances and details right.”

It was watching a wide variety of film genres that drove Tsang into the industry in the first place. “Around the age of 14, I started watching a lot of films not just from Hong Kong, but also from all over the world and different eras,” he says, naming Hong Kong auteur Wong Kar-wai as “the one director who really opened my eyes” and inspired him to delve into French films that Wong frequently references; this sent him further down movie rabbit holes. “They opened a lot of windows for me to take a glimpse into other people’s lives. They made me believe in the power of storytelling.”

Tsang would go on to study sociology at the University of Toronto, which cemented his fascination with issues around him—so much so that, when he returned to Hong Kong to launch his film career, he’d always “find stories with a kind of social critique” for his movies, a trait that is starkly different from the Hong Kong commercial action and crime films and the mainstream comedy work his father, renowned film actor and producer Eric Tsang Chi-wai, has tended to do.

For instance, Better Days was inspired by his observation of bullying and the pressure put on students during the gaokao, or public exams, when he was working on the mainland from the mid- 2000s to the 2010s. “The amount of time and sacrifices that families and these kids made to do well at the exams was mind-blowing for me. Then there’s the number of videos that you could see online of kids just doing very brutal stuff to each other,” he says. “I wanted to make a film that tackles these issues, to find out why people do that to each other, and [look into] the complexity of how much gaokao means to these students despite the high pressure.”

Tsang’s filmic experience is broad: as well as the sci-fi of 3 Body Problem and drama of Better Days, he has appeared in an action crime film, Triad (2012), while his solo directorial debut Soul Mate (2016) is a romantic drama. “I don’t have a concrete and unique style. I’m still learning and evolving,” he explains. “It really comes down to how this story interests me because it moves me. So what [steers] me more than creating my distinct directorial style is finding the best way to tell each of them. That, for me, is the most important thing."

Tsang, who has one foot in the west and the other in Asia, has a couple of projects in the works set in his hometown. “I’m a Hongkonger, so I want to do something about Hong Kong,” he says. “It’s incredible that a city of this size has this rich, cinematic history. There’s not that many places in the world that have our film history. That’s something we should all be very proud of.”

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