For Chien, who grew up between Taiwan and Hong Kong, it was The Brothers Sun’s emphasis on family that drew him to the show.
“I felt like it had tremendous resonance and [similarities] to my personal background, but also to what’s important in my life, which is my family,” he says.
“I grew up very close to my family – respect was a really important aspect of our upbringing. We used to have family dinners every Sunday night, and that was just a really easy place for me to draw from.”
“When I first read the audition, the first time I saw the breakdown, I went, ‘Whoa, whoa, hold on, hold on,’” he says.
“[Bruce] is a college student who wanted to pursue improv [comedy], wanted to pursue the performing arts – he’s studying for something else; he has a single mom who disapproves of what he wants. That sounds an awfully lot like my life.
“So immediately, I just saw a lot of myself in Bruce. Roles like this kind of come once in a lifetime, and I just remembered feeling really excited that there was a role like that that was being cast, that I felt like I was quite right for.”
I was like, holy c**p, Michelle Yeoh just fist-bumped me. That was tremendously validating and fulfilling.
The Brothers Sun was even filmed in the area where Li grew up – the San Gabriel Valley to the east of Los Angeles.
He says: “I feel the setting of the San Gabriel Valley is very authentic to me and to what I personally experienced. So it felt very familiar, and I just felt like Bruce. I felt like I was able to have a whole life here, because I did.”
“The first time I worked with her, it was actually the pre-read audition scene, so I knew that scene like the back of my hand,” Chien says. “[But] I remember feeling real, real nervous.
“She walks in, everyone sits up straight. I remember we rehearsed a scene … and afterwards, she looks over at me and she smiles, and she just gives me a fist bump.
“I was like, holy c**p, Michelle Yeoh just fist-bumped me. That was tremendously validating and fulfilling. In my mind, if Michelle Yeoh is giving me a fist bump, then I think I’m headed in the right direction.”
Li was similarly star-struck upon meeting Yeoh, but the two were able to quickly build their mother-son chemistry thanks to Yeoh’s warm demeanour and Li’s personal experience growing up with a single mother, the actor says.
“I feel like there’s something so inviting, so welcoming about Michelle’s presence. She’s somebody where if you stepped into a room with her and you have a five-minute chat with her, you feel like you’ve known this woman for five years. She gives off that effect.”
There were some memorable moments during the production of the show. For Li, one of his favourites was filming a scene in a nightclub in the first episode.
“I’ve never quite seen something done like that before … It was an eye-opening experience for me, in terms of movie magic,” he says.
“We did this really insane tracking shot – one big Steadicam shot – where basically for a minute, two minutes, it follows Charles, and then Bruce, and then [Bruce’s best friend] TK all sort of meeting for the first time.
“There [were] 100 people on set, at least 100, just for background, but we all had to choreograph how to move with the camera because it was doing 360 [degree] spins around the whole club.”
Chien’s most treasured memory of the show, fittingly, comes back to family..
“I remember the first day she showed up on set, and she saw her own trailer – it had her character name on it,” Chien says. “She got to go into hair and make-up, and everyone was really excited to meet her.”
“My mom dreamt of being an actress when she was a kid, when she was growing up in Hong Kong,” he adds. “So I could tell the whole day she was trying to keep this smile in, and that just meant so much to me.”
The Brothers Sun begins streaming on Netflix on January 4.