Interview: Director Sean Wang and Star Joan Chen on the Award-Winning Coming of Age Dramedy ‘Dìdi (弟弟)’

When I talked to Sean Wang in San Francisco last February, his life was in a bit of a surreal whirlwind. A month prior, he was nominated for the Documentary Short Oscar for his film Nǎi Nai and Wài Pó and then later that same day world premiered his first feature film, Dìdi (弟弟), at the Sundance Film Festival, which would go on to win the Audience Award for U.S. Dramatic and the U.S. Dramatic Special Juried Award for Ensemble. Not long after that, Focus Features picked up the film and brought Wang and I back together in San Francisco, this time with the film’s co-star, legendary actress and director Joan Chen (Xiu Xiu: The Sent Down Girl, Twin Peaks).

Dìdi (弟弟) takes place in 2008 in Fremont, California and like Wang’s previous documentary shorts, is heavily steeped in the life of his friends and family and his experiences growing up in the Bay Area. While it pulls from familiar coming of age stories like Stand By Me or Superbad, Wang felt he was on the outside looking in, rarely if ever seeing himself in them. In our brief chat this week, Wang opened up about why he needed to make the biographical Dìdi (弟弟), casting Izaac Wang to play a version of him and more. Chen, playing Wang’s mother in the film, revealed working with Wang’s real-life mother to help create an accurate and nuanced version of her that included speech patterns and vocal style. When asked if she gave Wang any advice as a fellow director she said “I gave him zero directing tips!” with a laugh. “She gave me good tips in the form of asking good questions, just coming in prepared and asking questions about the character and things that I had never thought about,” Wang replied.

Here is my conversation with Sean Wang and Joan Chen on creating Dìdi (弟弟).

Erik Anderson: Welcome to San Francisco, again.

Sean Wang: We’re back.

EA: Yes, it’s a good day for it. It’s a beautiful day. All right, let’s jump right in.

EA: With Dìdi (弟弟), you’re telling a coming-of-age story, and I’m sure a lot of your touchstones for movies like this were largely white American teen versions of them. What did you not see in those films that you knew that you wanted or needed to see in this? And how did the script change through that process?

Sean: An Asian kid (laughs). No, but I mean, yeah, I think you’re right. I think sometimes you see a version of something that you’re like, whoa, I didn’t even know I wanted to see that. And I think a lot of it was my own growing up and looking back and getting the confidence as I grew as a filmmaker to look a little bit more inward and have the confidence to put things and stories on screen that reflected my own life in ways that I hadn’t really seen before. And it all stemmed from a short that I had made in 2017 called 3000 Miles that… Erik is thumbs-upping… that was just chronicled by my mom’s voicemails, and she speaks to me in Chinese.

And it was the first thing I made that was very personal and kind of gave me the confidence to look inward a little bit more and actually have the confidence to write a feature in a movie that starred an Asian kid and starred a bunch of kids in the Bay Area that felt a little bit more closer to the kids that I knew growing up, that I felt like I hadn’t seen in any of the movies that I loved growing up, that again, were always sort of starring white American kids. And so, that was the exercise and just kind of seeing what it could be. And it eventually became much more of a mother-son story encased in a movie like Stand By Me or Superbad or 400 Blows.

EA: I love that. Joan, I have to tell you that your performance has touched so many people that I’ve talked to; they gravitate to you and to your performance. Did you work at all with Sean’s mother in “how” to play her or how did that unfold?

Joan Chen: I mean, from the script, I mean, everything is written there already, and I personally relate to it very much because we have a lot of similar experiences being immigrant mother, raising two American children, but obviously, we’re two different people. And I think for this particular character, I know that he wrote it based on his own mom. So, I did want to know his mom and to see if I could incorporate her elements into the character. Sean did extensive interviews with his mom, and so he showed me the videos and I looked at how she told the stories about her life and how she talked. And then I had Sean’s mom record every line that I have in the film.

EA: Oh, wow.

JC: Yeah. So, I want to see, I would obviously say, okay, I’m going to say it this way. This is how it feels. And sometimes it could jolt me a bit like, oh, she actually says it that way. Is that more interesting? Or just something you try to have this exercise, a background study. And so, we did that. And then the backstory was very detailed. I remember it’s like an entire page of extremely detailed backstory.

SW: Yeah. I felt like writing a novella.

JC: Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, all of it helped me to enrich the character, so to have her be more well-rounded, more three-dimensional.

EA: I love that. Sean, tell me about casting Izaac, your proxy in the film, and how you got him to this 2008 level of MySpace and flip phones and what that learning process was for him.

SW: I guess a bit of a two-part answer, but casting Izaac was… He was one of the first kids that we saw because a lot of the kids in the movie are first-time-round actors, but Izaac has been acting since he was eight. And you see a casting, our casting call lands in his manager agent’s hand. Of course he’s going to put Izaac up to audition for this. It’s an obvious fit. I think the challenge became, okay, we saw him, and he auditioned, and he’s a great actor. He’s been in things before. The thing with Izaac, and these are his words, not mine, but I think for a lot of the roles that he’s played up until now, he kind of feels like he’s playing a version of himself. He is in all the things. He’s very cool and confident and dripping with swag, and he is very, very cool in real life.

And the challenge became, immediately when we met him, we were like, okay, there’s something interesting here. He’s trained, but he’s not a proper like, hi, nice to meet you, like very polite. He’s kind of a punk in the best way. And I was always like, that’s really interesting, but he’s so cool. And it was, I think, difficult for him to shed that part of himself for the character in our first few Zooms. But I was always, oh, if we can get him to have the ability to be loud and angsty, and Wang Wang is not not cool. He’s just not the coolest. And so, it was always, if we can find that heartbeat of vulnerability and insecurity and all of this that he’s kind of doing to be on top of this desperate need to be accepted and feel a sense of belonging, then I think we’ll have something really, really interesting.

And then I think it was a very long process of similar writing backstory for Izaac, giving it to him. And then each time we got on Zoom, it felt like we were getting closer and closer to something that felt was what we needed for Chris. There were moments in that process where I remember he kind of embodied the character in reading the script and the auditions, and then we would improv, but he was improving as Izaac, and it was like, no, no, no, no. Improv as Chris. And I think it was just slowly getting him there. And eventually, we got there, and it felt really electric and alive.

And then as far as the MySpace stuff, that’s the short answer. It was just, it wasn’t important to me that he knew all that stuff. I’d never sat down with him and showed him MySpace or talked to him about the meaning of MySpace or something. Kids are on Instagram these days. The context is different, but the emotions are the same. So, we built all the MySpace stuff in post. So, I never bogged him down with that information that, to me, just was irrelevant for his character.

EA: Joan, you are an accomplished director yourself. Did you have any advice or guidance for Sean, or what was that relationship like as an actor and director?

JC: I gave him zero directing tips or anything (laughs). He wrote the script, and he knows this world. I mean, he’s creating this world that he’s experienced in his life. And so, I chose to just trust him and I’m glad that I could.

SW: She gave me good tips in the form of asking good questions, just coming in prepared and asking questions about the character and things that I had never thought about. And then just me kind of being like, whew, that’s a good question. And the one thing I learned at the director’s lab, the best thing you can say and do and admit to yourself is saying, I don’t know the answer yet. And she would ask me a lot of really great questions where I was like, I don’t know the answer to that yet. I’m going to go do my homework and I’ll get back to you. And it made me understand the character more. It made me do my homework. And I think, again, that’s work with someone as brilliant as her and it ups your game. I think she did that for everybody.

EA: I imagine so. I think I read that you said you want to do a John Wick-style movie, is that true?

SW: (laughs) Wow, news travels fast.

EA: I think I might speak for everyone in that, yes, that would be a great idea.

SW: I said I wanted to do John Wick starring Joan Chen.

EA: Okay. See. [shows them my notes saying ‘Joan Wick’]

JC: It’s Joan Wick.

SW: Joan Wick. It’s only Joan Wick, not John Wick.

EA:  I wrote that it has to have your grandma and it has to bring Joan in too.

SW: That’s the rumor we should spread.

EA: All right, that’s a good rumor. I will call as many people as I need to work that out.

JC: Okay. All right. Let’s do it.

Dìdi (弟弟) is now playing in select theaters and will expand wider on August 16.