Joan Chen (‘Dìdi’) on the complexity of portraying ‘a playful, artistic, and gentle, confused immigrant mother’

“I never had the kind of rebellion that Chris the character had in ‘Dìdi,’” shares Joan Chen on how her adolescent years differed significantly from those depicted in the Sean Wang movie. Unlike the protagonist, who grew up in 2008 and navigated friends and romantic feelings the digital age, Chen grew up in China during the cultural revolution, and her peers were fearful of “being sent down to remote areas to be reeducated.” Focused on “how to get enough nutrition,” the award-winning actress “never had the luxury” of acting out like her on-screen son, but she was lucky enough to be selected during her “first year in high school to star in a film,” which changed the trajectory of her life. Watch our full video interview above.

In many ways, Chen’s personal experiences mirrored her character Chungsing’s own. The actress says the role felt like “an opportunity for me to express myself,” mentioning, “I did go through much of motherhood the same way that Chungsing went through.” What most appealed to the star when she read the script was how the role differed from the “stereotypical tiger mom, strict matriarch.” Instead, Chungsing is “a playful, artistic, and gentle, confused immigrant mother.” She says that her confusion stems from “the cultural chasm that came from you and your child, and that I have experienced personally, so I did relate to that character very deeply.”

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The first time the audience sees Chungsing, she is painting at her easel. The character’s hobby of painting is very meaningful to Chen, who notes, “There is this unspoken longing in her. She is constantly in that state of longing, and that’s her peaceful, alone time, solitude that she needed in order to sustain this life that she is in.” Indeed, being able to withdraw into artwork helps Chungsing navigate being a mother “without knowing exactly how” as well as being seen as a “bad daughter-in-law.” The film explains that Chungsing had to set aside her personal ambitions of becoming a professional painter in order to care for her children, which is a sacrifice the celebrated actress knows well: “When I was a new mother, when the children were very young, I did stop working, and that was difficult. I really missed working, somehow, something in me, something so important, is missing.”

One of Chen’s many standout scenes in “Dìdi” is her confrontation with her mother-in-law Nǎi Nai, who is played by one of Wang’s own grandmothers, Zhang Li Hua and who starred in his Oscar-nominated short film “Nǎi Nai and Wài Pó.” The scene, in which Chungsing stands up for herself against criticism from her elder, is equal parts heartbreaking and empowering. “I imagine that was her very first time ever standing up for herself, and somehow there are moments like that in our lives that we somehow became courageous and brave enough and true to ourselves,” reflects the performer on the power of the moment. The pain intrinsic to the scene is amplified by a conversation she and writer-director Wang had in which they speculated that Chungsing’s husband perhaps “has either a girlfriend or another family in Taiwan,” whereas Chungsing “would never do anything like that… she would ‘t go out with any men at all.”

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This scene, and many others like it, encapsulates the emotional maturity of the young Sean Wang. As Chen notes of her collaborator, “The kind of maturity he had to reconcile with that relationship with his own mother, to realize the love and sacrifice his mother has made for him, the kind of consideration, introspection, and also, in his word , to truly see his mother, was very moving to me.” This was another facet of “Dìdi” that appealed to the star, who notes that a lot of “coming of age stories” feature parents or mothers who are “the obstacle” to the protagonist, whereas “in this film, it’s completely different. It’s a love letter to his mom.”

Chen’s greatest moment is a monologue she delivers to her son Chris (Izaac Wang) at the end of the film when he returns home after running away. They have a frank conversation in which Chungsing admits that she’s surprised by the ordinariness of her life but that her son and daughter have become her dream. The actress says that the film actually helped costar Izaac “have a better relationship with him own mother” after spending “24 hours a day” together on set and in the hotel during production. It also means something personally to the star, too. She explains that one of her daughters worked on the film as a production assistant and had the opportunity to see Chen perform the monologue. “It’s something I should have said with my own daughters… To listen to what I had to say to Chris, I’m saying it to her for the first time, my 22-year-old. I never had the chance to reconcile the adolescent years… for me to have this opportunity was so cathartic and redemptive,” describes the actress. She adds, “That was the scene that most moved me as I was doing it.”

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