Maxance Vincent
Warning: The following article and video interview contain spoilers for all episodes of 3 Body Problem.
For Jess Hong, starring in Netflix’s 3 Body Problem was her first big foray into television, as she tells Awards Radar on Zoom. In the series, Hong plays Jin Cheng, the scientist who steps into the world of the San-Ti video game after being given a headset by Ye Wenjie (Rosalind Chao) in the wake of Vera’s death. The character is based on Cheng Xin from Liu Cixin’s Death’s End, the third book in his Remembrance of the Earth’s Past trilogy.
Jin’s adventure in the video game sets up most of the series’ events, as she directly communicates with the San-Ti through the figure of the Sophon (Sea Shimooka), leading her to work directly with Thomas Wade (Liam Cunningham) on the Staircase Project in preparation for their arrival.
In stepping into the world of the series, the actor admits that she didn’t know how collaborative the experience would be. However, after meeting with showrunners David Benioff, D.B. Weiss, and Alexander Woo, the three began to adapt Jin Cheng based on details from Hong’s background in New Zealand:
“I didn’t think it would be that collaborative, but they sought my opinion of Jin and how I would bring her to life. The character comes from the third book, so she has a whole person there. But the way they wrote her into the scripts was much more 3D. Even in my meetings with them, they would incorporate these small details of me, Jess Hong, into the character, like she grew up in New Zealand. That wasn’t there originally, but they met me and said, “Oh, that’s an interesting accent. Let’s work that into the script.” So they’re constantly making these small shifts to add all these textures and layers into the character that otherwise wouldn’t have been there. I also asked them many questions, and I can be annoying like that because I want to know what their opinion is and what they perceived about her while they’re juggling a million other tasks, but I’m still like, “No, but what do you think about my character?” [laughs]. It really was a team effort.”
3 Body Problem’s central relationship with the Oxford Five is at the forefront of the series. It’s part of the reason why the characters feel so relatable and how natural their chemistry is, which Hong believes is due to how they got along by hanging out together and getting to know more about themselves:
“I feel like we’re a really awesome bunch. We’re quite eclectic. We all come from different backgrounds, and we have different acting methods. But we all get along, which is really important. In any friend group, there are also different dynamics between each subgroup. Jack [John Bradley] and Will [Alex Sharp] have a totally different vibe or dynamic from Jin and Will, Jin and Auggie [Eiza Gonzalez], and vice versa. There’s a lot of complexity there.
Derek Tsang, who directed the first two episodes, got us together in a group rehearsal so that we could just kind of test out the chemistry with each other inside the scene. That’s the pub scene in Oxford after Vera’s funeral. But we were also hanging out on set, in the green room, talking shit and poking each other. I quickly learned that no one in that group is afraid to tease or taunt the other, which is great.”
In stepping into the world of the San-Ti video game, Hong admits that shooting these sequences was particularly challenging, even though she is used to imagining the entire world around her through her background in theater.
“I definitely had never done it to this scale and for the screen before. To spend three months inside a blue-lined, gigantic studio set was pretty intense, I’m not gonna lie. But I was lucky because John Bradley was next to me most of that time. If not John, maybe some other actors, like Eve Ridley, who was 10 when we filmed. You rely on whoever is on the scene with you to check in and go, “Hey, our job’s really f–ing weird, isn’t it? Yeah, our job’s really f–ing weird. Cool. Cool. Cool.”
You then play the scene out because there’s still an emotional journey at its core. There’s still an arc to be played out, and Jin Cheng is also particularly emotionally connected in the game, so I could play into that. But she also has a crazy ambition and needs to solve every single problem in front of her. I could also work with that motivation to drive everything forward. Those game scenes were so great because they actually provide a bit of levity and a fantastical element to break up some of the heavier or more dramatic sequences in real life.”
Despite Jack being killed in the third episode by Tatiana (Marlo Kelly), Jin is still curious to figure out what the San-Ti ultimately wants and is willing to infiltrate a meeting held by their followers to help Clarence Shi (Benedict Wong) and Wade gather information. For Hong, Jin’s curiosity is her only way to unpack how the world works, and there would be no way in which she would not continue her journey to know what the aliens want:
“She’s the curious cat that never gets killed, somehow, she keeps evading it. She thrusts herself into dangerous situations, but she can’t help it. First, it was her way of surviving as an orphan who had moved from place to place. Secondly, the thing she loves most is solving the world’s mysteries and unpacking how the world works around us.
There’s no way that she wouldn’t continue on that mission. She’s given an opening to keep pulling the thread. She’s gonna keep pulling the thread! You literally have to stop her for that to end physically. So even though in the scene where she, Jack, and Tatiana have met for the first time, I think she definitely gets some heebie-jeebies from Tatiana. She’s like, “You’re a bit suspicious. However, you have the knowledge that I want, or you can connect me to the people who have the knowledge that I want.” As we discover in the next episode, there’s a more emotionally charged reason for her to go to that conference and continue on that journey.”
This emotionally charged reason is revealed in the fourth episode, where Jin finds out that Ye Wenjie is its leader, now realizing that she’s been purposefully given Vera’s headset to unlock its secrets. We discussed working with Rosalind Chao in building this dynamic in our video interview, seen below, alongside Jin’s contrast in the video game and the real world, how her friendship with Auggie takes a rift as she works closer with Wade, and the past relationship Jin had with Will.
You can check out my full interview with Jess below and stream all episodes of 3 Body Problem on Netflix today:
[Some of the quotes in this article have been edited for length and clarity]
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