{"id":31737,"date":"2025-09-19T16:06:07","date_gmt":"2025-09-19T16:06:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/31737\/"},"modified":"2025-09-19T16:06:07","modified_gmt":"2025-09-19T16:06:07","slug":"directors-would-be-like-this-is-the-asian-part-slow-horses-christopher-chung-on-battling-to-become-a-leading-man-slow-horses","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/31737\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018Directors would be like: this is the Asian part\u2019: Slow Horses\u2019 Christopher Chung on battling to become a leading man | Slow Horses"},"content":{"rendered":"

Christopher Chung is no longer surprised when members of the public walk up and insult him to his face. \u201cIt happened yesterday,\u201d he says. \u201cA guy came up to me and said: \u2018Are you from Slow Horses<\/a>? You\u2019re awful.\u2019\u201d Or sometimes, it\u2019s \u201cYou\u2019re a dickhead\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut,\u201d the 37-year-old adds, the insults are usually \u201csaid with love and affection\u201d. And \u201cI want, as an actor, to have some effect, so it\u2019s really \u2026\u201d he hesitates, as if searching for the right word, \u201creally nice,\u201d he beams. Then he bursts into laughter.<\/p>\n

Whatever fans of the hit spy drama Slow Horses may think of his character, for Chung, playing the talented but abrasive hacker Roddy Ho is a dream role. \u201cThe best thing is not having to worry about the other characters\u2019 feelings. You can be as arrogant and obnoxious as you like.\u201d He perceives Roddy as \u201cslightly on the spectrum\u201d and \u201cmisunderstood\u201d; never \u201cvindictive\u201d or \u201cnasty\u201d, just \u201cegocentric\u201d and lacking a censor. \u201cSometimes, the things that he vocalises are similar to my internal voice. So it\u2019s a really fun character to play: I get to just say what I think.\u201d<\/p>\n

Spies like us \u2026 Ruth Bradley and Christopher Chung in the new series of Slow Horses. Photograph: Jack English\/Apple TV+<\/p>\n

We meet in London\u2019s Soho, not far from Slough House, the rundown east London office for disgraced MI5 spies where Roddy spends most of his time behind a computer. But in the show\u2019s new season, a series of bizarre events unfold in the city and the hacker takes a more central role. He attracts a glamorous girlfriend and \u2013 during a thrilling episode in which he wields a sword \u2013 is shown topless and declared to be \u201cripped\u201d by a colleague.<\/p>\n

Sitting opposite Chung, I remark on how unusual it is for a geeky character to be presented as physically attractive: in the novels, the hacker\u2019s defining physical characteristic is his thick black glasses. \u201cHe\u2019s just me,\u201d Chung drawls in a Roddy-ish way that makes us laugh.<\/p>\n

It becomes clear, however, that I\u2019ve touched a nerve. He tells me that, after arriving in the UK at 24 in 2012, he had to navigate a lot of \u201cunconscious bias\u201d as an actor with east Asian heritage: \u201cIt\u2019s one step forward, two steps back, consistently.\u201d He was often auditioning for roles he didn\u2019t want to play, \u201cstereotypes like the takeaway worker or the Asian nurse \u2013 peripheral characters that don\u2019t have any autonomy\u201d \u2013 and other opportunities were thin on the ground.<\/p>\n

I always thought my career ambitions would be capped at being the best friend to the lead. I never thought I\u2019d get to take that myself<\/p>\n

To have the freedom to be more choosy with his acting roles, he started working as a personal trainer: \u201cIf I didn\u2019t have that, then my career might be in a very different place.\u201d He continues the work today: \u201cI had a client this morning. I love it because it gives me an external focus, an hour that\u2019s about the client, not me. That\u2019s really healthy.\u201d<\/p>\n

But when the part as Roddy arrived, Chung \u201cwas really concerned about my physicality, because I was quite big at the time\u201d. So at his audition, he tried to \u201ccover up\u201d by wearing a hoodie. Then, after he got the part, he discovered his costume was too small and \u201cstarted to spiral, worrying they were going to want me to be this geeky Asian kid\u201d. He began to wonder how quickly he could lose muscle. His first rehearsal swiftly put paid to that idea. \u201cThey were like: \u2018No, no, no. We\u2019re going to build all of that into the character.\u2019 As soon as they said that, it was so liberating.\u201d He realised that he could portray Roddy in a way that challenged even his own beliefs about how a nerdy east Asian guy should be seen on screen: \u201cThat was the most beautiful thing given to me on this job.\u201d<\/p>\n

Acting alongside stars such as Gary Oldman, who plays Roddy\u2019s grubby, mercurial boss Jackson Lamb, has forced Chung to bring his A-game to every scene, he says: \u201cYou\u2019re trying to meet them at their level so that they don\u2019t have a dud opposite.\u201d<\/p>\n

Cast offs \u2026 (from left) Rosalind Eleazar, Christopher Chung, Saskia Reeves, Aimee-Ffion Edwards and Jack Lowden in Slow Horses. Photograph: Jack English\/Apple TV+<\/p>\n

Behind the scenes, the cast of the show are like a \u201cdysfunctional family\u201d with Oldman acting like a \u201cvery supportive\u201d father figure. There\u2019s a lot of banter and camaraderie between them all, he says, and when Oldman learned Chung could sing, the two of them recorded a version of Let It Be together \u201cjust for fun\u201d.<\/p>\n

The role has been a \u201cgamechanger\u201d for Chung: he has since been cast as a hot-headed soldier in Doctor Who, a villain\u2019s sidekick in the Steve McQueen movie Blitz, and has just finished filming the Australian Netflix period drama My Brilliant Career. In it, he plays the romantic lead, the handsome and wealthy Harry Beecham.<\/p>\n

\u201cI always thought my career ambitions would be capped at being the best friend to the lead,\u201d he says. \u201cI never thought I\u2019d get to take that myself.\u201d Previous auditions for leading roles had been unsuccessful, and for a long time he was unable to see himself playing those parts: \u201cGrowing up I was never the most desirable kid.\u201d<\/p>\n

Born to an Irish mother and a Malaysian Chinese father (they met at a party in London in the 1970s, and he often visits his mother\u2019s home town of Limerick) Chung grew up in Mornington, a suburb of Melbourne, where he was one of three or four Chinese kids in a school of 2,500. \u201cI remember kids yelling out to me in the field: \u2018Jackie Chan, do some kung fu,\u2019 all the time.\u201d Heath Ledger had been his acting idol; he was not into martial arts, and so didn\u2019t see an east Asian actor whose career he wanted to emulate.<\/p>\n

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Despite this, he loved performing from a young age and soon realised no other career held the same attraction. He took acting courses in New York and Philadelphia and then moved to London. Within six months, he was cast as Archie Wong, a student in BBC drama Waterloo Road, whose main function is to secretly help his (white) languages teacher learn to speak Mandarin. Later stints in the theatre followed, including roles as the jock Kurt in the musical version of Heathers, and Paris in Romeo and Juliet at the Globe. Then Covid-19 hit and theatres closed. Chung spent lockdown wondering whether he should take a break from acting: \u201cIf you weren\u2019t an established actor at that point, what hope did you have?\u201d<\/p>\n

On the eve of the second lockdown, he landed the part of Roddy. When his agent broke the news, \u201cI broke down on the ground and cried,\u201d Chung says. \u201cHere I was, with an opportunity to have the career I\u2019d always dreamed of.\u201d<\/p>\n

These twists and turns of Chung\u2019s career are fascinating: it\u2019s hard to imagine Roddy on stage, dancing in a musical, I say. Initially, he shrugs this off with a joke: \u201cI like to show range.\u201d But after mulling it over, he explains that in his experience, actors from minority ethnic backgrounds \u201ccan\u2019t just be good at one thing. You have to be good at everything if you want to work.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2018It\u2019s a really fun character to play\u2019 \u2026 Chung with Hiba Bennani in Slow Horses. Photograph: Apple TV+<\/p>\n

Before Slow Horses, he says, he often found himself pigeonholed by directors: \u201cThey were very much like: \u2018This is the Asian part\u2019,\u201d he says. When he was working on Waterloo Road, an executive producer suggested that a good storyline for Archie would have him \u201cgo to China on a boat\u201d. Internally, Chung thought, \u201cWhat the fuck? But I said: \u2018OK.\u2019 I didn\u2019t have the vernacular at the time to say: \u2018What are you talking about?\u2019\u201d He felt \u201cothered\u201d and that his presence on set was ticking a box.<\/p>\n

It was thanks to his wife, the Scottish actor Frances Mayli McCann, that he got past it: \u201cShe told me to keep going.\u201d Earlier this year he was nominated for best supporting actor at the Bafta TV awards, becoming the third east Asian male actor ever to be nominated. Now, he\u2019s doing everything he can to break out of \u201crace-specific\u201d roles. There needs to be more diversity \u201cacross the board, behind the camera, on the stage, the higher-ups\u201d, he says. \u201cThat\u2019s where significant change starts to happen.\u201d<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, as viewers gear up for Slow Horses\u2019 new series, he eyes the release with some trepidation. \u201cI feel a little anxious about being a bit more central,\u201d he admits. \u201cFame is not something that I ever chased. I think it\u2019s really overwhelming. You don\u2019t get any time or space for yourself.\u201d On a practical level, he says, being really famous is very expensive, because you can\u2019t easily go out. \u201cYou have to get people to go and do stuff for you \u2013 and I can\u2019t afford that,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

His personal training clients, however, are \u201cthrilled\u201d by his newfound fame: \u201cI think it\u2019s a hoot for them to be able to say: \u2018Oh, my trainer is on Slow Horses.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

Slow Horses season five is on Apple TV+ from 24 September.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Christopher Chung is no longer surprised when members of the public walk up and insult him to his…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":31738,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[430,156,111,139,69],"class_list":["post-31737","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-celebrities","tag-celebrities","tag-entertainment","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31737","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=31737"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31737\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/31738"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=31737"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=31737"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=31737"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}