Actress Fala Chen on Irma Vep, Shang-Chi, parallels with Maggie Cheung and the Louis Vuitton catsuit she had to wear on set

Fala Chen tells the Post about playing an actress making a vampire film in HBO series Irma Vep, Olivier Assayas’ reworking of his film starring Maggie Cheung

She talks about the most French part of the shoot, having an ‘almost identical’ career path to Cheung and being offered only Chinese roles after Shang-Chi

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Actress Fala Chen, who appears in the HBO series Irma Vep, says her career has many parallels with that of Maggie Cheung, who played her character in a film version of the story.

Published: 11:24am, 27 Jun 2022Updated: 4:21pm, 30 Jun 2022

She emerges from an antique chest, dressed in a skin-tight black catsuit. Hypnotised, she slips down a hall like a wraith, on a mission to sabotage the Grand Vampire of a criminal gang. It’s Fala Chen in her latest role – as Cynthia Keng, an Asian star playing a version of Irma Vep.

In the new series written and directed by Olivier Assayas, Alicia Vikander plays a Hollywood celebrity, Mira Holberg, who appears in the title role of Irma Vep. The eight-part series reworks a 1996 film which starred Maggie Cheung Man-yuk. The whole concept started from a 1915 French serial called Les Vampires.

For Chen, all the roles and time periods became a dizzying mix of fact and fiction. Like most of the characters in the script, Cynthia’s experiences echoes the actor’s own career, from her work in Hong Kong television dramas and movies to her experiences as an outsider in France.

“Most of us in the series play two characters,” she says. “We’re both the actors on set and the characters in the vampire story they are trying to film. I was uber aware of being watched, of how I presented myself.”

When playing Cynthia, Chen chose what she called a “naturalistic or realistic” style of acting.