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Why Netflix action drama The Brothers Sun, with Michelle Yeoh, has family at its heart, and how the ‘welcoming’ Oscar winner put her co-stars at ease

  • The Everything Everywhere star joins Hollywood newcomers Sam Song Li and Justin Chien in an all-Asian series on Netflix about a family with gangland links
  • Action sequences and twists aside, it is the familial themes that resonate most with her two co-stars, who had their nerves eased by Yeoh’s motherly aura on set

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Stars of Netflix show ‘The Brothers Sun’ dish on working with Oscar winner Michelle Yeoh

Stars of Netflix show ‘The Brothers Sun’ dish on working with Oscar winner Michelle Yeoh

Following her critically acclaimed role in Everything Everywhere All At Once and an appearance in the Disney+ TV show American Born Chinese, Oscar winner Michelle Yeoh returns to the action genre in the upcoming Netflix series The Brothers Sun.

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She is joined by Hollywood newcomers Justin Chien and Sam Song Li in the eight-episode show, the latest US series to feature an all-Asian cast.

To be released on January 4, The Brothers Sun is interlaced with black comedy and familial themes in a classic tale of two colliding worlds.

Yeoh plays Eileen “Mama” Sun, whose sons live vastly different lives: firstborn Charles Sun (Chien) has become a hardened Taiwanese gangster under his crime boss father (Johnny Kou), while his unsuspecting brother, Bruce Sun (Li), has been shielded from his family’s criminal activities by Eileen, who raised him in California.

When an assassination attempt is made on the Sun family patriarch, Charles flies from Taipei to Los Angeles to protect his family – and Bruce, his world upended, learns the true nature of the family’s profession as mother and sons navigate their new normal and avoid dangerous adversaries.

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