Chinese actress Wu Jinyan who rose to fame for her role as Wei Yingluo in the hit drama Story of Yanxi Palace addressed a topic that seemed to be bothering her with the premiere of her new drama Knock on the Happiness Door where she teams up with co-star Nie Yuan as an onscreen couple for the third time.
She took to social media to ask, “What do you think of when you hear Wu Jinyan? I believe many still think that Wu Jinyan equals Wei Yingluo.”
She reveals that she’s very thankful to Story of Yanxi Palace producer Yu Zheng and thankful to have taken on the role as Wei Yingluo that has been loved and known by fans. However, Wu Jinyan is not equivalent to the roles she portrays. According to her, whether it’s Wei Yingluo or a controversial role, each one is a part of her life and with that, she thoroughly follows the script, gains experience through her fellow actors and expresses every role wholeheartedly.
She says, “Every character has their own feelings. Regardless of the success or failure, regardless of whether someone likes it or not, I have done all that I can for these roles. But they shouldn’t and can’t imprison me because I have more roles to shape. So I want to escape from Wei Yingluo, who brought me great glory. I’ll continue to act after tearing off these labels, and look back after several years to see where the actress Wu Jinyan has gone.”
When I first heard this, I really wondered why Wu Jinyan wouldn’t want to be associated Wei Yingluo who is a very strong and clever woman. She’s basically the badass of the whole story! However, there is also the pressure of such a successful role overshadowing future works. Wu Jinyan has had other dramas since then and continues to try to break out of the label. I truly admire the fact that she is putting away a role that gave her so much popularity in the industry to welcome exciting challenges ahead!
Knock on the Happiness Door follows Nie Yuan as Huang Zili, a doctor who faces drastic setbacks in his career and love life, but somehow manages to get by as he single-handedly cares for the old and young that his ex-wife left behind. Wu Jinyan plays the hardworking and good-natured Fang Yan who has always wanted to fight crime as a cop but settles for regular police work due to her family’s wishes. Their paths cross when the doctor and the cop coincidentally meet.
With her new drama, she hopes that everyone would like her new character as policewoman Fang Yan who is ordinary yet strong and full of warmth.
Source: 1
Yui
Her character is a police woman but isn’t she too skinny for being a policewoman? Some other actresses or actors tried to deep their characters by gaining or losing some weights based on their characters. I saw the first 2 episodes and decided to quit. She looks pretty on that pic tho
anon
Skinny policewoman is ok, don’t she use gun in modern days?
WJY did not focus on losing weight for this drama, she is on her normal weight, being a dancers she is very strong and can do great jumps. No shame on her at all. She does not need to gain weight for this drama, especially when she is strong and skinny from her own cultivation and not from starving dangerously.
What I cannot stand is actresses losing weight for Wuxia ancient dramas where they have to do kung fu. But how the freaken hell are they suppose to even perform kungfu when they that skinny, they are skinnier than sticks on the tree branches. Also, spending their focus on losing weight made them so tired that they couldn’t even perform regular scenes such as standing up. Some actresses even use others to replace her back scenes so she can go rest from starving.
Anon
It’s true that moving from such a strong character down to a weaker character can be a great challenge.
Ash
Nah, any “restrictions” she felt are all in her head. She didn’t lack variety of scripts offered to her after Yanxi Palace. It’s just whether she is versatile enough as an actress. There is absolutely no necessity for her to make such a statement if she can play each role convincingly. Her work will speak for itself.
Anonymous
She say that because there are good and bad characters to play. Weak characters are often ridicule to be bad and people often blame actor for being bad at acting even if it’s just the character having to be dumb by the screen writer. Start from top to bottom people might think you are getting worse each time. But if u start from bottom up people will have an illusion u improve each time. Strong characters are the hardest chance to come by.
jdj
its hard to overcome the image set by your character when you have a hit as big as yanxi palace and seeing how this is the third time she’s acting with nie yuan of course people are going to make comparisons to yanxi palace lol. if she has the talent and versatility to become different characters people are naturally going to start appreciating her for her talent and not hold on to “yingluo”. i don’t think its something she should worry about as its all down to public perception at the end of the day.