Disclaimer: This My Brilliant Career interview has been edited for brevity and clarity. Full spoilers ahead!
Christopher Chung is best known for his performance as Roddy Ho in the Apple TV+ series Slow Horses. Now he is returning to his roots by portraying Harry Beecham in the Netflix limited series My Brilliant Career.
The character originates in Miles Franklin’s novel of the same name, and a much-beloved 1979 film adaptation in which the character was portrayed by the late, great Sam Neill. Now Chung is stepping into the role, marking a rare opportunity for him to play an Australian character.
LadyJenevia: My opening icebreaker is something that I’m asking everyone I’m interviewing from My Brilliant Career. What is your favorite Baz Luhrmann project?
Chung: Oh, that’s a great question. I think my favorite Baz Luhrmann project would have to be Moulin Rouge. 100%.
LadyJenevia: Good choice! I mean, all answers are correct, but nobody has chosen that one yet.
Chung: Oh, really?
LadyJenevia: Yeah.
Chung: It’s so iconic. I really wanted to be Ewan McGregor in that film when I [was] growing up.
LadyJenevia: Maybe if you do a bit of singing, you can land in whatever his next musical ends up being.
Chung: I started in musicals, so maybe that’s maybe that’s on the cards somewhere down the line. We’ve got to get this interview to Baz and make sure that that happens.
LadyJenevia: He is one of the great Australian romantic storytellers of our time, and I would say that My Brilliant Career has no shortage of romanticism. What would you say is the basis of Harry’s attraction to Sybylla?
Chung: I think the basis of Harry’s attraction to Sybylla is that he sees a lot of himself reflected in her and in her free spirit. Harry is so constrained by the societal pressures and the things that he feels are expected of him in his position. He sees how free Sybylla is within her pursuit of her career and how non-conformist she is, which is why they bond in the first instance.
They also have such an incredible connection to the land. You see in episode two when they go out into the watering hole and out into the fields and he just sees a lot of free spirit within her, which is something that he himself pines for himself.
LadyJenevia: Harry says to his aunt Augusta that she makes his life infinitely more interesting. Would you say that him being raised by a suffragette like her has made him more open-minded to being able to fall in love with someone as modern for the time as Sybylla?
Chung: Yeah, absolutely. Everyone is shaped by the people who raised them, and Augusta definitely brought him up with that kind of sensibility. He definitely has an awareness of why Sybylla is the way that she is and what she is trying to pursue by way of Gus (Augusta). One hundred percent, I think he’s definitely more interested in that aspect of it. I don’t think Harry is short of women to marry because he’s quite wealthy and he’s quite a prominent figure within that society. For him to pursue Sybylla in that way, it’s because there’s something different about her.
LadyJenevia: I spoke with your show-runner Liz, and she spoke very highly of both Philippa’s audition and also your audition. She said that it was immediately apparent that the two of you would be cast to play Sybylla and Harry. What was your preparation for auditioning to play Harry? How did your understanding of him as a character evolve once you actually booked the job and played his entire story?
Chung: This project was brought to my attention by a previous agent of mine, who’s actually Philippa’s agent. She said that ‘there’s this part that I think is right, so maybe you should get your team to look at it.’ I read it immediately and was like, ‘I have to do everything that I possibly can to get this role.’ I understood what Liz was trying to put across on the page. Also, I’ve worked on Slow Horses for a long time, which is also IP. I was able to look at how she had adapted it and tailor my performance to what I thought they were going for within this adaptation.
With Harry in particular, I felt very grounded, and it felt very close to who I am as a person. Probably more so than any of the work that I’ve done previously. Maybe because he’s Australian, but also because he’s a bit more of a sensitive soul. I definitely felt like that was the whole basis of my performance in the audition and something that I held on to when we were in production. As you go through production and you’re making the show, characters slightly change because of the world that you’re in. Auditioning is also quite isolating because it’s just you and a reader normally. Once you’re enveloped by the world, the other characters, the costume, the sets, the landscape, it does inform a lot of your performance.
One of the first scenes that we actually ended up doing was when Sybylla comes to Five-Bob, and it’s me and Charlie walking across just in their eyesight. That was the first day of production, and I was like, “Oh god, I have to walk as the character, and we haven’t… oh, I guess this is his walk now.” It’s figuring out those kinds of beats on set, but they come at you naturally when you’re in that environment.
LadyJenevia: One of the saddest character moments that Harry experiences is when some white fellas racially harass him. I interpreted their mention of opium to be a pointed callout from a writing perspective because the British were the ones who committed the war crime of flooding China with opium, just as the British are the ones who colonized Australia from its Indigenous population. Did that commonality factor into how you played Harry in things like his friendship with Charlie? Either way, was this something that you considered as an actor in bringing the world of that story to life?
Chung: Yeah, definitely. It was something that I was always really interested in from the get-go when I signed on to do the project because looking at people from my ethnicity within that time period is underrepresented in storytelling. It’s something that I really wanted to honor and make sure that I did justice to, how Harry would have experienced the world in that way. Yes, he’s very affluent. Yes, he’s got a long family lineage, but it also doesn’t take away from the racial prejudice that was running through the country at that time. That was something that I really wanted to make sure I was honoring throughout my performance.
But also to your other point, yeah, with Charlie as Harry’s best friend and them growing up together, they share that kind of experience together. Charlie was not being protected the same way that Harry was through his affluence, but he definitely sees the way in which he’s been Othered within the world. It’s only Harry’s standing in society that protects him. When he goes into spaces like the two-up tent, it’s very apparent that it’s not a universal protection.
LadyJenevia: When Harry and Sybylla are together outside, there’s a point where she disappears into the water, and he gets really upset, worrying that she might have drowned. Was that reaction something that was born out of trauma from losing his mother, perhaps? Because they didn’t fully elaborate on that, so it’s more so an implication.
Chung: That’s very good pickup. Well done. Like that’s very subtle within that moment. There’s actually a previous version of the script where when me and Sybylla are walking towards the watering hole, it’s me commenting that my father used to take my mother there when they were younger, and it was their favorite spot, and that’s why it’s so special to him. For me, he doesn’t want to have this trauma associated with that space or anything happening to someone that he’s starting to have feelings for or cares about within that space. He’s brought her here to this special place for him, and in some ways I think he feels like she’s kind of taking the piss, so that’s why he’s just like, ‘I try to do this really nice thing and share a part of myself with you.’ Then, he shuts down. When she says, ‘I was just having fun,’ he starts to see a little bit more of the world through her eyes again. That’s when he says, ‘You’re trouble,’ but with a smile.
LadyJenevia: Not every part of Harry’s story is trauma and being harassed by people. He gets to do fun things as well, like these silly, whimsical period piece dances. Can you share a bit of insight into the process of working on learning those dances and then actually performing them on the day?
Chung: What was really great about the first dance sequence that we have at Augusta’s birthday party is we learned the whole sequence, we had a lot of professional dancers within the room, and then the cast joined in. I can move, I can dance, I can get things down with like a little bit of rehearsal. But in this instance, I was feeling like I wasn’t going to get this down. I managed to get myself into a position where I thought, maybe Augusta can pull me up halfway through, Harry can be a crappy dancer at the start [laughter]’ and then he starts to join in and then that’s when he he meets Sybylla.
The second dance sequence, though, was great fun because we had a lot of extras in that barn scene. We had a little bit of rehearsal time to get that under our belts, but everybody was really up for it, and it was supposed to be a bit more rowdy and fun. That was definitely one of the more kind of jubilant days on set. Great times.
LadyJenevia: I know it’s not an actor’s job to judge their characters, but more so to empathize with them instead. Having said that, Harry says to Sybylla that he’s worthless without the Beecham fortune. Do you think Harry derives a lot, perhaps too much of his self-worth from being able to help others and provide for them and often doing so through money?
Chung: I think it’s more his self-worth comes from honoring what his father would have done. It’s always being led by being the best person. The thing about Harry is that he’s always trying to do the right thing for everyone, but he’s not always getting it exactly right. He thinks that by going off and not marrying Sybylla, he’s doing the right thing, honoring her because, ‘I’ve promised you a life that I can’t give you anymore. I have to honor that promise and I have to go and make my money again so that I can give you that life that I promised.’ At the end of this series, when he does come back to propose to her again, he doesn’t have everything that he thought he would have for her, but he’s like, ‘You know what? I’ve been an idiot. Like I know that I love you and that’s got to be enough for us.’ So I think it’s coming to that self-realization that, for him anyway, you don’t have to have everything, like all your ducks in that row. You just have to know exactly what you want and go for it.
LadyJenevia: What do you hope viewers will take away from watching My Brilliant Career?
Chung: I hope viewers take away from watching My Brilliant Career a broader scope of Australia of what it would have been like back in the 1900s. We’ve really expanded the story from the original. I hope viewers have a good time, and a sense of questioning what you want in the world and what you want to pursue, and young girls see a relentless possibility of what’s possible for them.
My Brilliant Career is streaming now on Netflix.
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