Reality show takes toll
B.C.-raised Godfrey Gao, the world’s first Asian male supermodel, dies
Godfrey Gao, 35, the world’s first Asian male supermodel, who grew up in Vancouver and became a celebrity in China, died Wednesday in China while filming a physically intense reality show called Chase Me.
The cause was given as a heart attack by JetStar Entertainment, his management agency. Gao, who was once hired by the Canadian government to promote Canada to Asian tourists in a series of ads, was shooting an episode of the reality show in Ningbo, Zhejiang, a port city near Shanghai.
The show involves filming at night as contestants race through obstacles, and Gao reportedly slowed down, collapsed and fell while running, after saying out loud that he could not continue.
Camera operators continued to shoot him as his heart stopped, as if thinking it was part of the show, according to several news reports.
Taiwan News reported that CPR on scene caused Gao to regain a heartbeat after three minutes of arrest before he was taken to hospital. He was pronounced dead in hospital about three hours later in the early morning after life-saving efforts failed.
“He has unfortunately left us, leaving us extremely shocked and saddened, and we are still unable to accept this,” the JetStar Entertainment statement said. “His family has rushed to the scene. Please understand Godfrey’s family is experiencing deep sorrow and grief, and avoid excessive disturbance to them. We will accompany Godfrey’s family in handling the relevant matters with a low profile.”
Zhejiang Television, which produces the show, issued a statement pledging to take responsibility and improve safety on their show.
Gao’s body was said to have been sent to his birthplace of Taipei on Wednesday.
He was born Tsao Chihhsiang in Taiwan in 1984 to a Taiwanese father who worked for the Michelin tire company and a Malaysian mother of Chinese descent who was once a beauty pageant winner.
He grew up in North Vancouver after the family relocated there, attending Argyle Secondary School and later playing basketball at Capilano University. He got some early modelling work as a living mannequin in a Richmond, B.C., mall, and moved to Taiwan in 2004, seeking the limelight. He has lived in both places since.
A series of acting roles made him an emerging star in China. His lead role in the romantic television series Remember Lichuan, for example, earned him the nickname “nation’s husband” in China.
But for Western audiences, his big break came in 2011 and is regarded as an important moment for Asian representation in Western media. He was hired as the first Asian model for luxury design house Louis Vuitton, posing in a major campaign with expensive messenger bags that had become fashionable among increasingly wealthy and style conscious Chinese men.
Since then, Gao has also worked for Salvatore Ferragamo and appeared on runways at top shows in Milan and Paris.
But his real fame was always as an actor in China, where as an ethnic Chinese man with a Western upbringing, including exotic pursuits like hockey and basketball, he held a special attraction.
Gao played a warlock in the 2013 Hollywood action film The Mortal Instruments: City of Bones, and was the Mandarin voice of Ken, Barbie’s partner, in Toy Story 3.
In 2015, the Canadian Tourism Commission, now Destination Canada, an agency of the federal government, hired him for a campaign of ads shot in Vancouver, Toronto and Whistler, B.C., to promote Canada to Asian tourists.