Who’s that girl?
Hong Kong actress Kara Wai talks about the challenge of playing a character with multiple personality disorder.
KARA Wai’s latest drama role is so complicated that she sometimes doesn’t even remember who she is.
The Hong Kong actress told this to reporters during the blessing ceremony for the thriller drama Detective Investigation Diaries.
She was accompanied by fellow cast members Vincent Wong, Philip Keung and Benjamin Yuen.
The drama is a collaborative effort between TVB, Youku, and US production company Imagine Entertainment. In the new drama, Wai plays a mother with dissociative identity disorder (DID), a condition formerly known as multiple personality disorder (MPD).
Her co-star Wong plays her son, who also suffers from the same condition. The difference is in the number of alternate identities each has to deal with.
Since the producers had cautioned cast members not to reveal the plot, Wai could only talk about how she interpreted her new role.
“My character is much more challenging to portray. Vincent has got three different identities. But mine is likely more than five or six.
“I also suffer from mental illness and hallucinations. These involve several major criminal cases, and the imaginary individuals that emerge are different as well.
“And when facing my ‘three’ sons, I’ve also got three different attitudes.”
Wai, 60, described how she has to take time to read the script in detail every day, to gauge the depth of her illness and keep track of how far she has to go in her portrayal in each episode.
“Sometimes she gets better and other times worse, so I have to define these varying stages very clearly.
“During my scenes with Vincent, I’ll ask him which ‘son’ he is portraying,” she joked.
“Having been in the film and TV industry for so long, this is my toughest role yet. I’m afraid that if I make even a small mistake, viewers will be able to spot it. It’s definitely tougher than filming action scenes,” said Wai, the award-winning actress who is best known for her fierce fighting roles in more than 150 action-packed films and TV series.
Wai is a three-time winner of Hong Kong Film awards for best actress: My Young Auntie (1982), At The End Of Daybreak (2010) and Happiness (2017).