Original Article:https://www.weibo.com/ttarticle/p/show?id=2309404475603653886153#_0
Original Author: 魅惑山竹Q
In the Summer of 2019, he walked down that a long alley holding onto a jar of wine, his bright red hair tie fluttering in the winds behind him, and — this became the biggest crush of the year.
From “Ambush at Qiong Qi Path” and “Bloodbath at Never Night City”, from “Encirclement of Burial Grounds” to “Confrontation at Guan Yin Temple”, countless scenes from The Untamed have been relished and commented by the audiences. However, even without such grand settings and climatic stories, there are hidden details that are worth remembering.
As an experiential actor, Xiao Zhan has produced many of such details in The Untamed.
One such scene is the Yi City Arc, where Wei Wuxian is cooking glutinous rice porridge as a poison antidote. In his personal life, Xiao Zhan’s friends have proclaimed him to be a competent cook, and he is able to recreate many dishes. This skill of his was brought into his acting.
In the scene, he was holding a basin of glutinous rice and washing them seriously, taking the rice out to check the cleanliness from time to time. When he added the rice to the cooking pot, he offhandedly picked off the rice that were stuck to his hands and flicked them into the pot.
He has brought his real life experiences into his acting, and brought the sense of realism into the fantasy story of The Patriarch of Yi Ling.
Similarly, in the short clip Buying Ears, Xiao Zhan was portraying a food deliveryman. After he received the script, he took care to observe the chance encounter with an actual food deliveryman to craft his role. From the expressions to movements, from speech patterns to body language, he absorbed this information like a sponge and added these experiences to his performances.
Sniffling in the cold wind, splitting his chopsticks with his mouth such that he can open the packaging easier, flicking off stray food, the smooth pacing of the performances left no traces of “acting”. The audiences were able to empathize with the food deliveryman and were left touched and teary eyed from the performance.
This ability was not only shown in his dramas or short clips, but in his commercials as well. He mumbled to himself as he wrote, clicking off his pen as he put it down to read a text message on his phone. He represented not Xiao Zhan, but every single of his audience during their school days.
It was said that acting stems from real life. If an actor has broken away from reality and has given up on observing the world, his performances might even seem mechanical and still.
Although Xiao Zhan did not major in drama during his school days, his life and experiences as one of us gave him the ability to be experiential in his performances. His interests in painting and his previous career path as a graphic designer gave him the ability to be sensitive and observant of his surroundings.
In his future acting career, he will encounter many more different roles and embrace many different lives. Hopefully, his ability to be experiential will aid him in crafting these roles and earn the audiences’ love and praise.