E-Junkies: Thai actor Nonkul memorised his Mandarin lines 100 times for drama Oh No! Here Comes Trouble

Acting in a foreign language for the first time is a difficult feat, but just how many times must actors memorise their lines to nail it?

Speaking to AsiaOne recently for the Taiwanese action-comedy fantasy drama series Oh No! Here Comes Trouble, young Thai actor Chanon Santinatornku, commonly known as Nonkul, shared about his challenges acting in the show. This is his first Mandarin-speaking role.

Nonkul said: "I haven't mastered Mandarin so I cannot improvise the scene yet, so I needed to stick to the script 100 per cent. I needed to memorise the script many, many times to be able to nail the dialogue… I had to memorise the lines at least 100 times."

As his character Yang Ning struggles a lot with negative feelings toward his brother's tragic sacrifice, there were many crying scenes.

Nonkul opened up about overcoming this challenge: "When I started out in my acting career, I found myself quite an insensitive person. I found it hard to cry, especially on camera, so I went to a lot of acting schools to improve on it.

"Just like many athletes need to go for training — like a boxer needs to train for boxing — as I kept training, my body found it easier and easier to cry."

His Taiwanese co-star Vivian Sung concurred with him that crying was hard, but the storyline is powerful enough to make her tear up as she was already "immersed in the story".

"I felt very sorry for Nonkul's character, so the tears came rather naturally," she told AsiaOne.

In Oh No! Here Comes Trouble, Tseng Ching-hua plays delinquent student Pu Yi-yong,who gets into a major accident and discovers that he can communicate with spirits after waking up from his coma.

He joins forces with policewoman Chen Chu-ying (Vivian) and medical student Cao Guang-yan (Peng Cian-you), and the trio strive to free troubled spirits of their negative thoughts.

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A scene where Yi-yong receives CPR from Chu-ying marks Ching-hua's first onscreen kiss with an actress.

Vivian chimed in: "For the CPR scene that day, we shot it about 30 to 40 times."

Seeing Ching-hua's surprised reaction, Vivian explained that he probably did not realise it as his character was unconscious.

Vivian elaborated that while real CPR requires blowing air into the recipient's mouth, they tried to avoid it through "acting techniques and camera angles".

"But as it was a really close shot, it may still happen by accident," she added.

Oh No! Here Comes Trouble is now streaming on iQiyi.

ALSO READ: 'Pretending to be beaten up is harder than beating people up': Tseng Jing-hua and Peng Cian-you on new fantasy action series

jolynn.chia@asiaone.com

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