‘3 Body Problem’ Star Jess Hong Balances Her Performance With Emotional Truth, Brilliant Scientific Prowess

It is perhaps the understatement of the year to call Netflix’s 3 Body Problem a complicated series.

Based on the novels by Liu Cixin, the drama series introduces the “Oxford Five,” a group of college friends trying to figure out why the world’s greatest physicists are committing suicide. They eventually discover that the San-ti, an alien race, are traveling to Earth to take it over and wipe out the human race. They must collectively use their brilliant minds to hopefully advance human technology enough to stop their potential onslaught – some 400 years in the future.

You would think balancing the complex scientific jargon with real, deeply felt human emotions would be a challenge for actors.

But finding emotional truth within the material was actually the easy part for star Jess Hong who plays Dr. Jin Cheng, one of the “Oxford Five.”

“That’s actually the most comforting part for me. I felt very lucky because the writers [led by David Benioff, D.B. Weiss, and Alexander Woo] are legends, and they are known for their character-driven stories. They created these very 3D characters, these very flawed and complex human beings,” Hong explained over Zoom. “If we didn’t care about them, then we wouldn’t care about all of the jargon and all of the scientific talk because there’s only a limited number of people that are smart enough to understand all of that. For me, the most straightforward part as an actor was connecting to the heart of Jin Chang, connecting to her relationships to other characters, and trying to really map out that story arc and make it very clear her struggles and why she makes the decisions that she eventually makes.”

Hong’s Jin Cheng definitely lives in two different worlds within the series. There are, of course, compelling moments of scientific exploration and discovery — a thrill for Jin as she boasts a naturally and endlessly curious mind. There are thrilling moments of innovation and ingenuity across the series ranging from ridiculously advanced VR, generated from a combination of several green and blue screens with extraordinarily realistic production design — to a creative solution for outer space propulsion. Science enthusiasts will find much to relish in here.

But Jin also experiences intense grief and emotional trauma throughout the series’ first season. Every actor uses different methods to put themselves in that deeply vulnerable and all-too-human space. For Hong, the key is enough preparation to allow her to live in the moment the day she shoots the scene.

“I try not to overload my expectations. You do your prep work beforehand. You create the whole backstory and create those emotional ties between your real life and their life. Then, hopefully on the day, you’ve done so much prep that you can just let it all go and try to be in the moment,” Hong remarked. “Maybe you’re nervous that day, and you can use the nerves going into the scene as part of her anxiety in that moment. Or you can use the fact that you felt pressured to turn on the waterworks at this moment. The fact that you’re pressured can add to Jin’s pressure in that moment as well. In a way, you’re just finding all those windows between your real life and theirs and jumping through them in the moment.”

Of the many subplots within season one, the unwritten love story between Jin Cheng and Will Downing (Alex Sharpe) remains the most touching, poignant, and ultimately painful story. Early in the series, Downing, who holds a deep-seated love for Jin, discovers he  is dying from pancreatic cancer. Knowing Jin is already in a relationship and is unavailable, Downing keeps his feelings to himself but takes multiple opportunities to express his love for Jin in silent ways again and again.

As smart as she is, does Jin ever understand the true nature of her connection with Will? It’s a question that Hong and Sharpe carefully explored during filming.

“So it’s very easy to collaborate with [Will Sharpe] on this because he’s one of the most brilliant actors and brilliant human beings I’ve ever met. We would have so many conversations about their backstory and how they met. Were they friends straightaway? Was their chemistry straightaway? Maybe subconsciously, she knew that there was something stronger between them but just never acknowledged it,” Hong posits. “In that regard, she’s a little bit clueless when it comes to her own feelings, kind of how she impacts other people emotionally.”

Hong talks about a late-season sequence in which Will, nearing the end of his life, makes a decision to help Jin’s Earth-saving effort by essentially donating his brain. For science, in a way. They share an emotional moment in the hospital, and Jin begs him not to go through with it. Deeply in love and facing the end, Will can’t turn her down and goes through with the life-ending proposal.

In that moment, Hong guesses that Jin finally realizes how deeply Will cares for her, but she, as an actress, must convey all of that through physical expressions and subtle gestures in her beautiful performance.

Given the alien-based subject matter, did the series change Hong’s thoughts on life on other planets?

“No, I’ve never changed. I’ve always thought there is life on other planets. It’s just that I don’t think it’s in the way that we can necessarily perceive. I truly believe, probability wise, that there must be other creatures out there in some form or another. They are just out there. Maybe they’ve noticed us. Maybe they’ve left us alone. Who knows?”

3 Body Problem streams exclusively on Netflix.