Posted in: Exclusive, Interview, Lionsgate, Movies | Tagged: exclusive, Expired, hugo weaving, interview, Ivan Sen, Jillian Nguyen, ryan kwanten

Expired: Jillian Nguyen on Her Character's Similarities & Co-Stars

Jillian Nguyen is learning a lot on the go as an up-and-coming star in the entertainment industry. Not far removed from her debut in 2019's True History of the Kelly Gang, she plays the female lead in April opposite seasoned Australian actors Ryan Kwanten (True Blood) and Hugo Weaving (The Matrix) in Ivan Sen's futuristic neo-fi thriller Expired. The Lionsgate film is about a hitman (Kwanten) who meets a mysterious woman (Nguyen) and comes down with a deadly illness. I spoke to the star about how she came to be cast, learning from Sen and her co-stars and her similarities with April.

"[Expired] is a sci-fi romance that blends two of my favorite genres, and it was set in Hong Kong, my favorite place in the world after watching Wong Kar-Wai's films and working with an incredible director who's also a DOP, writer, composer, casting director in Ivan Sen," Nguyen said. "Of course, there are Ryan Kwanten and Hugo Weaving, two very iconic Australian actors. It was a dream script for me, to be honest." She credits the writer-director teaching her the ins and outs of the filmmaking experience. "His sets feel very calm, almost like you're in a temple or something. Because he shoots as well, we would rehearse before every scene, and sometimes it would just be him. Sometimes when we're shooting, it's just him and the focus pool. So it was [an] incredibly intimate filming experience, and I haven't had that experience since. He always taught me that the camera sees everything. I don't ever have to push anything, just to internalize, and the audience will feel it. He taught me so much about filmmaking and just about the magic of the camera. It really is a magical thing, just how it really captures people's colors and humanity. Yeah, it was a very wonderful experience, honestly."

What Nguyen Has in Common with Her Expired Counterpart

Nguyen didn't have to stray far to find her inspiration for April. "She is [a] migrant worker who is [a] nightclub singer in Hong Kong," she said. "Similarities is in terms of her soul, how displaced she feels in a place that should be her home. Being Asian Australian, it's like you never really quite belong. For her, even though she's surrounded by such a diverse group of people, it's not her home. There are a lot of issues there with her identity and a sense of place and self. Other similarities are she loves to sing, and I love to sing. She's a karaoke singer. I love that in real life, too. That's very easy. She ice skates, and I don't. It's very hard. It's like walking on water, and it's terrifying. She's quite guarded; I'm pretty guarded; I think that can be pretty good. She has trust issues. I have trust issues now, but then ultimately, like every other human being, I want to love. I want to be loved completely, and then I don't think April realizes that that's what she needs. That's what she does get to feel, and it changes her life, and she's very relatable."

One concern Nguyen had was that she didn't want just to recite her lines but provide a layered and authentic experience. "There is a fine line of the character feeling almost like she wasn't human and quite robotic, but still trying to give her more light and warmth as the film carried on," she said. "I knew at the start [that] I really struggled with the fact that the two characters weren't going to have the ending that I wanted, but then I started to understand the different kinds of love that April needed. So that was interesting for me as an actor going through her journey. In the script, it said she cries uncontrollably. I'm like, 'Oh my God, how the hell am I going to do that?'"

Nyugen broke down the invaluable lessons passed to her by her peers. "From Ryan and Hugo, I learned you can be a true artist who really cares about their work and who is just insanely talented and committed, but also just be kind people that others genuinely like to be around. They told me what it was like to be a good person and still be a good actor. Most times, it comes hand-in-hand. Ivan told me so much about the camera, about being and not pushing anything. Hugo would just sit there alone with his friends, reading the script over and over again like he's been working for years and he's still so committed. Ryan just melted into the character with so much ease. So he just told me to just like, relax and yeah, just to kind of drop into the deep end with our director because he had the script and the whole world they created that was so rich. There were many lessons that I'll keep forever." Expired comes out to theaters, on-demand, and digital on March 18th.

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