When preparing to play a pair of couples for Andrew Ahn’s reimagining of “The Wedding Banquet,” Bowen Yang, Lily Gladstone, Kelly Marie Tran, and Han Gi-chan felt the best way to go about it was to take in the challenges of real-life relationships. During a recent interview with the Los Angeles Times, the cast reflected on their shared viewing of the Showtime docu-series “Couples Therapy,” which features actual sessions between partners and therapist Orna Guralnik, and how it helped bring them together.
“The ‘Couples Therapy’ viewing, I think, was very instrumental in accelerating something between the four of us,” said Yang, who was the one to suggest the show ahead of the fourth season. “I will always cherish those moments of us watching it together.”
Despite not watching a lot of reality TV, Gladstone “loved” watching “Couples Therapy” together and allowing it to inform the character she would be playing.
“Finding a show where the human behavior was central to solving these interpersonal issues that couples have, I thought it was a brilliant thing to put on, intentional or not,” Gladstone said. “It’s what good storytellers do. You find other stories to prop up the one that you’re telling.”
One of the elements “Couples Therapy” communicates so beautifully is that you don’t have to be the sum of your past life experiences and that accepting love is often a choice one must actively make. Tran felt this echoed into the larger production as no one had to explain “what chosen family was.” Since “The Wedding Banquet” also deals with the challenges faced by many LGBTQ individuals, Tran also appreciated how everyone involved could relate to the experience being depicted.
“I remember constantly having different crew members come up to us and just say how special it was to be on a queer set, because so many of them were queer as well and had never worked on anything that was primarily queer in its cast and its crew,” she said. “It was just this contagious feeling on set — it just felt really magical.”
This was particularly true for Han. Coming from Korea, these kinds of conversations aren’t often had, nor do these types of characters and relationships get to be explored.
“By filming this movie, I was learning about chosen family and how queer community outside Korea works,” Hand said. “Before that, I didn’t know a thing … but now I’m talking in these interviews and answering all these questions [and I keep learning] more about global issues and LGBTQ society, but it’s a totally new experience for me.”
“The Wedding Banquet” releases in theaters April 18 from Bleecker Street.
