Deirdre19

Liu Chang as Chai Jian
http://xhslink.com/o/60keECL0wah

Chu Tingyu’s costumes are definitely different from the usual. I like it!
http://xhslink.com/o/1dhgfW5dPtS

I see… Thank you for clarifying.

Jeremy Xu as Yuan Weiyang
https://weibo.com/tv/show/1034:5324651933401126?from=old_pc_videoshow
http://xhslink.com/o/8FufWGJIo8j

Oh, it’s flute lessons today 😃 how idyllic!
http://xhslink.com/o/3XAHEQugeK
People are saying that Chu Tingyu and Yuan Weiyang are daughter and stepfather. I have no idea if it’s true or not.

Yes, that’s what he always does. He manages to give depth to the most tropes characters and every single one of his characters is different.
As for drama refs, I really depends on what you like…
His recent guest appearance in The Nanyang Mystery (ep. 1-4) was very good and totally different from his role as Prince Xin. Plus he dubbed himself, so there is the added voice bonus.
Of his costume dramas The Autumn Ballad is probably the best, again with the voice bonus, but I also like The Legend of the Phoenix. Sadly the plot falls apart in the second half, but except for the FL the cast is pretty good.
If you like something light-hearted and humorous, there is Royal Rumours (also with Meng Ziyi).
Personally, I very much like Be My Princess which is really funny in a tongue-in-cheek way and he just looks gorgeous in modern styling.

As Overdo (said to have cost 8 million yuan per episode) has just demonstrated, the production cost alone is no guarantee for production quality.
There is, unfortunately, a lot of corruption in many of these project where the money is siphoned off by some of the people involved. It works like this: the director (or someone else with influence) insists on using a certain provider for set building, costume design, CGI, dubbing, or other services. The provider then charges inflated fees for mediocre service and the profit they make is either shared with whoever brought them in or the company actually belongs to this person just using a third-party front.

Well, if one can be shameless, so can the other! 😂

In the novel he was definitely a bad character. He tried to have Shen Xihe assassinated more than once and he killed his own brother to steal the throne from him (he didn’t poison the CP, though).
However, in the drama version, I am not so sure. There seems to be a rule in C-dramas that emperor’s cannot be thoroughly evil, just power-hungry and flawed.

His fans have been telling him the same. We’ve had enough of the suffering. He owes us a comedy!

You can blame the scriptwriters for not giving it to us any sooner. As much as I enjoy the intensity of Jeremy’s acting as tortured love brain, it is a rather tiresome trope. The Prince Xin in the novel was a tragic figure as well, but for much more interesting reasons.

Jeremy’s combat scenes are truly one of a kind!
http://xhslink.com/o/1G5fgR4oE4E
He acts the part with raw intensity instead of trying to look pretty in his shiny armour and the result is breathtaking!

Thanks for sharing this.
After all these nice words about warmth and human connection, iQiyi had better not try and mess this up with their Ai slop

That sounds indeed intriguing, but I wish they would give us a little bit more info about the individual characters and their background.

Haha, a drama with a wooden ML, that narrows it down 😂
Yeah, a lot of these girlfriend fans are very unkind to any actress who comes close to their precious because they are jealous. The usual rule of thumb is, the worse the acting skills, the more hysterical the fans.

It’s the same people who you see raving about some idol boy’s phenomenal acting skills on other drama pages. They wouldn’t know good acting if it hit them in the face. Just ignore them.

Xu Zhengxi started his career acting in HK movies and dramas, but according to his bio he has had subsequent professional training.. He was never on the idol track, even if his agency got him to act in a number of idol dramas.
If you listen to his original voice acting in Southern Anecdote, you will know that he is quite capable of doing it. His real voice is so special that no voice actor can even come close.

Being a serious actor didn’t stop them from dubbing Xu Zhengxi in Blossoms of Power and frankly, even as a non-Mandarin speaker, I find the dubbing horrible.
Let’s just hope that the production team values quality and sticks to the real voices.

It seems that security on the set is pretty tight, so there aren’t a lot of leaks. This is from today:

http://xhslink.com/o/70HatmHKWPm
http://xhslink.com/o/1JnddqKzKVl
http://xhslink.com/o/9HC1j0HJPYN
http://xhslink.com/o/Uv4WhXxviL

We all do!
The current climate in the industry where everyone just chases traffic and data instead of focusing on quality is sadly not favourable to him. All he can do for now is showcase his talent in interesting roles in quality dramas hoping for the right opportunity. I know that he works hard behind the scenes to get decent roles so sooner or later, it will happen.