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Reminder: Watch Katie Leung in One Child on Sundance Starting Tonight!
Posted by Megs

You may remember, back in October, we reported that Katie Leung’s two-part special One Child would be premiering this month. Well, today is the day! At 9pm ET/PT, tune into SundanceTV for Part 1 of the two-night special.

SundanceTV’s latest original scripted drama “One Child” will have its world premiere as a two-night special event on Friday, December 5th and Saturday, December 6th at 9pm ET/PT, each night featuring a two-hour episode.  The mini-series stars Katie Leung (Harry Potter), Emmy® nominated actress Elizabeth Perkins (“Weeds”) and Donald Sumpter (“Game of Thrones,” The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo) and is penned by Guy Hibbert, known for his work on Five Minutes of Heaven and currently working on Eye in the Sky, starring Aaron Paul and Helen Mirren.  This riveting dramatic thriller plunges into the heart of contemporary China – in all its contradictions – and takes a fresh, cross-cultural look at what it means to be family.

“One Child,” following the summer’s critical success for SundanceTV’s “The Honorable Woman” starring Maggie Gyllenhaal, tells the story of a young Chinese-born woman, Mei (Leung), adopted at birth by a couple in the UK, who suddenly gets called back to her native Guangzhou by her birth mother.  Her son Ajun – and the brother Mei never knew existed – has been wrongly accused of murder and is facing execution. The real killer is a rich Chinese ‘princeling’ with a well-connected, wealthy father who has corrupted the witnesses into lying.

Filed Under: Katie Leung
Katie Leung Talks Life Post-Potter and BAFTA Breakthrough Brit Award
Posted by Megs

In a new interview Katie Leung, best known as Cho Chang to Potter fans, discussed her life since the films concluded as well as her recent honor at the BAFTA’s: The Breakthrough Brit Award. The award was bestowed upon 18 new-comers to celebrate their emerging talent. Read the full interview here.

“I wasn’t getting any auditions to start with and also, I just wasn’t sure whether I was right for this kind of career,” she said. “I fell into Harry Potter and I was just lacking in confidence. I went into photography and did that for four years, which I still love and am passionate about, but I just happened to get this part in a play at the Young Vic and that kind of set it all off again. I fell in love with being on stage and just gave it a shot and now being at drama school I know I’m making the right decision.”

[…]

“Being surrounded by actors who had trained [while filming Potter], I felt such an amateur because some people try and get away with not training and I think when I was younger I felt like that was the case. I thought I didn’t need to train because I was already taking part in something that was so huge and only better things could come of it. That’s not the case at all. Having trained now and coming into the last year of my degree, I see the benefits and the difference it has made. It requires craft, you can’t learn without training.”

On winning the award, she says:

“It feels amazing. I’ve known about it for a month, but couldn’t tell anyone – it was a bit like when I got the role of Cho Chang and couldn’t tell anyone. It’s a great honour. I’m really grateful. In the past decade, I wouldn’t say I’ve done a considerable amount of work, it’s just that I’ve been lucky to get the opportunity to have done quite a few gritty interesting roles, such as Ying in Run and Mei in One Child. It’s great for knowing that I’ve made the right decision in choosing the right roles as well.”

Also, a video of her talking about the award may be watched below:

Having been plucked out of obscurity for Harry Potter, Leung decided to take on some formal training: she is now two-thirds of the way through a BA in Acting at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland.

“I can’t really believe it,” she says of her Breakthrough Brits selection. “As an Asian actor it’s very difficult to get work… I came really close to giving it all up. I don’t come from a family of actors, which makes it difficult to get feedback. But to know that BAFTA is backing me and that my work is being appreciated just means the world.”

Filed Under: Katie Leung
Katie Leung’s ‘One Child’ Premiering in Two-Night Special Event
Posted by Megs

One Child, starring Katie Leung will air as a two-night event on December 5th and 6th at 9 PM ET/PT. Part One introduces Mei Ashley (Leung), a college student, adopted as a baby from China who has had a content upbringing as the daughter of professors. When she’s contacted by her birth mother in China, a journey to discover her identity turns into a dangerous fight for justice. Part Two follows Mei’s journey as she is thrown into extreme danger in her attempt to save her brother from an unjust criminal sentence. Just when things are starting to look positive, Mei encounters setback that is almost more than she can bear. A full press release, sent to us by Sundance, may be read below:

SundanceTV has the world premiere of its newest original mini-series “One Child” on December 5th and 6th at 9 PM ET/PT. The four-hour series stars Katie Leung (Harry Potter), features Emmy® nominated actress Elizabeth Perkins (“Weeds”) and Donald Sumpter (“Game of Thrones,” The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo) and airs as a two-night special event.

“One Child” tells the story of a young Chinese-born woman, Mei (Leung), adopted at birth by a couple in the UK, who suddenly gets called back to her native Guangzhou by her birth mother. Her son Ajun – and the brother Mei never knew existed – has been wrongly accused of murder and is facing execution. The real killer is a rich Chinese ‘princeling’ with a well-connected, wealthy father who has corrupted the witnesses into lying.

Perkins and Sumpter play Katherine – an American – and Jim Ashley, Mei’s adoptive parents who are challenged to both let her visit her birth mother while protecting her from the pain of meeting the woman who once rejected her. Mei must struggle with who she is in order to decide where her loyalty lies.

When Mei lands in China and begins to witness the criminal justice system through western eyes, she discovers the dichotomy between rich and poor – the connected and the unconnected – and the corruption which forms the bedrock of its governing institutions.

Penned by Guy Hibbert (Eye in the Sky, Five Minutes of Heaven) this emotionally-gripping, dramatic thriller plunges into the heart of contemporary China – in all its contradictions – and takes a fresh, cross-cultural look at what it means to be family.

‘One Child’ is a deeply affecting work that delves into the heart of a human struggle. It tells the story of an ordinary young woman who is plunged into a situation that challenges her to her core,” said SundanceTV President, Sarah Barnett. “It takes viewers on an immersive journey across the globe and shines a bold spotlight on the complexity of family dynamics and personal identity.”

“One Child” is executive produced by Hilary Salmon for BBC Productions. The project is a BBC Drama production for BBC Two, co-produced with SundanceTV (deal brokered by Drive in conjunction with BBC Worldwide North America), and distributed by BBC Worldwide.

This project follows the summer’s critical success for “The Honorable Woman” starring Maggie Gyllenhaal, also a SundanceTV/BBC co-production. Previous to that “Top of the Lake” received two Golden Globe® nominations and one win for Best Performance by an Actress in a Mini-Series for Elisabeth Moss; eight Emmy nominations including one win; and two SAG nominations. It was also a SundanceTV and BBC co-production.

Filed Under: Katie Leung
Katie Leung to Star in ‘One Child’ for BBC and SundanceTV
Posted by Megs

Deadline reports that Katie Leung is set to star in One Child for SundanceTV and BBC Two. The show is a four hour mini-series centered around Mei, who Katie will be portraying. The show will begin filming this May in London and Taiwan for a late 2014 premiere on SundanceTV. A short description of the show may be read below.

Penned by BAFTA-winning writer Guy Hibbert (Five Minutes Of Heaven), One Child, a BBC Drama production for BBC Two, stars Harry Potter franchise alumna Katie Leung as Mei, a first-born Chinese girl adopted by English parents, who gets called back to Guangzhou when her birth mother desperately seeks her assistance in her son. How far will Mei go to help the woman who gave her away and the brother she’s never met? “One Child is a deeply affecting work that delves into the heart of a human struggle,” said SundanceTV President Sarah Barnett. “It tells the story of an ordinary young woman who is plunged into a situation that challenges her to her core.”

Filed Under: Katie Leung
Katie Leung Talks Her Career Post Potter; Starring in ‘Run’ Airing on Channel 4
Posted by Megs

In a new interview with the Evening Standard, Harry Potter alum Katie Leung talked about what her life and career has been like since the series was completed. As we posted a couple weeks ago, Katie is set to star in a new short film by Daniel and Ateh Jewel called Sun Never Sets. The film is being funded by Kickstarter so they need everyone’s help to raise enough money (£25,000) to be able to film.

She is also currently starring in Run, a mini-series on Channel 4, which was originally going to air in March but instead started last night and continues until Thursday. Katie plays Ying, “a Chinese illegal immigrant selling DVDs to try to free herself from the vicious gang-master who brought her to Britain.”

She discusses Run in the interview:

The series [Run], […] starts [Monday] on Channel 4 and there is definitely no magic in Leung’s storyline. It is a gritty portrait of modern Britain, part of which involves Leung’s character being raped. “It’s difficult to watch, but I felt to give justice to the character it was needed and I was more than happy to do it,” she says. […] Run, she thought, “was a great script”. The physical challenge was the greatest, however as “I literally had to run quite a bit. There’s a scene where I’m running from the immigration officers and I pulled a muscle in my leg on the first day of shooting.”

She also talks about Harry Potter and her more recent roles:

“It hasn’t been a conscious decision to step away from Potter.” Leung’s last major role was on stage in a production of Wild Swans at the Young Vic last year. “I’m just lucky that projects I’ve had the chance to do have been away from it all and have been quite challenging roles.”

Leung first got the role in Harry Potter at an open casting when she was 16 years old. She and her father travelled to London together “with no expectations at all” but the director Mike Newell clearly saw something in her. “He asked me where I had trained and I said I hadn’t done any form of acting before. When I saw the surprise on his face, I thought, ‘maybe’.”

Finally she talked about her future and the difficulties with picking the right roles:

[…] “People had expectations that I would go on and do bigger and better things, which is pretty impossible if Potter is your first thing.” Leung briefly considered quitting acting but is now studying drama at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland in Glasgow. There are more acting projects in the pipeline but Leung has to filter out the rubbish. “There have been quite a few things that I’ve had to say no to. It mainly involves nudity where it hasn’t been required. I’m quite a prude in that sense. I’m up for it if it’s going to be an epic script and it’s needed — like the rape scene in Run.”

Scripts can also be harder to come by because of her race, says Leung. “Because I’m Chinese I don’t get five scripts a day to read. That’s a limitation in itself. In a way we’re lucky, though, because there are fewer of us so we have more of a chance of getting the roles.”

Filed Under: Katie Leung
Katie Leung to Star In Short Film – Donate with Kickstarter
Posted by Megs

Katie Leung, who played Cho Chang in the Potter films, is set to star in a new short film by Daniel and Ateh Jewel.  The film is called Sun Never Sets and is a Sci-Fi Short Film Set in the Near Future Shanghai that also stars Derek Jacobi. The filmmakers are hoping to film in Autumn over a five day shoot and to complete the main post-production of the film by December 2013/January 2014, and to have the film ready to submit to film festivals by February 2014.

The husband/wife team is raising money for production using Kickstarter, a website that helps people raise money to fuel their creative projects. They are trying to raise £25,000 so if you wish to donate visit their Kickstarter page! They have 58 days left to raise the money so anything you can do to help would be appreciated.  They have different backing options and for those people who pledge a certain amount you get various incentives from email updates on the production all the way to tickets to private screenings and visits to the set!

A synopsis of the film is as follows:

Sun Never Sets is set in the near future where China has become the undisputed world power and the West is in disarray. Now, the tired and hungry people of Europe are fleeing to the great cities of China to seek a new life as economic migrants.  Against this backdrop, a Chinese-born Englishman named HEDGES has decided to turn his back on the tide of history by taking his adopted daughter KATIE to a small abandoned island downstream from Shanghai, where his British ancestors used to trade to China from in the nineteenth century.
He has rebooted the abandoned island and staffed it with illegal English immigrants to China, creating his own world as if the British Empire had never fallen. The island is off the grid and has no electricity or running water.  The small community living under Hedges use gas lamps, so it’s as if they are living a British version of an Amish village.  One day a wealthy English family, who have started a successful new life in Shanghai, crash their boat on the shores of the island. Hedges and Katie are forced to take them into their community. The arrival of the family sparks off something in Katie – who has always wondered what life might be like away from the island. She spends her evenings gazing at the neon haze of Shanghai, which she can see through her grimy bedroom window. Katie can see how at ease the family are with life in Shanghai; they speak fluent Mandarin and are fully accepted into Chinese society, and this leads her to question everything Hedges has told her about the modern world. This brings her into conflict with Hedges, especially when the young son of the family, TOM, offers to take her back to Shanghai with them.  In the climax of the film, Katie is pressured to make life-changing choices, which ultimately reveal the dark history of the British Empire in China and Hedges’s ancestors involvement in the Opium Wars.

Filed Under: Katie Leung
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