Sam Song Li experienced a major case of déjà vu during one of his first days on set of Netflix’s The Brothers Sun. Born in Guangzhou, China, and raised in Southern California, Li immediately felt a kinship with his character from the upcoming series: a pre-med student using his tuition money to pay for improv classes, unbeknownst to his single mother. In another case of art imitating life, Li found himself shooting in an apartment building that he had walked past every day on his way to elementary school. “I grew up in the [area code] 626—in Rosemead, in San Gabriel—so a lot of those places were shockingly familiar to me,” Li tells W with a laugh. “Being there gave me confidence, like, I could bring authenticity to this story.”
That was a recurring sentiment among the actors chosen for The Brothers Sun, the latest project to feature a predominantly Asian American cast. Created by Byron Wu and Brad Falchuk, the eight-episode action-dramedy, which premieres January 4, follows Charles Sun (Justin Chien), the eldest son of a powerful Taiwanese triad leader who travels to Los Angeles to protect his shrewd mother, Eileen (Michelle Yeoh), and clueless younger brother, Bruce (Li), after a mysterious assassin puts Charles and Bruce’s father in a coma. As Taipei’s deadliest criminal organizations and a new rising faction go head-to-head for dominance, Charles, Bruce, and Eileen must come back together before one of their countless enemies kills them all—and usurps their family’s position atop the food chain.
Joon Lee, Sam Song Li as Bruce Sun, Michelle Yeoh as Mama Sun, and Justin Chien as Charles Sun in episode 104 of The Brothers Sun.
The Brothers Sun is Li’s highest-profile project to date. But the 27-year-old has amassed hundreds of thousands of followers across Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube for his self-produced comedy sketches about Gen Z and Millennial culture. Drawing inspiration from Donald Glover, Randall Park, and The Lonely Island—all of whom parlayed their early short films and comedy skits into mainstream Hollywood success—Li began making his own home movies in his teens and posting them on social media in his early 20s. The accessibility of those platforms, at a time when there was still a dearth of Asian-led projects in the Western world, allowed Li to further develop his creative muscles.
A few years after uploading his first videos, Li is “blown away” by the reception to his recent sketches, which he feels have tackled more mature themes. (One of his most popular POV videos, for instance, parodies a guy who wastes no time on a first date.) But Li is well-aware that there is an unspoken stigma around online content creators who venture into acting, a profession where someone’s talent may not be given the same weight as their existing network of contacts or their number of followers. Li insists, however, that creating his own content has always been a means to achieving his ultimate goal of becoming a “traditional actor,” à la Matt Damon or Edward Norton. “It seems like it could just happen overnight, but I’ve always felt like I needed to lay the groundwork for that transition,” he says.
What exactly is he looking to emulate about those actors who first inspired his interest in acting? “The longevity, the versatility, the freedom, the belief that people can see you as an actor that can be anything,” Li responds. “It doesn’t necessarily have to be an Asian guy; he can just be a person in a story. Those guys are movie stars and cultural icons, and that was never as accessible [as an Asian American man]. Growing up, I guess there were a couple. But you couldn’t even name more than five back in 2010.”
Li first caught the acting bug as a student at the University of California, Berkeley, where he underwent a traditional Shakespearean education on the stage. “Acting is embracing the challenges and nuances of being a human—that [idea] was so liberating for me. I’d never experienced that before, even from making videos,” he says. Around that time, the first season of the groundbreaking ABC sitcom Fresh Off the Boat premiered. Even then, Li was hesitant to give up his skill set as a videographer and wanted to work behind the camera “out of necessity.” It wasn’t until “the Daniel Dae Kims and the Steven Yeuns of the world came out” in full force that Li began to double down on his dreams: “That’s when I was like, ‘Wow, I could really see myself having a career like that onscreen.’”
Sam Song Li as Bruce Sun in episode 106 of The Brothers Sun.
The Brothers Sun was conceptualized by an all-Asian writers’ room and headlined by Yeoh, the first Asian woman to win the Academy Award for Best Actress. Although he was initially “shocked” that a genre-bending Chinese American family drama was in the works at one of the world’s largest streamers, Li had a wealth of personal experiences that linked him to Bruce—the goofy, naïve younger brother sheltered from the truth about his family. As much as The Brothers Sun centers siblings reconnecting after decades apart, the story, at its core, examines the challenges of raising sons who are bound by duty and tradition while still hoping to carve out their own place in the world. Like Bruce, Li was raised by a headstrong single mother who wanted him and his sister to follow in her footsteps. “She’s an aerospace engineer, so she wanted me to get into computer science, or medicine; she sent me to summer camp for biology when I was 13,” Li says, laughing. (He hopes to one day tell a story about his mother’s experiences as a new immigrant chasing the American Dream.) “A lot of the expectations that Asian parents have on their kids are accurately portrayed in this show,” he adds. “There’s tremendous respect for your mother figure, especially when you see them taking care of you, when they’re the only other person in your life. You build an intimate relationship with your parent, you could get rebellious with them, you could get frustrated, and that’s very normal because you spend a lot of time with them. It was really easy for me to access that, and acting with Michelle made it even easier.”
Sam Song Li as Bruce Sun and Michelle Yeoh as Mama Sun in episode 107 of The Brothers Sun.
Although he acknowledges there is still a lot of work to be done to make up for decades of underrepresentation in Hollywood, Li feels The Brothers Sun is proof that there is a growing appetite for diversity within Asian-led stories whose characters run the gamut, from antihero to villain. Some of Li’s favorite movies, such as Searching starring John Cho—who is referenced in a key episode of The Brothers Sun—are not specifically about an Asian American family, but are inevitably enriched with the actors who have been chosen to tell those stories. A movie like Yeoh’s acclaimed Everything Everywhere All at Once “captures the story of immigrants, but what’s so amazing about a film like that and projects that do it right is the message transcends the Asian American experience,” adds Li, who believes that the cultural specificity of the story is what makes it universal. “As long as we’re pushing the boundaries and doing the best we can to create experiences that every family can watch and go, ‘Wow, that’s something that we can think about ourselves,’ that’s a win for us as a community.”
