[2014.04.25] DANIEL WU GETS CLOSE TO NATURE TO RID THAT DEMON WITHIN

Daniel Wu says his mentally disturbed cop character is very hard to get into

Daniel Wu holds his own against Best Actor Nick Cheung

Daniel Wu is very lucky to marry an understanding wife like Lisa S.
courtesy of on.cc

The Emperor Motion Picture THAT DEMON WITHIN (MO GAING) depicted the dark side of humanity. Actually lead actor Daniel Wu (Ng Yin Cho) knew something about that. He complained that the production was the toughest in his film career. His soul was fully suppressed. After the shoot he immediately went to South Africa to be close to nature and drive away THAT DEMON WITHIN.

Ng Yin Chi talked about the difficult experience of working on THAT DEMON WITHIN. He admitted that the character was the most difficult in his film career. He not only had hellish training to lose 30 pounds, in order to get into character he also had to be in a suppressed state for a long time. He said, "Because I had spiritual and physically challenges, I lost over 30 pounds for this film. This character's soul is very complicated, the world that I have get into is very difficult. Thus as soon as the shoot wrapped the next day I immediately flew to South Africa, a place of nature, to wash away all the suppression inside."

For the unprecedented challenge, Daniel did all his homework before hand. "I interviewed many psychiatrists, at the same time I found a former schizophrenic and talked with him about his life experience so I had a clear identity of this character."

Almost succumbing to mental illness from the film, Daniel revealed that he has always had dark thoughts and deeply understood that the world was unfair. "I felt that every man has to have a dark side. If the entire world has female presidents we wouldn't have war. Because women have children, they would understand how important life is. My inside tends to lean to dark stuff, with a little upheaval and anger. Maybe this type of anger came from the discrimination when I grew up as a Chinese in the U.S. I understood the world was unfair."

When Daniel was working on THAT DEMON WITHIN, his wife Lisa S. was pregnant. Because he had to get into the dark character, inevitably he brought the negative emotions back home. Luckily his wife did not complain and even was understanding at every turn, for which he was very appreciative. He praised his wife many times during the interview.