Jess Hong Can’t Believe Jin Let Her Friend Donate His Brain

When Jess Hong moved to London to shoot 3 Body Problem, the new Netflix adaptation of Liu Cixin’s Remembrance of Earth’s Past trilogy, it was her first time living outside New Zealand — and just one in a series of firsts. Working with big names like Game of Thrones creators David Benioff and D. B. Weiss was certainly new, and the post-release press tour has been “its own wild beast.” Then there’s the subject matter: Hong plays Jin Cheng, a brilliant theoretical physicist who, after receiving a mysterious state-of-the-art VR game from the mother (Rosalind Chao) of her late professor, is almost recruited to an organization dedicated to welcoming an alien race as humanity’s overlords. When said organization murders her disbelieving friend Jack (John Bradley), Jin turns to their destruction, joining the British government and other international bodies on endeavors to stop the San-Ti. That includes the mysterious Staircase Project, which involves sending a human brain into space; Jin’s other friend Will (Alex Sharp), who has always secretly pined for her, volunteers to donate his brain, knowing his stage-four pancreatic cancer will take its toll soon anyway. The final token of his love is the secret gift of a star, the discovery of which changes everything for Jin. “Having read the books and seen the origin of that very, very long love story, it was already making my heart ache just reading about it,” Hong says. “I didn’t need to do too much in terms of finding my way there. I just needed to meet Jin and feel her heart.”

While Jack turns down Tatiana’s invitation to aid the San-Ti, Jin stays and listens, and it seems like she’s swayed at first. Obviously, she doesn’t join them, because Jack is killed immediately afterward. But if the murder didn’t happen, do you think it’s possible Jin would’ve joined the followers of the San-Ti?
Yes, I do. Whoever their sponsors are, aliens or otherwise, the technology they have is beyond anything she’s imagined. That’s enough to spark her curiosity and hunger for more information and resources. Her ambition comes out. The other thing: Tatiana knows about her background and about her parents dying in the flood, and even though Jin knows she’s being emotionally manipulated, she still feels the throes of that. There is a possibility she could have been one of them, thinking she just needs to convince everyone to let the other beings come and advance our technology.

I like that the characters’ decisions about communication with extraterrestrial life are informed by their own experiences. Ye Wenjie sided with the San-Ti against humanity after witnessing the Cultural Revolution. Jin’s parents were lost during a flood, which briefly allows her to relate to that feeling of displacement. There’s a parallel there.
Roz Chao and I talked about this. Ye Wenjie exists in another timeline, with extraordinary circumstances putting a lot of pressure on her. Jin Cheng has experienced trauma, but she lives in a world where her capabilities are acknowledged from early on. She has been nourished and nurtured in order to evolve those capabilities and become a top scientist in her field, a female role model for other physicists. Ye Wenjie did not have the same opportunities. But they’re both brilliant women with a lot of ambition who want to find answers and gain knowledge. Jin thinks if she can solve every single problem, things will be better on the other side. That’s how she gets through dark times. Ye goes on another journey, but she definitely started off that way. They were both idealists. If you put them side by side in a similar environment, they could’ve turned out very similar.

That also makes me think about the tension between Jin and Auggie, with Auggie opposed to Jin’s work on the Staircase Project. Auggie seems like the moral center of the show, focused on helping people in practical ways. Where do you think Jin stands by comparison?
Jin’s role in the third book is very much empathy, to show humanity’s not worth giving up on. She still has that function here. She wants to save us all, but she goes about it in a different way. She cares deeply for her friends immediately in front of her, but she’s thinking about progress and the betterment of humanity in the future. Her ambition and her obsessive nature, wanting to acquire as much knowledge as possible, takes over there. She lets other things fall to the wayside. She lets her friend donate his brain — that’s wild! You have to be so ambitious to allow that kind of desire to surface. Auggie is much more about humanity now. “Let’s just do what we can today to help the people in need that I can see right now.”

How did you learn about the creators incorporating your New Zealand background?
It wasn’t long after a Zoom chat I had with them in 2021 where I started receiving scripts with the addition of “those years I spent in New Zealand.” I was like, “What? Wait, that wasn’t in the last one!” I was doing an English accent in my last self-tape! I also didn’t realize that I say “buddy” a lot. Suddenly, I started seeing the word “buddy” in the script. I was like, “Hey, why is Jin saying that suddenly?” They were like, “Jess, you say that all the time.” Now I notice it and I can’t stop.

They just picked up on that from talking to you?
And we only talked for, like, an hour. They love to get these little nuggets of who you are and weave them into the character — not too much that it takes over, just enough to add authentic texture so you don’t have to work too hard.

What was your favorite scene to film?
I got a real variety of treats. I got the crazy spectacle stuff, where I hang from wires with John Bradley in extravagant costumes. I’d never worked with so many special effects, on blue screens with all these background performers and amazing sets.

I didn’t really need to work for the scenes between Jin and Will because they drew something out of me. It was so easy to fall into that relationship, into that friendship with all that subtext. I auditioned with the scene with Jin and Will on the beach — I did a chemistry read with Alex Sharp in the early stages. I’ve been with that scene since August 2021.

How do you see Jin’s history with Will? Does she have similar romantic feelings for him buried down deep?
Alex and I talked about this. They probably never had anything in the past, but maybe it was always easy for them to talk. Maybe they would have a group hang back at Oxford, and they’d be the last two chatting in the room at night, having endless deep-and-meaningfuls. There might have always been some chemistry there, but Jin can get so caught up in her ambitions and career that she’s not super-aware of her own feelings. You might be able to observe other people, but as soon as it’s yourself, it’s like, Wait, me? Really? With him? I don’t think she even realizes, literally until the last moment, when she finds out he bought her a star. It’s like, Oh, fuck. He’s done all of this for me, and what the fuck have I done for him? That moment where she runs to him, I don’t think she has any thought process. She’s just instinctively like, I need to be close to him right now.

She’s very cold to Raj in their final interactions. Where is Jin’s head during those moments?
Her head is in that cryogen chamber with Will’s brain. She hasn’t even acknowledged the fact that he’s passed away. He’s alive. What are you talking about? We’re going to see each other again. She’s in full denial, just burying herself in work. To have to deal with something real, like her current relationship, is way too much. It’ll make her realize some other things she doesn’t want to confront.
 
If there’s a season two, do you have an idea of how Jin’s story will play out and what it will include from the books?
I would love to know. Should we both go to Dan, David, and Alex, and ask them? I know a couple of things they really want to include in there, and they’ll be pretty obvious because all the fans will want to see those moments. That’s more about the environment and key events. In terms of Jin, her character doesn’t technically appear until the third book, so she had to be grafted onto another plot in the first book. They might try to do something similar for season two.

I was really happy to see the locusts scene from the end of the original book, here in Florida with the cicadas.
They even got the ant from The Dark Forest in there as well, just a little bit.

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.