Western actors finally making it big in China

ALONG with men in fedoras and 1930s cars, the costume drama “Grassroots King” has a feature that nearly every Chinese TV show seems to require these days – a Western character.

Kerry Brogan, an American actress who plays the lead character’s British girlfriend, is one of dozens of foreign performers on Chinese TV, recruited to appeal to increasingly worldly audiences.

“Our audiences are no longer satisfied to watch foreign characters played by Chinese in a wig,” said Yan Hao, a producer of “Feng Yu,” a TV spy thriller whose cast includes three Western actors.

Producers who used to hire exchange students and other foreign amateurs to supply a dash of non-speaking exotic color to TV shows now put out casting calls as far afield as the US and Europe for professionals. They appear in productions ranging from war stories to romances and some host TV variety shows.

Brogan, a Mandarin speaker in her 20s, said she has appeared in 40 Chinese movies and TV productions. In “Grassroots King,” a saga set in the turbulent years before World War II, she has a speaking role as a regularly appearing character.

“There’s much greater desire to work together between Westerners and mainland Chinese people,” Brogan said. “The market has a greater need.”

Yan said Chinese audiences are looking for entertainment that reflects the world they see on the internet and in China itself as society becomes more cosmopolitan.

“When I turn on the TV these days, sometimes even I myself am surprised that there are so many foreign faces in Chinese shows,” said Zheng Feng, a casting agent who has been finding foreign performers for Chinese producers for 11 years.

Zheng said he is setting up an English-language website to advertise abroad for actors.

The trend sits awkwardly with the communist government’s culture officials, who have issued directives limiting use of foreign programming on Chinese TV and ordering on-air personalities to limit use of foreign words.

China’s State Administration of Radio, Film and Television rules limit the number of major foreign actors or crew members to one-third of the total employment for a movie or TV program made in China.

There are no statistics on the number of non-Chinese actors working in China, but Zheng said he believed the number has risen by 20 to 30 percent a year over the past decade.

Foreign actors usually are paid 50 percent more than their Chinese counterparts.