Boba, Popcorn Chicken and Pizza Baos: Cast of Netflix’s ‘The Brothers Sun’ Celebrate Cultural and Local Representation

Two days after The Brothers Sun’s Jan. 4 premiere on Netflix, the creator and cast of the action-packed, comedic family drama returned to the San Gabriel Valley, where the series is set and much of it was filmed, for a special one-weekend-only edition of 626 Night Market, held at its usual location at Arcadia’s Santa Anita Park and featuring a diverse mix of Asian food vendors and other small businesses.

“We’re all from around here, and we really wanted to set the show in the 626 because it’s such a vibrant community and we feel like it hasn’t been represented on screen before,” co-creator Byron Wu, who called Hacienda Heights home, shared with the at-capacity crowd on Saturday night. Netflix covered the night market’s entrance fee, and Day 1 of the event, which was open to the public with prior registration, sold out with 20,000 sign-ups.

The racetrack’s parking lot was lined with creative food and beverage options, from sugarcane slushies and hand rolls to sizzling prawns and Hawaiian honey cones to pork belly buns and boba. Jeffrey Golez, a chef for Baozza — founded in Beijing in 2016 — said the 626 Night Market was the brand’s first pop-up opportunity when they expanded to America and, more specifically, to California. The company puts an Italian twist on bao buns by offering fillings like pepperoni and Italian sausage. “Normally it would be like a barbecue pork or veggie dumpling,” said Golez, who described the bao as “really fluffy and airy.” The chef, who was two episodes into The Brothers Sun by the time of the night market, appreciated how the show’s “martial arts was done with comedy because it’s usually very dark-toned,” he told The Hollywood Reporter. 

Susie Nguyen, event director for 626 Night Market, stressed the importance of partnering with Netflix and its Asian vertical, Golden, for an event rooted in cultural authenticity and bringing Hollywood to the San Gabriel Valley. “I wanted the company to break into the Asian community because it kind of felt like we were in our own bubble before,” she said. “But this is a really great opportunity to connect with all these other Asian creators in the industry.” Nguyen, who’s been with the event for a decade, noted that the diversity of Asian cuisines across the vendors they curated mirrors the diversity of Asian cultures in the area. “This area is really special, especially because of all the Asian communities that live [here].”

And no one knows that better than members of The Brothers Sun cast themselves. The show stars Academy Award winner Michelle Yeoh as the mother to two vastly different sons navigating surprising family secrets and a transpacific power struggle among triads following an assassination attempt on their father. Sam Song Li, who plays the creative and naive younger brother Bruce, told THR that his own phone number begins with the 626 area code, so his character — and the environment of the show — felt like home.

“I was raised by a single mom in the San Gabriel Valley. … I wanted to be an actor and my mom was an aerospace engineer who really pushed me to follow in her footsteps or study medicine, so I really related to my character,” said Li. “This show is so inspirational because it’s all about choices, it’s all about taking risks and being groundbreaking. Doing things that we haven’t seen in society. Bruce wanting to be an improv artist is so bizarre to Asian families, but so real for someone like me. … I hope this show inspires immigrant kids.”

The beauty of The Brothers Sun lies in its exemplification of the power of specificity and nuance — not only in relation to place, but culture, too. Often, representation (especially onscreen) is broadly applied to historically excluded identities, like “Asian-American.” But The Brothers Sun centers specifically on a Taiwanese family, and it’s this distinction that helps disabuse viewers of improperly viewing Asian culture as a monolith.

“I grew up in L.A. and Taiwan, I’m very close with my family, so all of those things just made this role incredibly appealing to me,” said Justin Chien, who plays responsible and deadly older brother Charles. “I love that in the script, it highlights and shouts out some specificities about our culture without having to explain it. We’re here, we’ve been here, our history is here and some other places as well, but this is a story mainly about Americans who happen to be Asian.”

This authenticity was captured thanks to the story being written by Wu and a nearly all-Asian writers room, which was “important because we don’t have to explain why we are the way we are,” Chien added.

Derek Ting, co-founder of Little Ding’s Taiwanese Street Food, shared that his version of Taiwanese popcorn chicken is so popular because he intrinsically understands what makes it good. “Growing up, I used to visit Taiwan every summer because all my relatives are in Taiwan, and the most memorable part of each trip was going with my cousins, uncles and aunts to these night markets to browse around and eat a bunch of great food and ride mopeds home and get boba afterward. I love 626 a lot because it brings that aspect of Taiwan and the culture to the States.” His popcorn chicken bites, which come in original and spicy, are served in a box for easy handling when walking from stall to stall.

“For me, what’s so great about the show is it’s extremely detail-oriented and nuanced in terms of it being the San Gabriel Valley and about Taiwanese-Americans and Asian-Americans, but at the same time the themes are so universal,” Highdee Kuan, who plays Charles’ old flame Alexis, told THR.

Added Madison Hu, who plays Bruce’s classmate Grace, on the show’s representation: “Having an all-Asian cast is one huge part of it, but also having all-Asian designers, our stunt team, and just having in front of and behind the camera people who knew the culture so specifically and were able to bring that detail and nuance to the table — for not just stories of suffering and hardships of being Asian-American but also joy and excitement and happiness as well. Straddling that was so easy to do because of the writers and the story.”

At the close of the night, the Brothers Sun team greeted a chilly and excited audience at the market; Wu, Yeoh, Chien, Li, Kuan and Hu were joined by other castmembers including Joon Lee, Alice Hewkin, Jon Xue Zhang and Jenny Yang, as well as executive producers Kevin Tanchareon and Mikkel Bondesen. 

Following a lively surprise performance by GRV Dance Crew (who also appear in the series), Yeoh addressed the crowd in Mandarin, Cantonese, Korean and English, saying: “Thank you, San Gabriel Valley, for all your love and cooperation that made it possible for us to film here and have such a great time. We had too much good food and we were all worried we wouldn’t fit into our costumes, but somehow we figured it out.”