Doctor Strange star Benedict Wong says he was pretty surprised by how similar his character in the new Netflix sci-fi show 3 Body Problem was to himself when he first got the scripts.
In the new show from True Blood’s Alexander Woo and Game of Thrones showrunners David Benioff and D. B. Weiss, Wong plays Da Shi, a private investigator brought in to investigate a string of scientist murders. In the series, adapted from a Chinese novel of the same name, he soon finds out that their fates are linked to a decision made by a young woman many decades prior.
While Shi is taken directly from the novels, the showrunners did add some elements to the character to honor Wong. Among the details they weaved in were his character hailing from Salford, his parents being from Hong Kong, and the fact he grew up in the '70s.
"Well, I thought I was being stalked actually, when I was reading the characters," Wong laughingly tells 12DOVE. "Then I met them on Zoom and I said, this sounds a lot like me, and Alex Woo confessed that they've copied the Wikipedia page."
It turns out he wasn’t the only one either, as his co-star Liam Cunningham had a similar situation. He plays Thomas Wade in the show, the leader of an intelligence operation investigating the scientific threat, and Shi’s boss.
"It was very weird for me too because I think that Wade is an American in the books or ex-CIA," Cunningham adds. "So when I got this Dublin dude, who you have no idea where he's come from or anything like that, I went, 'Woah'."
Speaking to Wong, he adds: "We talked about that, didn't we? That the characters that they had written were dangerously close to ourselves. It was a bit weird [because] a lot of the time we hide behind accents and various methods of veils over us as human beings but they kind of stripped all those things away. Weird, but kind of brilliant." Nodding, Wong adds: "It's been great to play it though."
3 Body Problem arrives in full on Netflix on March 21. We also spoke to the cast about some big changes from the novels and why it was an "easy yes" for the Game of Thrones stars to return.
For more, check out our guides to the best Netflix shows and the best Netflix movies available now.
