You're in filmmaking and working on your big dream BL production, your writer is one of the best, you got decent budget, interested sponsors, a great director, a professional crew. Now, you gotta cast your actors, the mains and maybe a sidedish. Who would you chose and why? Which criteria would you apply for example age, appearance, acting style, experience, ability to create chemistry, on-screen charisma, name recognizability? Which actors would you pair and why? Make it country specific.
MY ULTIMATE FANTASY CAST + BL MASTERPIECE!
If I could have any BL in the world. What would I pick?
I kinda already did this here:
TOP 10 BL PAIRS + What They Should Play Next - I chose SamYu for the gay Descendants of the Sun, but you threw the door wide open on this one so I am pushing it. (I also did Crazy BL Actor Pairing I'd Love to See )
I hold by those picks but I’ll reboot the game a little.
Now, you gotta cast your actors, the mains and maybe a sidedish. Who would you chose and why?
(SamYu - We Best Love) in a Taiwanese production of Hospital Playlist.
So Hospital Playlist is a true ensemble piece with 5 leads, but the anchor relationship would be these two. In case you were in any possible doubt as to my ultimate bias.
(L-R: prudish pediatrician, arrogant heart surgeon, comedic general surgeon, neurotic OBGYN, warm & brilliant neurosurgeon)
Hospital Playlist is not just one of my favorite Kdramas, it’s one of my favorite dramas of all time. I love a medical drama, it has multiple solid romances all ending happily, it’s about older characters, there are complex stories and GREAT side characters, food is vitally important, and it’s ultimately extremely comforting. It’s sadly het, tho.
So I want Taiwan to do the queer version. And I want it to get the proper treatment the way Taiwan sometimes does with their het stuff, like full on 20-30 episodes.
Hospital Playlist only it’s 5 queer surgeons, paired as follows:
Sam plays the funny single dad general surgeon (his husband left him alone with their adopted son, yadda yadda)
Yu is the kind hearted brilliant neuroscientist. I’d like to see him play a warm nerdy character for a change.
(Spoiler, these two characters are already besties who once moot-pined and eventually end up together.)
Lin Yu (OuWen from Love is Science) plays is the arrogant heart surgeon. Of COURSE HE DOES. Slayed by the military boy in the end, of course. Honestly we can pair him with Anderson Cheng again as Sam’s younger brother, but I’m not married to that pairing.
The OBGYN has to be our neurotic chaos bi character (that comedy writes itself) and I would cast Bruce He in the role. Because, he has dimples and I love him in everything and I am shallow af. He can have all the crazy exes up the wazoo. That’d be fun. I don not care who he ends up with.
I’d turn the rich prude pediatrician character into a lesbian who I want played by Aviis Zhong, because she hasn’t played enough lesbians yet. Never enough lesbians.
I want her slow pining desperate younger love interest (AGE GAP!) to be played by Tannie Huang (DNA Says Love You bestie). I think they would kill it.
I want the older administrator of the hospital adopted lesbian mom of the group to be Tammy Darshana Lai (Encore Martha). And I want her to be having her own life, quandaries and relationships.
Which criteria would you apply for example age:
I’d like it to be older characters in general. I love a high school drama but I’d like something more relatable to me, and more meaty for the actors to sink into, where being queer is there, and important, but there’s other life shit going on (ex spouses, children, career hiccoughs, side interests and hobbies).
Clearly I’m picking all over the place on actual actor ages, but the main characters would all be in their late 30s at least. The support cast of residents and students and patients so forth would be many other ages.
I’d like the Love is Science? team to direct (Tsai Mi Chieh & Chang Chin Jung).
Appearance, acting style, experience, ability to create chemistry, on-screen charisma, name recognizability?
I want mostly pretty because, as already mentioned, I shallow af. But I also want broad queer rep and diversity. So trans characters, butch, femme, various creeds and colors, all of them - in complex, capable professional doctor roles and positions of power. I want it to look like the Philippines vomited queer rep on this hospital.
It’s my fantasy medical drama, I’ll queer it up if I wanna.
I think Taiwan in general has a realistic, highly physical, slightly comedic acting style that would suit Hospital Playlist very well. (Probubly better than Korea’s style did, quite frankly.)
All the actors I chose (but Yu) are experienced and established. I think Avis and Bruce are big enough names for major draw. And SamYu as a pair are a big enough deal to pull the BL audience in spades. A show like this could take off international well and easily. Authentic queer rep is one of Taiwan’s strengths and this kind of show could showcase that for truly broad appeal, like Asia’s version of Queer as Folk, only a million times BETTER.
