Australian-Thai actor Chai Hansen is known for his roles in the television series Night Sky and The Newsreader. Hansen is heading to the Capital for our first Comic-Con event this weekend, 27-28 August.  

Hansen joined CW for a chat about life on television, meeting your idols and cosplay.

1. You shot the Night Sky series with Sissy Spacek and J.K Simmons, what was it like working with such impressive actors?

 That was a blast. I’m still pinching myself now, even after it’s been a year since we started preproduction. I had the most fun ever; it was such an insightful experience to work with such industry professionals. The wealth of knowledge they have is immense.

They really took their time with every scene, if something wasn’t clicking, they really ironed everything out

J K Simmons, we still stay in contact; he emails me now and then to see how I’m doing, he is a really lovely man. He was the hardest working person in the room, he knows the scripts like the back of his hands. There was a moment when I stumbled over my line, and I was like sorry what it is again, he corrected me and I was like wow he knows my lines better than I do.

He has such a good eye for detail; one moment when the costume designer had to switch out a hat because of a stain. They replaced it with an exact copy, gave it to him, and he was like this isn’t the hat.

2. Night Sky has gotten a good reception, how are you feeling about it all?

It’s phenomenal. I was so nervous when it first dropped. The production sent me a prescreening and it took me a week to sit down and watch it. I was so nervous because I was so worried about my performance, if I was able to fit in on screen, I put it off, then my mum and I watched it together and she was like ‘this is amazing, this is one of the best shows I’ve seen in a long time. She said even if you weren’t in it, I would still watch this show’.

I was so relieved because I’m proud of the work that I did on the show and it’s not very often that happens. Of course, there were moments I could have made this choice or that choice. I’m really happy with the work I did.

To see it get such good reviews was just icing on the cake.

3. what are you working on next?

I’m currently in the second season of The Newsreader at the moment. That’s another gem of a production; everyone is so lovely and so talented. This season is going to top the first season, doesn’t happen often – hard to capture lightning in a bottle twice. It has recaptured everything it did in the first season.

Shows like Breaking bad, it was slow but was a character-building season; you have to do that for the rest of the story. Night sky was kind of like that in the first season; it’s a character developmental season. Then it would have gone on more into something.

Unfortunately, it has been canceled which is heartbreaking. It is a shame, I was talking to the other actors on it and we are all equally as devastated. We were prepping to do preproduction in September and then the news dropped.

4. You’re coming to Canberra for our first ever comic con event, are you looking forward to that?

I’m excited. I love doing Comic-Cons; they are so much fun, and you get to meet the fans that have watched your stuff. It’s great to see the show from their perspective and I love seeing the cosplay. There are some awesome talented cosplayers, sometimes even better than the original. It’s a good atmosphere that they create.

5. Who would you cosplay as?

I don’t know. I dressed up as The Crow for Halloween once; I think that was really cool. Maybe something like that.

Although I would like to get into those costumes; I can’t think of the name they have big heads and you kind of get into them. I saw one recently it was R2D2 that was upgraded to robot form and I was like that is such a cool custom. That would have taken years to make, it was so intricate.

Catch Chai Hansen at Oz Comic-Con Homegrown Canberra at EPIC, 27-28 August; ozcomiccon.com

Hansen’s responses have been condensed for publication.

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