LOS ANGELES – A star of Hong Kong TVB shows such as acclaimed period drama No Regrets (2010), Fala Chen crossed over to Hollywood only a few years ago.

But the 40-year-old actress’ first American projects have made quite the splash.

There was Marvel’s superhero blockbuster, Shang-Chi And The Legend Of The Ten Rings (2021), in which she played the hero’s mother; and Emmy-nominated psychological thriller The Undoing (2020), which co-starred Oscar winner Nicole Kidman.

Now the China-born, Juilliard-trained actress – who was 14 when she and her family emigrated from Chengdu to Atlanta, Georgia – is in a new English-language drama, Irma Vep, French director Olivier Assayas’ self-referential satire of show business.

Starring Alicia Vikander and airing on HBO Go and HBO (StarHub TV Channel 601 and Singtel TV Channel 420), with new episodes on Tuesdays at 9am, it has Chen playing Hong Kong actress Cynthia Keng, who has been cast in a French television show to appeal to the Chinese market.

Chen tells the press in a Zoom interview that, despite her success, she has occasionally wondered if she herself has been the token Asian, cast mainly for her ethnicity.

“I was very lucky when I started my acting career. It was in Hong Kong, so I never felt like I was ‘the other’ and I looked like everyone else on set,” says the star, who also appeared in the TVB hits Steps (2007) and Moonlight Resonance (2008).

“But once I started (working elsewhere) and even during drama school in New York, I always had the feeling, like, ‘Why did they cast me in this particular role?'”

Usually, she would get roles written as Asian, as opposed to those where the ethnicity is not specified.

“Which is fine – I am Asian, or Asian-American. But it does feel like there is still a limit to a lot of people’s imaginations when it comes to what an actor is capable of beyond the colour of their skin,” says the actress, who is married to French technology entrepreneur Emmanuel Straschnov, 39, and has a four-month-old daughter.

And she feels like that even now. “Even though I just came out of an all-Asian-cast Marvel film, it sometimes feels like, after Shang-Chi, my agents are getting more calls about me playing an Asian character who speaks only Chinese or things like that. That’s unfortunately still a work in progress in this industry.”