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Christopher Chung is in the middle of a rare stretch: two major television roles hitting their stride in the same year, on opposite sides of the world. In August, the Melbourne-born actor became the new Harry Beecham in Netflix’s My Brilliant Career, a role that famously made Sam Neill a star back in 1979. A month later, Slow Horses returned for its sixth season, pushing Roddy Ho — the MI5 misfit Chung has played since the show began — straight into the centre of the action.
Most of Chung’s career has played out in the UK, where he’s lived since his early twenties. So, Netflix’s My Brilliant Career adaptation (one The Guardian recently described as “steamy” and “sassy”) offered something he’d been chasing: a reason to work at home. It also offered him a chance to slip into the shoes of a leading man.
“One of my ambitions and goals for my career has always been to be able to get a job back home that would warrant me to come back and film here,” he says. The project, based on Miles Franklin’s 1901 novel, stood out immediately. “It’s so iconically Australian.”
The property holds hallowed ground in the national canon. Gillian Armstrong’s 1979 film adaptation not only enshrined Franklin’s novel as a feminist masterpiece but also served as an early launchpad for the late Sam Neill, one of Australia’s finest cinematic exports. Before filming began on the new series, Chung heard from Neill, who had originated the role of Harry opposite Judy Davis nearly fifty years earlier.
“Felt like a bit of protection, to be honest,” Chung says of the blessing. “If he says it’s okay, then it’s okay, right?” Neill, whom Chung calls “an exemplary human” and “so generous and kind,” passed away in July, just a month before the series premiered—lending a poignant weight to Chung taking up the mantle.
Opposite Chung is Philippa Northeast as the fiercely independent Sybylla. Chung doesn’t hold back on his praise: “She is a consummate professional. I’ve actually never worked with an actor that is as hardworking and diligent as she is. 10 out of 10, no notes.”
Trading the insufferable tech-bro antics of Slow Horses’ Roddy Ho for the sweeping romance of a 19th-century pastoralist was quite the pivot. As the wealthy, chivalrous landowner of Five-Bob Downs, Chung brings a magnetic and tender presence to the screen.
Ask Chung how it feels to be cast as a romantic lead, and his reaction is one of bashful disbelief. “It still makes me laugh. I’m looking around the room every morning,” he says. But on a more serious note, he’s spoken frequently about the paucity of such roles for men of Asian descent, who, as he notes, are so often relegated to playing retiring nerds or specific stereotypes.
In an interview with Digital Spy, he laid out the reality: “There aren’t a lot of opportunities for Asian men to play romantic leads in film and TV… especially from minority backgrounds, we’re very much pigeonholed into… ‘You’re going to play the takeaway shop owner, you’re going to play the really smart doctor. You are going to be the nerdy sidekick.’”
My Brilliant Career is proof that a small stretch of the imagination can open those doors and lead to better story-telling.
“It’s something that I never saw — people that looked like me in those positions,” he says, recalling years spent watching what parts were being written, who was writing them, and where funding flowed. It took someone else’s imagination to kick the door open: producers Liz Doran and Chloe Rickard looked at Harry Beecham and asked a simple question. “Why couldn’t Harry have been Chinese? These people existed back in that period of time. It makes total sense; let’s expand the story in that way,” Chung recalls.
Reimagining Harry as Chinese Australian became one of the more talked-about departures from Franklin’s novel, and for Chung, the shift outlasted the role. “It’s opened my own expectations of myself and what is possible far beyond what I thought I would be,” he says.
The change echoes the story’s own politics: Sybylla’s refusal to accept the future everyone else has planned for her, a struggle Chung sees in his own path. “My story is quite like Sybylla’s story, in terms of pursuing your career and going against what people expect from you in society,” he says. He credits the women who shaped that instinct: a 101-year-old grandmother he calls “a force of nature,” and a mother who emigrated from Ireland in her twenties, pregnant, with a three-year-old in tow, “before Zoom and Skype and WhatsApp.”
Chung’s performance, however, has drawn some of the warmest (in the literal sense) notices. Collider called him the internet’s “next boyfriend” in waiting, noting that casting Harry as Chinese Australian read as more than a cosmetic change to the story. InReview singled out his chemistry with Northeast as giving their romance “genuine heat.”
Acting wasn’t the first plan. “I wanted first and foremost, I wanted to be a singer and a musician,” Chung says. He spent his teens auditioning for reality TV talent shows before deciding, once he’d relocated to the UK, that acting needed his full focus. To support himself, he trained as a personal trainer: “Something that was flexible, that would allow me the kind of resources to continue to pursue my acting.” More than a decade, a BAFTA nomination, and two major television roles later, the side gig has stuck. “That’s how I ended up becoming a personal trainer, which I still do now.”
Chung’s ongoing role as Roddy Ho on Apple TV+’s Slow Horses remains a career pillar. He’s played the abrasive, brilliant hacker since 2022, but Season 6 lands differently. Roddy has moved from the periphery to the centre of the action, complete with fresh tattoos and a peacocking new energy to match his expanding presence.
“We had a big changeover in writers this season,” Chung says. “We didn’t have Will [Smith], who was the constant throughout the first five seasons.” With Gaby Chiappe taking over as head writer, the handover gave the cast more say over their own characters. “It gave us as the actors a lot more agency,” he notes. “It’s really creatively inspiring, because you get to make up certain bits that Will might have taken care of previously.”
Working opposite Gary Oldman, Chung says, “definitely stopped being intimidating, which is nice… but it’s not stopped being inspiring. When you get on set with him, you inherently become a better actor yourself because you’re just trying to reach his level.” He is, however, quick to credit the ensemble over any single performance.
Balancing two major shows, of course, requires a certain level of upkeep, and we’d be remiss if we didn’t ask about his beauty routine. “Good skincare is always important. Wash your face at night. Moisturise, tone, cleanse, all of those things,” Chung advises, along with a daily non-negotiable: “SPF every day. Sun damage is a no-no.” He’s recently added a red light therapy mask to the rotation, asking sincerely if they work (we can’t comment because of the TGA). “They might not do anything, but at least you feel like you’re doing something,” he laughs. And the perm he picked up while filming Harry Beecham has stuck around, too.
When it comes to real-life romance, Chung doesn’t hesitate: the most romantic thing he’s done was take his now-wife, actor Frances Mayli McCann, to Paris for the day. The pair met performing together in Here Lies Love in London and had exactly one Sunday off. “We got up at six. We went to Paris for the day,” he says. It was Christmas, freezing, and her first time seeing the Eiffel Tower or the Arc de Triomphe, before they “went back in the evening full of red wine and cheese.”
As for what’s next, Chung is thinking smaller: a week away with friends and a handful of projects he’s producing rather than acting in, “some here in Australia, and some back in the UK.” First, though: “I don’t know, a holiday. That would be nice.”
The post ‘It’s Opened My Own Expectations Of Myself’ — Christopher Chung On Stepping Into Leading Man Status With ‘My Brilliant Career’ appeared first on ELLE.
