After the Magnolia Award Wu Yue: The "Internet Storm" in 2017 gave me the freedom to perform

June 26, 2023 | Total No. 3278

Editor's note

On June 23, the Excellent Shanghai TV Drama Seminar was held in Shanghai. Actor Wu Yue attended the meeting and made a wonderful speech. Different from the public discourse that is usually based on viewpoints in the seminar, Wu Yue talked about the experience and experience of congratulation, both emotional and rational.

The audience was infected by her and listened to the whole text calmly and attentively. That night, Wu Yue won the Best Actress Award at the Magnolia Awards ceremony with the role of Ai Xianzhi in "County Party Committee Compound", and this "beautiful text" also became her most sincere acceptance speech.

Good morning, leaders, teachers! It is a pleasure to be able to participate in this symposium, and here are some of my thoughts on Shanghai and some tips on the road to acting.

This is a rare cool day in Shanghai in summer. The arrogant hairs on the plane trees finally returned dust to dust and soil to earth after a heavy rain. Magnolia blooms, green leaves are shiny and oily, the flowers are white, large, and from a distance it is a large clean white handkerchief. The green of the trees, the handkerchiefs full of trees, this is the scene I am most familiar with in Shanghai.

As a Shanghainese, the word "hometown" was not so strong in my heart before the age of twenty, and at that time, in my opinion, the core word for "Shanghai" was "to leave". If you leave, you can grow up, and when you grow up, you will have the opportunity to be free. So as soon as I graduated from university, I started the road to the rivers and lakes.

For young people, crew life is happy. But now it seems that the happiest thing is that at that time, my young parents were young. Also, there is a lot of time to waste. Year after year passed quickly, the rivers and lakes calmed down, and I became a professional actor. Sometimes you hear voices like "Are you from Shanghai?" It's not like ah, the personality is very northern!" I am very happy to hear such comments, and I feel that the farther away from Shanghai, the more independent and successful I am.

Of course, Shanghai doesn't mind, it's still its own appearance. It appeared deep and shallow in my suitcase, in my parents' phone, in casual snacks, in the booklet of Ailing's essays on the bedside table, and in the bowl of camelina ravioli that occasionally came to the table... also familiar, strange, distant, and inseparable.

About the performance

Being an actor has always come with some luck for me. During the college entrance examination, I only filled out one of the long list of volunteer forms - "Shanghai Theater Academy", and I was admitted. The first play after graduation is "The Story of Late Autumn in Beijing", directed by Teng Wenji, many stars come to help with friendship, the stars shine, and I am the female number one.

I remember Director Teng said, "When I picked her up at the airport, I decided to see this girl in the crowd come out, Wu Yue is the Xiaofeng I am looking for." The past is vivid, and now think about luck. But as an actor, I'm also a little weird. Until now, I would be anxious the day before the start-up, nervous in front of the first shot, and completely insecure. Some painful, some torturous.

But some realizations bring me infinite yearning. For example, art comes from feelings, and in the world of feelings, it doesn't matter whether you are a "brand" or a "master". The important thing is that you express what you feel so that the person who sees it feels it as well. And feeling this thing comes from the heart, it is honest and does not lie, there is yes, there is no no, no one can deceive anyone.

So, whether a performance is moving depends first and foremost on whether it comes from sincerity. Then, bring respect, kindness and enthusiasm, nothing to do with packaging, away from pride and prejudice, and so that everything you go from beginning to end - beauty!

An actor's job is to create beauty. So I often feel satisfied that I am an actor. The anxiety before each boot will always be released with the filming of one scene after another, especially after filming those big emotional scenes, I will always sleep well at night. The "fulfillment" brought about by this contentment cannot be disturbed by the "data" who create anxiety.

About the actors

The Internet era is coming, and I know that the era of going door-to-door to watch TV is over. Every era will give birth to its own art, just as each era now has its own TV series.

So what does the Internet age really mean at the moment? I don't know! But I know one thing very well, as a middle-aged actress, it must be very embarrassing to step into the world of "appearance theory" without paying attention. Because in this world, gray hair is anxiety, collagen is supreme, aging is the biggest enemy, and if a "not good-looking" face is still aging, it is simply a great crime.

But luckily, in the winter of 2016, in Shanghai, I filmed a TV series. Looking back at this play now, the growth it brought me was incredible. It was called "My First Half of My Life," and I was 46 years old.

The "Shanghai" of that year was no longer as simple as "leaving" and "freedom" for me. Because I began to realize that my parents are old and sick. My dad had a stroke on 11/4/16. That period of shuttling between the crew and the hospital was described in four words as "chaos". But I'm lucky, how do I say that? In the summer of 2017, "The First Half of Life" was broadcast, and fate arranged for me to quickly understand what is called "hot search" in the shortest time.

"Why is this actress so old, so ugly and so haggard?!"

"Such an old, ugly, and haggard woman dares to rob someone else's husband?!"

Yes, it's like being pushed into the river before you can buy a lifebuoy, and before you have time to struggle, the river floods overhead. It's sour, but it's also painful!

Everything that a middle-aged actress was worried about and feared was unloaded by a self-made TV series. Really, I never dreamed that the spit stars that an actress was most afraid of actually helped me leave as quickly as possible, those obsessions and attachments that I once didn't want to leave in every possible way, and did not have the courage to leave.

Later, the word "leave" began to become wonderful. Like when I was younger, it once again gave me freedom. But the difference is that the former is "departure" and now it is "going home". Another pleasant thing was that I began to appreciate how free and happy a performance that threw away distractions and traveled lightly.

I really didn't expect that when I was young, I kept looking for it, but when I stopped, I looked back and saw it. There's nothing more important than getting growth. So it is with acting, so with art, so with being a person, so with life.

Finally, I would like to take this opportunity to wish all my colleagues perseverance and freedom on the road of art. I also wish that the Shanghai I love can produce more excellent and heartwarming TV works.

【Text/Wu Yue】