Families are messy and complicated. The Sun family even more so, as “could not be more different” brothers Charles (Justin Chien) and Bruce (Sam Li Song) must protect their mother Eileen (Michelle Yeoh) from Taipei gangsters after their ruthless father, Big Sun (Johnny Kou), is shot.
Inspired by the works of Japanese filmmaker Jûzô Itami (The Funeral, Tampopo), screenwriter Byron Wu first looked to Itami’s Minbo: The Gentle Art of Japanese Extortion, a tongue-in-cheek comedy about the Yakuza (an organised crime syndicate based in Japan) for inspiration. The Yakuza waited for Itami to come home one night soon after the release of the film and beat him up demanding he never make another movie about the Yakuza again.
“I couldn’t help but laugh. How funny is it that these gangsters were so insecure about what they did that they decided to beat up a comedy director? That started off as this examination of masculine insecurity and security in The Brothers Sun,” notes Wu. As an Asian-American TV writer, that led him to think about his own views on toxic masculinity which formed the basis of the characters nerdy and naïve Bruce and his drug dealing bestie TK Lee (Joon Lee).
Byron Wu. Photo by Haley Bartels
Byron later decided that he needed a similar character who didn’t grow up in America as a counter point, and goofy Charles Su (Justin Chien), Bruce’s rage-filled brother was born to depict that darker side of masculinity. It wasn’t until Eileen “Mama Sun” (Michelle Yeoh) was created that The Brothers Sun really gelled as a gangster family show.
Getting Brad Falchuk Attached
Byron Wu was working as an assistant to literary manager Mikkel Bondeson before he went to study at the American Film Institute (AFI). Bondeson later became president of Brad Falchuk’s company who pitched it to him.
“I sent this script off to Mikkel, right after AFI, and I was just hoping he would get me repped. He said, ‘Oh, Brad might be into this. Why don’t you just keep developing with one of our executives for a little bit and then we’ll pass along when we feel like it’s ready?'” And that is exactly what happened.
“I didn’t hear from Mikkel for about six months. Then I got an email out of the blue from Brad’s development executive saying, ‘Mikkel just pitched your script to Brad at our staff meeting. Can you send a story bible? I didn’t have one. Give me three days. I just typed away and sent them whatever I had come up with in that time,” adds Wu.
“I was on a Zoom with Brad, probably four days later, telling me he wanted me to become the showrunner and co-creator of The Brothers Sun.” Brad was interested in a world of three Asian-American crime families that he knew nothing about.
Sun Family Dysfunctional Dynamics
“We read a few books on Taiwanese gangs. We had a writer who was very familiar with LA gang life,” states Wu. But they weren’t making a documentary. They were making a show about a dysfunctional crime family. So, they allowed themselves substantial poetic license.
“We wanted to distance ourselves from gang reality in a lot of ways. We wanted to make The Brothers Sun our own and live in a space that was truthful in its feeling rather than factual,” mentions Wu.
The comedic aspect of The Brothers Sun allowed the writers to lean into cultural stereotypes and outlandishly subvert them with aspects like Charles’ baking and Bruce’s bumbling foolishness during improv.
Eileen didn’t want to just be an over-protective mom and order Bruce to rest and study to become a doctor. She really came into her own when deciding to lead the crime syndicate.
The Suns are America’s favorite Asian-American dysfunctional family. “Bruce very much has his own goals. One of the themes we talked about from the start was his duty to himself versus his duty to his Confucian family. The Sun family is almost of the medieval kind where there is no self. Everything you do is in service to the family. As the story progresses, Bruce starts to bump up against the thing that his family needs as opposed to his personal desires.”
Charles is on the other end of the spectrum because his entire life is devoted to protecting his family because he was raised by his father in Taiwan that way. “He has this secret internal passion for baking. As the season progresses, he starts to see what life could be like if he wasn’t raised to be this killer.”
Bruce and Charles spar throughout the series as each tries to impose their own value system onto the other, yet appreciate their stark philosophical differences to become closer.
“Mama Sun is on her own journey of being sent over to America from Taiwan. She had this rich and powerful life back in her home country. And then, she had to go down to nothing. Now she’s reclaiming her power,” states Wu.
Eileen “Mama” Sun (Michelle Yeoh) Photo by James Clark/ Netflix
Bruce is ostensibly the main character in the show even though most of his decisions are in lock step with Charles. “He didn’t want to believe his family was a crazy Triad family until he was forced to.” Bruce is acutely aware that his family will likely end up dead on their current trajectory.
“Bruce is naïve and he’s definitely smart. He’s able to think on his feet. He’s able to put plans together and see routes of solving problems that no one else can. That’s what makes him special,” elaborates Byron. Bruce could conceivably became the new Sun crime family boss if he had more confidence. “He’s organized and he’s intelligent. Charles is a bit more impulsive.”
Another theme that underpins The Brothers Sun is identity. Bruce knows exactly who he is while Charles does what’s expected of him while mainly neglecting personal aspirations.
Bruce is the unwilling participant in the gang crime in some respects. “Bruce is a good guy. He also loves his family so much and he wants to be a part of that. He is someone who wants respect. Charles, on the other hand, is someone who has lived his life with respect, and deep down wants some sort of personal satisfaction.”
Writing The TV Series
Byron Wu confesses that building out his initial idea into a fully-realized TV show took some time. “When I presented the script to Brad, I think I’d done over twenty-seven drafts,” recalls Wu. “There was a lot of writing and rewriting; a lot of plotting and planning. First, the show was just about Bruce and TK. Then it was about Bruce, Charles and TK. Then Mama Sun was added. Each time I would revisit the script, we would go a little bit deeper into these characters.” This was a slow process until the writers’ room opened and things sped up.
“We spent the first two weeks talking about these characters, talking about their arcs, talking about who they were, who we thought they were, and who they could be. Things evolve again when you get actors attached. Actors bring their own flavour and nuances into these characters.”
Byron Wu confesses to identifying with Bruce’s character the most. “The improv, the silliness, the goofiness, the earnestness are all me. There are also parts of me that are Charles. There’s a very serious side of me as well. I feel split between the two of them.”
Despite the sharp comedic slant of The Brothers Sun, the dual tone of show also needs to capture the brutality of gang violence. “We talked about Infernal Affairs; the noir aspect of it. We talked about The Godfather; Michael Corleone… but as if Frodo Baggins was the one who is becoming the head of the family.”
“We spent the first two weeks laying out characters and acts individually. Then we broad-stroked the episodes. We would go through episode by episode, one week per episode, and we would break the whole season together. Then we went into outline. It was really nice that we could lay out the whole season on boards. We had to see how the whole season played out before we even started writing the second outline. After that, we did another outline, we did notes, and the writers went off and wrote their drafts.”
“Our outlines are very in-depth. It’s about one outline page and two script pages per episode. The actual script going from outline to script took a week and a half to two weeks.”
Big Sun (Johnny Kou) Photo by Michael Desmond/ Netflix
The Brothers Sun had a writers’ room comprising Asian-Americans so they could connect with their common experiences. Wu brought up the typical drawer filled with different hot sauces or items stored in plastic bags commonly find in Asian-American households according to the writers’ room. This was the impetus for Charles storing parts of Giant’s (Tae Kang) body in bags around the house.
Bruce’s passion for improv wasn’t initially part of the show. “That’s something that came out of me talking to Brad about my own life,” adds Byron. “I had to move down to LA to do improv and Brad thought that was so funny and interesting that he wanted to put it into the show.”
Byron Wu uses the term “brilliantly stupid” to describe the humor of the show, “I think it’s how one of our writers put it… such the dinosaurs and our little bits in the car. We have so much fun and you think it is so dumb, but it makes us laugh and that’s part of what makes it into the show,” chuckles Wu. These silly scenes are played off against full-fledged gruesome gunfights to give them a sting. There wasn’t a specific formula to navigate the tone of the comedy. It all came down to intuition in the writers’ room.
Shaping His Writing Career
Byron Wu adds that Mikkel Bondesen taught him the basics of the business. “One of the nice things about working with him was getting to read a lot of scripts and seeing what was coming through his office. That helped me decide what I wanted to do.”
“I feel like my style really developed when I went to the AFI. I got to experiment and pursue the sort of tone and stories that I was most interested in. Before that, I was writing very broad, half-hour sitcoms. They were fine, but not having any sort of specific uniqueness to them. That’s really when I got to develop my sense of self.”
In conclusion, Byron Wu recommends that aspiring writers should keep writing until they eventually break in. “I know so many people who stopped writing. They have one script that they wrote three years ago that they’re still trying to get somebody to read, as opposed to rewriting it or writing something new.”
“You’ve got to be keep going, keep getting better. Keep being self-reflective and self-aware and open enough to criticism and wanting to be able to make yourself better and to grow. Because in the end, if you just keep growing, at some point, you will get good enough to get into a room.”
