Wang Chu Ran Endures the Fallout of Playing a Disliked Female Lead Character with a Flat Performance in Fireworks of My Heart
Well it’s been a wild July for C-actress Wang Chu Ran. She first stole Ren Min‘s thunder at the beginning of The Longest Promise for being prettier in period garb and overall had more onscreen charisma, though as the drama went along fans just settled into enjoying the story. But she was supposed to have a big female lead breakout for modern drama Fireworks of My Heart (My Fireworks on Earth) with Yang Yang airing on Hunan TV and Mango streaming but that drama turned out keep dropping in ratings and racking up complaints. In the end, majority of viewers disliked Wang Chu Ran’s character and her performance, talk about double whammy. Reportedly she’s lost three endorsements since the drama aired with outspoken netizens claiming to boycott brands that use her after she gave an interview saying she was attracted to the female lead character who was quite flawed and netizens think the character is just an awful woman so are upset Wang Chu Ran does not find what the character did so problematic and think she has ethical and moral lapses because of that.
I agree the female character in Fireworks drama sucks but it wasn’t really her fault, and more the fault of the writer and screenwriter. That said, the reason she gave for playing the character would make me doubt her character as well.. she should’ve just been honest with the real reason she play the character instead of saying she is ‘drawn’ to the character’s flaws. Media play fail for her. One extra lesson to learn.. her acting actually fell flat for me as well and I couldn’t finish the drama.
What is wrong with being drawn to a flawed character as an actor? Flawed character means complexity, more challenges. The fact that she said the character is flawed also means she acknowledges the characters’ shortcomings. That is some twisted logic just to hate on her. Also netizen said she has an ethical and moral lapses then proceed to bully her, irony is calling lmao.
Yeah, f*ck likeability, I much prefer interesting, complex, flawed characters over boring, likeable ones lol
I also don’t understand, all of this seems to be targeted black campaign marketing?
I wonder who paid for this
I agree with you except for the fact that she lacks the self awareness to know she does NOT have the acting ability to pull off the complexity of a flawed character to make it relatable rather than disdained.
The main failure of Fireworks of my Heart is actually the shitty script but both Yang Yang and Wang Chu Ran really exacerbate the situation with his over acting and her under acting. It’s also a mystery how little to no chemistry they show onscreen considering they are supposedly dating in real life.
If I do psychoanalysis (my own opinions entirely), a lot of people are annoyed for her having the upper hand in the longest promise just because she looks better. Many don’t likes girls who they perceive to be pick me girls. So which is why they bullied her for this drama. Again not saying this is correct. The vicious trolling of Ren Min is so terrible and Wang Chu ran being compared all the time to her. People who did not like this happening might have been like “now we will show you, just you wait”. None of this would have happened if people don’t keep rating women on looks. It just creates an environment of negativity.
I get it, actually. Look at how that Wonyoung girl is getting insane hate from other girls for… eating a strawberry in a cute way. Yeah.
Girls (and probably many grown-ass women too), hate that girl for breathing and because she has a perfect girl image, she’s always being labeled as a “pick-me” girl even tho she literally didn’t do anything to warrant that kind of label, as far as I know. That term has lost all meaning now, a lot of women just use that to anyone they don’t like or anyone they perceive to be a competition, when its original meaning is women who put down other girls just to get brownie points from the males, hence “pick me”. I don’t know much about C-ent, so I don’t know exactly what’s happening to Wang Chu Ran, but it what you’re saying makes sense
That’s actually quite logical explanation.
It makes me quite curious tho, does actress famous for their looks like Dilraba also got the same treatment when she was rookie?
I am so happy to be past the age when I would be judged by my looks. I am in my late thirties now but found good looking or being found not good looking are both hurtful. I have friends who were not considered pretty and I have seen how devastating life could be for them to the point that some needed therapy. Conversely being found good looking is also bad since one gets a lot of criticism and negativity from women and lots of creepy me (I am south Asian and men have told me who do you think you are, how dare you reject me. I literally had to go hiding because I did not want unstable men doing something violent). Conversely no one criticises men too much for looking however they are. In delightful deceitful k drama for example the male lead who is a fabulous actor and I really like him, did not look good at al and no one commented. But see the bullying the female lead got for crash course in romance. I am tired of this. Women are more than their looks seriously. How many of us notice how our grandmas or moms look like but we love them nonetheless.
Beautiful girl but yeah her acting is stiff. Chemistry is lacking even though they’re both good looking. Hope for better acting choices next time.
The whole dropping of endorsements is just weird, not as if she was in a big scandal that constitutes cancellation, need to word her statements better.
Brands want people who can sell the brands. There’s no obligation involved such as to support an actress who lost some popularity. Indeed she committed no crime or any moral transgression. It’s just too bad. If brands just need looks, there are millions of pretty models, etc. That’s part and parcel of riding on fans popularity to sell the brand.
Xiao Zhan didn’t do anything wrong but all brands dropped him previously just because some fallout over fanship issue not caused by him.
The book was popular because she was flawed and so is he, it makes sense as there were very clear events that were explained. I hates her character too. She was mean, tough but I understand her being an orphan and then having such high expectations/standards & not being able to be herself and her love. It helps that the mother was god damn the worse, she tried to get rid of leading man every way possible even to death. So although, the lead characters were initially unbearable but they have growth later on. He was a bad boy who smokes & she smoke too because of him but both became life saver later on in life (so we understand why the mother don’t approve of him). Over the book was very humanized.
Here in the drama, the tone was totally the opposite. WCR portray the character too nice and soft spoken. There’s no reasons given to make us understand the characters & when it tries it was too late and we are already done w/ these characters. This actress was wrong for this project. She deserve the negative critic on her acting, but upset fans need to stop attacking her. Flawed character are the most interesting, but it was not properly taken care in this drama.
Agree the drama’s characterization was meh.
A lot of things got deleted, like how the fl lives in dark room, she doesn’t have any friend nor interact much with other people, how she took antidepressants, it was never shown.
For the ml too, they deleted the part about him getting tortured to near death by meng family, and also how dark things about government basically never made it to the screen.
They also deleted a lot of highschool scenes, where basically the ml and fl, drank, fight, smoked, and had s*x together. I wonder if cnetz would flip out if they adapt these.
I wonder if they don’t pass the censorship? Well if it’s so, the censorship really ruined this adaptation for all of us.
Well, she helped take the heat off Yang Yang of the criticisms on his acting.
I would say she chose the wrong character and drama to focus her mediaplay on. If she had focused on her strong independent character in The Longest Promise which was pretty likeable instead of this drama, she would have gained some fans. But I guess it makes sense she chose to focus on this drama as she’s the 1st female lead here.
Also, Wei Daxun had a breakout of popularity with his character in this drama, his character is in love with Wang Churan who is his adopted sister. The audience had loved the angst of this semi-forbidden love which was doomed from the start. Instead of capitalising on this ship, Wang Churan chose to promote her loveline with Yang Yang (who is already receiving criticisms on his acting) on variety shows and that irked the shippers.
Seriously though, C-netz have real issues. I mean, imagine cancelling sir Anthony Hopkins because he found Hannibal Lecter an interesting and worth-playing character.
I can’t tell if she’s any good either on the show (haven’t watched it), but if the audience was to cancel actors for bad acting, 90% of Chinese idols would be sipping tea in front of their TV right now.
Lmao yeah, I wonder how cnetz would react if they have murderer protagonist like Mouse too, are they gonna say “you’re attracted to murderer?!”
That said, maybe this is why chinese never put out complex character, because protagonist in their mind should have no fault, always perfect
I don’t know if you’re serious in comparing Wang Churan or Yangyang to Anthony Hopkins. LOL
Of course Chinese viewers appreciate shady characters that are written and acted well even more than goody 2 shoe roles, shadier characters like Zhang Songwen’s Gao Qiqiang (this is 2023’s top viral character over any idol drama…. He’s like Walter White), Dylan Wang’s devil Dongfang Qingcang which was the viral role of 2022, Leo Luo’s demon Tantai Jin, Lost You Forever’s Xiangliu are all extremely populae. Manipulative female characters like Yanxi Palace’s FL or Legend of Zhenhuan’s FL are more well-liked than Mary Sues. The problem isn’t that Fireworks had shady leads, it’s that the author JiuYueXi clearly plagiarized another webnovel where the adopted FL falls for her stepbro ML but added another ML for plausible deniability; the giveaway is that the 2nd ML is very likeable even in the plagiarized version because he was meant to be the ML.
I have to agree that I dropped the drama because I couldn’t feel the chemistry between the leads. Aside from the wooden acting by both leads (sorry, Yang Yang fans), I found the story a bit forced or is it the love between them? Just to be clear, I find YangYang very handsome, and I loved him in King’s Avatar. It’s just that he acts like he’s acting sometimes.
There’s more to it than is being reported here. Originally, netizens were trolling her and Yang Yang for their characters, but the shady things the crew have done to Wei Daxun, a supporting actor, in order to shift the attention towards the two leads only escalated things. WCR’s behavior on the variety show and her response to netizens’ criticism further left a bad taste in people’s mouths. Naturally, with all this attention, it led people to do some digging and coming to a consensus of her having a diva attitude, stealing resources, and more. WCR won’t be canceled over this, but the things that are being exposed have just tainted her reputation, since before this, everyone perceived her as a sweet and sophisticated girl. Yang Yang is established, so he’s able to protect himself from the all the drama.
Can you elaborate on the diva attitude and stealing resource? I don’t go on weibo much, so I don’t see all the rumors. I did read about the rumor where she stole some role from Mao Xiaotong, but I thought MXT’s studio already said it’s fake. It just feels like a smear campaign. What the production did to Wei Daxun has nothing to do with her, and I don’t think netizens should be taking their anger out on her to this extreme.
It was rumored that the drama fireworks was first offered to mao xiao tong however while waiting for negotiations from mxt and production, wcr’s team grabbed the drama.
Diva attitude- several complaints were exposed after the “witch” comment from wcr last july 22,2023, one coming from the neufmode magazine photographer complaining of her attitude, production crew of the drama, former assistants who left her alleging that they couldn’t tolerate her being bossy. The Antigen testing was a melon from year ago in db, it wasn’t confirmed until recently due to her negative feedbacks after the exposure of her diva behavior. There are videos of her rolling her eyes, to Tan Jianci while filming their drama and before the camera rolls, video of her rolling her eyes after filming and all her assistants were coming over her to get all her stuffs. It was also said that during weibo ceremony red carpet, when she walked with chen zhe yuan and tian xi wei, she walked too fast and left behind the 2 companions so she can be photographed alone, however, this has not been approved and she had to wait for the 2 to be on the same frame.