128 Circle Actor Duan Weiming Explains His Westworld Season 3 Premiere Appearance
‘Ah Cai’ has a scene with Jeffrey Wright on the Emmy-winning sci-fi series.
SPOILER ALERT: This story contain minor spoilers for Westworld's Season 3 premiere episode, 'Parce Domine'. So approach with caution.
Unless you’ve been hiding under a rock (without Wi-Fi connection), you may have heard that the third season of Westworld, HBO’s Emmy-garlanded, sprawling and mind-bending sci-fi series, was partly filmed in Singapore.
Not only will viewers catch glimpses of recognisable landmarks (start a drinking game!) but also familiar faces. One such actor who pops up on the show is Duan Weiming, whom you may remember, depending on how old you are, either as coffee stall assistant Ah Cai on Neighbours or kopi stall owner Larry on 128 Circle.
On the season premiere, the freelance actor — and full-time butler to a Chinese businessman — plays a fisherman who encounters Jeffrey Wright’s on-the-run robot Bernard Lowe. Weiming’s part maybe small, but the scene is significant.
Without stepping into scared spoiler territory, the scene — where the fisherman speaks Mandarin, and Bernard English (Wright reportedly had Mandarin lines but those were apparently nixed) — confirms the whereabouts of the eponymous theme park.
Here, Weiming (or Joe), who admits that he knew little about Westworld before filming, shares with 8days.sg, in an e-mail interview in Chinese, his experiences working on the series. On a show about human-like robots running amok, has he ever wondered if his character is real or synthetic? “You’ll have to watch all the way to the end to find out,” Weiming, 59, replies, cryptically.
