Christopher Lee’s Scene in Taiwanese Drama Islanders That Got Everyone Talking: Singaporean Co-Director Reveals How He Pulled It Off

When Ler Jiyuan finally got to work with Christopher Lee, the very first thing he shot with the veteran Malaysian actor was — his bare butt.

“It’s an honour,” Ler wisecracks. “Because I’ve never worked with [Lee's Chinese name] Ming-Shun ge before and the very first time I worked with him, I get to shoot his naked butt. But I think that’s something that not a lot of people get to do, you know?” Ler tells 8days.sg over Zoom from Los Angeles, where he’s now based.

In Islanders, a seven-part Taiwanese drama series now streaming on Prime Video, Lee stars as a businessman whose relationships with his wife, longtime mistress, and a much younger paramour come under public scrutiny.

When his offhand comments about Cross-straits relations ignite public outrage, social media goes into overdrive, thrusting him into the heart of a national controversy, even his once-devoted assistant (Abang Adik’s Golden Horse Award winner Wu Kang Ren) begins to rethink his everything.

Ler, 44, cut his teeth working on such Mediacorp dramas as The Pupil, Code of Law and Zero Calling. He’s best known for Invisible Stories, the 2020 HBO anthology series about the lives and struggles of heartland HDB dwellers.

Islanders wasn’t originally Ler’s project. He was in early talks for a second season of Invisible Stories when Covid-19 and corporate upheavals put everything on hold. But as the saying goes, when one door closes, another opens — that very show would become his calling card, and a lifeline for the Islanders team when their original director jumped ship.

Working on Islanders took some getting used to, Ler admits, who was drawn to its offbeat pace and tone. “It wasn’t conventional TV. I saw it as a poetic melodrama — characters speaking in metaphors, allegories,” he says. “It felt like adapting a novel. I knew it had to follow its own rhythm.”

Ler shares directing duties with acclaimed Taiwanese theatre director and actor Tsai Pao-Chang, who makes his TV debut with Islanders, both as a director and screenwriter. “Because he was still relatively new to screen direction, I was brought in to co-direct,” Ler explains.

From the get-go, the collaboration was a smooth one. “[Tsai] and I worked very well together. I handled the big-picture elements — the visual language, working with the heads of departments, that sort of thing,” says Ler. “He focused on the script, the dialogue, rehearsals, and performances.”

Lee’s nude scene — which had him emerging from the water in a bathhouse and locking eyes with Wu’s character — was, according to Ler, a pivotal moment.

“This was originally in the script. This is a key scene,” he says. “He has to kind of walk up from a swimming pool like a mermaid going to shore. And then we have to capture him in this sensual way… it took time to get there.”

The first attempt didn’t quite work. Ler credits Tsai for pushing him to rethink the mood of the sequence. “I told the DP, you know what, let’s reshoot this. We put smoke on the water surface, and then we changed the lighting such that, when he stands up, there’s ripples on his body. The whole scene just comes alive with that… it created that atmosphere and that sexual tension between him and Wu Kang Ren’s character.”

What notes did Ler give Lee ahead of filming the scene?

“I told the team to pass him a message from me,” Ler recalls with a laugh. “I said, just work on the chest and deltoids — whack the upper body a bit.”

Sure, Ler was okay with Lee having a bit of a dad bod, but he still wanted the silhouette to pop on camera. “You just need that shape,” he adds.

To his credit, Lee took the note and reportedly hit the weights. But physical prep aside, what truly impressed Ler once filming began was something far less superficial.

“What’s really sexy about Ming-Shun ge is his charisma,” says Ler. “Once I put him on camera, I understood. He’s not there to ‘sell meat’, so to speak — it’s his natural aura. That’s what comes through.”

Ler was also struck by Lee’s versatility. “If you’ve seen him in Workers, it’s a totally different character. He can play anything — which is why he’s in such huge demand.”

Islanders doesn’t shy away from sex — queer, straight, or otherwise. “Yes, we had a very good intimacy coordinator who is super professional,” Ler notes. “She not only takes care of the integrity and safety of actors during the scenes, but she actually choreographed the scenes. I told her what I want, and she designed it.”

For Ler, these R21moments were as technically demanding as stunt sequences. “Intimacy scenes are difficult. They are like action scenes. You gotta take one shot at a time. Every shot needs to be a closed set.”

And which were harder to shoot? “For me, the gay scenes are a little easier to shoot than the guy and girl scenes… because a female, you need to protect on top. A male for male, you don’t need to protect on top. You just need to cover the bottom.”

Beyond sex, Islanders boldly tackles Taiwan’s fraught political climate. For Ler, who has spent much of his career navigating Singapore TV’s stricter limits, it was eye-opening.

“Taiwan is a very, very, very, very open society. You can pretty much shoot anything. You can shoot homosexual content, you can shoot religious content, you can shoot political content. And this is something that in a way blew my mind.

“When I first saw the script, there’s a debate scene [about China-Taiwan’s tumultuous relations]]. I’m like, wow, you can say that? It’s like, oh man, this is really incendiary.”

These days, Ler is thousands of miles from Taiwan. He’s in LA, finishing his Master’s in directing at the American Film Institute.

“I’m on a midlife crisis study mission. I’m studying my master’s in directing… I’m working on my thesis film right now,” he says. He’s also developing a few feature film ideas — including “a love story with supernatural elements” set in Taiwan.

Even while in America, Ler’s thoughts remain with Singapore. This year, he marked SG60 with fellow filmmakers overseas. “We watched the National Day parade, actually. We ate mee siam and we watched the whole parade. It was pretty fun.”

And his wish for Singapore? “More openness, more freedom and the ability to express ourselves. [Especially after the closure of indie cinema The Projector last month and arts centre The Substation three years ago], if a country doesn’t have a platform — like this incubation base for our local artists — we will not have an identity. This is our identity — our arts and culture. We need to really invest in it.”

Watch Islanders on Prime Video; Invisible Stories and Workers are streaming on HBO Max. The Pupil, Code of Law and Zero Calling are available on mewatch.

Photos: Catchplay, HBO Max, Ler Jiyuan