Kevin Tancharoen wants you to know his family came from Thailand, not Taiwan. He remembered people getting that mixed up while growing up and always forgave their errors, because when you hear it out loud, it makes sense. He finds it humorous now that he’s directing and executive producing the upcoming Netflix dark family comedy, The Brothers Sun, which centers on a Taiwanese family in the midst of a triad war. 

“Oh, you’re Taiwanese?” Tancharoen recalls the mistake to The Nerds of Color. “No, Thailand. [Then they’d ask], ‘what’s the difference?’ And I just explained it. We’re pretty different.”

Yet, despite being different ethnicities, Tancharoen related to the personal storyline of The Brothers Sun, which was the reason he signed onto the project. In the story, Bruce Sun (Sam Li) is a Taiwanese American pre-med student who dreams of becoming an actor. He is then thrust into the mafia world when his older brother Charles (Justin Chien), the interim-head of the Jade Dragons triad, visits — expecting Bruce to fulfill his familial obligations in the family business. 

“The [series] felt like this unique mixture of Kill Bill and [HBO’s] Barry,” Tancharoen explains. “This is everything that I love, but, most specifically, what the characters were going through. When it came to Bruce’s character, being an Asian American growing up here in America from birth, it was just something that I related to, on a very nuanced level. There were a lot of relatable moments that I felt with him as far as being an outsider within your everyday environment – and being thrust into a world that is a little larger than life. I relate to that in many ways.”

Best known for his work on the supernatural and superhero genre, Tancharoen knew his way around fight coordination and stunts. But, there was something different about The Brothers Sun when it came to the action sequences. The series was rooted in reality and the choreography had to include some humor amidst the chaos. He worked closely with supervising stunt coordinator Justin Yu and his team to ensure there was some storytelling behind the punches and kicks. 

“I’ve been so used to making people look like the absolute badass in the superhero genre – the thing where you kick butt and then hold a pose,” says Tancharoen. “That was the kind of language I was used to doing, but with this [series], there was a lot more of a storytelling approach. We had to make sure that the humor, the stakes, and the emotional storytelling between the two brothers had come across [throughout the action]. It almost ended up feeling like a musical in a weird way because everyone has their story to tell.”

Tancharoen uses Disney-Pixar’s The Incredibles as a reference for his fight choreography. As the family fights the villains, they are working through their family drama and have grown even stronger. He wanted that for the brothers as they go through their many hurdles, “It’s capturing those moments and making sure that there was an arc there. Everything that was choreographed felt grounded.”

In-between the intense fight scenes, there were a lot of emotional journeys for the main characters, who are each facing their own internal battle. Bruce doesn’t want anything to do with the mafia life. Charles is filled with so much rage as he was forced into this mobster role. Their mother, Mama Sun (Michelle Yeoh), wants more in life than to be a mother, all the while, showing obvious favoritism towards her youngest. Tancharoen didn’t shy away from highlighting these arcs. Rather than focus on the speaker in the scene, he captured the listeners’ silent expressions, which ended up feeling more heartbreaking. 

“I wanted to try to ground as much of the personal journeys and the emotional arcs in a lot of the silent moments,” says Tancharoen. “We can settle on the nuance a lot more. There’s a lot more value when you watch the person who’s listening to the information. That’s how we interpret emotions – by watching body language, facial tics,  shifts in eyeballs and eyebrows, and deep breaths. Those are all subconscious things that we can interpret every day.” 

Though not everything is sentimental, Tancharoen promises levity in the dark moments, finding humor in the most random moments — but it worked. He credits the actors working off each other and finding a balance. He recalls comedian and actress Jenny Yang, who plays triad member Xing, making the character her own by adding a level of dryness that Tancharoen did not expect or consider for the cool, female assassin. 

“I love when those moments happen,” says Tancharoen. “When an actor can walk in the room and tell us what the role is — and then, we’re like, ‘Great. Now we can work on this together.’”

With Hollywood exhausting the Italian Mafia genre yet again, it’s about time for something new and fresh like The Brothers Sun. Asian mafia and gangsters in Hollywood settings have always been seen a certain way — one that pushes the white lead’s narrative. Tancharoen hopes the series will bring forth more Asian mobster stories, especially those told by Asian creatives. As for possible stories if The Brothers Sun were to continue, Tancharoen joked maybe he’ll add a Thai mobster in the mix to add a little bit of the Thai-Taiwan humor. 

He jokes, “I would love to introduce something like that where they do mistake the region — and maybe even ask “how to pronounce your last name’ because it’s always difficult and it’s really funny.”

The Brothers Sun debuts on Netflix on January 4.