Introducing Danny and Dicky

We’re very excited to announce our two lead actors playing Danny and Dicky Wong!

Danny, the older brother, will be played by... who the fuck cares. It’s Freddie. He’s playing Danny. You already knew that. Freddie is who he is. We don’t need to talk about him anymore.

But Dicky, the younger brother and the Mama’s boy of the duo, will be played by --

BRANDON H. LEE!

You may have seen him as Kwan on Cobra Kai.

Before Cobra Kai, Brandon was a stuntman, an incredible Taekwondo competitor, and just a goofy dude making action-comedy videos with his friends.

He met our action designer, Yung, while working as a stuntman on Shang-Chi, and impressed him not just as a fighter, but as an actor. Early in the process, Yung suggested we meet Brandon as a candidate for Dicky.

So, late last year, the four off us met up and got some delicious dumplings (always gotta do food research, you know) and the vibes were, as the kids say... good. Honestly, we all got along great. It was kind of charming how much Brandon looked up to Freddie from the old YouTube days. Even then, you could see a great little brother/big brother energy between them.

After the train car fight, Yung noted that while Freddie did a great job in that sequence, whoever plays Dicky really needs to be able to fight. With our budget and time constraints, getting two actors fully up to speed for the kind of choreography we want is going to be tough.

So while Freddie and I were already confident in Brandon’s stunt and fight credentials, and could tell he was charming and funny on camera, we weren’t yet sold on whether he could carry the film. And whoever plays Dicky really has to be able to carry the emotional heart of the film.

Just to clarify: we knew Brandon was a good actor. But being “good” and being “right” for the role are two different things.

Dicky is a hard character to play. He’s a man-child teetering between pathetic insecurity and determined professionalism — all while balancing broad, slapstick insanity with genuine emotion and pathos. If it’s all goofball, it won’t work. If it’s too saccharine, it won’t work.

Our references, Kung Fu Hustle, Shaolin Soccer, even early Chaplin films, all work because the comedy is grounded in authentic human emotion.

Also, his co-star is Freddie. (If you couldn’t tell, Matt is writing this.) Freddie is a fantastic pantomime actor. He’s perfect for his role and he’s going to crush it. But he’s not traditionally trained, so his co-star has to be able to match his comic instincts and style — while also grounding their relationship so the whole thing feels real.

All of this is to say: while we were starting to audition other actors, we had Brandon come in and do a chemistry read with Freddie.

He killed it.

One of my favorite moments as a writer is hearing the words you wrote coming out of the mouth of an actor, and forgetting you wrote them. When an actor makes you forget for a second that this is a character you've obsessed over on the page and instead is just a person in front of you.

Brandon and Freddie played off each other perfectly. Brandon was willing to go as far as we wanted with the goofy stuff, but always knew how to bring it back to something real.

And this chemistry read wasn’t easy. We gave 10 pages of sides. Four scenes with big shifts in extreme tones. Hell, we had him do the spooning scene with Freddie, on an air mattress.

Beyond nailing the performance, Brandon clearly understood the character. He brought his own point of view to Dicky, he can fight, had great chemistry with Freddie, looked the part — and most importantly (if I'm being selfish) he was just a joy to direct.

Maybe someday we’ll even post the chemistry read. But even if we don’t, I’d love to talk more about auditioning and what we look for as directors. Pretty quickly, you can usually tell if someone’s right for the part. The rest of the audition is about how they take direction, what their instincts are, whether they’re willing to make bold choices, etc.

Brandon took everything we threw at him, including some weird left-field direction, big shifts in tones of a scene, quick line changes, and so on. He not only made it work, but the scene would get better.

Anyway, all that to say: we couldn’t be happier to have Brandon H. Lee as Dicky Wong.

We’re pretty sure as you all get to see more of him, y'all are gonna to fall in love with him just like we did.

I mean look at this dude! He was made to be in a film like this: https://www.instagram.com/p/C-_L0YfypAd/?hl=en