CHARLOTTE NICDAO TALKS ABOUT HER COMPLEX AND MULTIDIMENSIONAL ROLE AND FILMING SEASON 2 OF MYTHIC QUEST ON APPLE TV+ DURING A GLOBAL PANDEMIC

BY DINO TAKASHI AND IRVIN RIVERA

CHARLOTTE NICDAO is on a hot streak. While there is a scarcity of lead roles made for Asian women on TV, Charlotte is reprising her role on the second season of Apple TV+ Mythic Quest. The show premiered a month before the world hit the pause button last year and in spite of the global pandemic, it survived another fresh season of story pulled off from a dysfunctional yet entertaining found family in a video gaming and design company along Rob McElhenney (It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia). Charlotte is playing Poppy Li, the lead engineer that created the popular game, the namesake of the tv show.

PHOTOGRAPHER: IRVIN RIVERA, FASHION STYLIST: LUCY WARREN, MAKE-UP ARTIST: DANA DELANEY, HAIR STYLIST: BRIDGET BRAGER

In a male-dominated gaming industry like IRL and in the Mythic Quest-verse, Charlotte Nicdao and Poppy Li, are both making their own mark, in their own terms, playing multidimensional and complex roles.

Charlotte was born and raised in Australia with Filipino roots on her dad side. Growing up, there were not much available roles that tackles the stories of Asian characters. She remarks that the entertainment industry is getting more exciting with the characters women get to play but still lacking specific roles made specifically for a certain group, for example, Filipinos.

As workplace TV shows are making an indelible spot in people’s TV binging habit, Mythic Quest is following the leads of celebrated shows like The Office. With funny banters and a storyline so entertaining, it offers a fresh and charming look of the gaming industry with a bunch of eccentric characters that are universally relatable. We caught up with Charlotte in LA talking about the quirks of her role Poppy Li, Animal Crossing, filming and life in general during Covid and being an actress representing the Filipino community on a global scale.

Hi Charlotte! Congratulations on Mythic Quest Season 2. How are you?

I'm good! How are you? That was a fun shoot. I had heaps of fun. I'm so happy to be here.

How was that experience like filming Season 2?

We started filming season two at the beginning of 2020. We shot one week of the first episode and then the entire world shut down. So basically, we had an episode that we had to scrap because the world had become a completely different place and as we were trying to figure out how to come back and properly shoot a second season, Rob McElhenney, my boss basically had this idea if we could shoot an episode while in isolation. And you know I think ultimately a lot of shows had this idea, and I think it was really exciting about what we did was that we are a workplace comedy so obviously we want to get some good zoom jokes in there and like have a bit of fun with the fact that everyone now have to work from the computer. But I think on top of that, we really wanted to address the idea of loneliness and a lot of people were going through that during the pandemic so I was so proud to be part of something that I think really captured the moment of what we were all feeling, really all feeling back in the beginning days of all that [pandemic] breaking out. And then we were lucky enough to go back and shoot a whole second season later in the year under some really strict covid protocols and honestly, I just felt so grateful to be able to go into the job that I loved with this cast and crew that means so much to me. I mean, a lot of them and I are closest friends so it wasn't lost on me how lucky I was that I got to go in and make believe that the pandemic was over for a few hours every day.

How are you excited for season two?

I am so excited and I always say that I feel like if someone had asked me five years ago to write down my dream job on a piece of paper I would've basically written what this show is and what this character that I get to play is and I feel like season one was just as whirlwind of happiness for me and then season two we really got to come in having to establish exactly who these characters are and what we're trying to say and make as a TV show. Throughout season one, my character Poppy is sort of frustrated with her lack of control over this video game that she had created and in season two, and the cool thing about season two, is she's finally being promoted so that she has the power that she's always dreamed of having at this company and so I got to play with these ideas of success and the idea of reaching the top never being quite what you imagined that it would be and how that was like. I mean, for Poppy it's great because she's very used to being amazing at her job as a coder. She's like a supernova genius programmer that really has never come up against a problem that she couldn't solve in that arena. When it comes to being a leader, she's a complete novice. She's terrible with people. She's also kind of a jerk. And so I think that it's like this is a very new challenge for her to try to figure out what kind of a boss she wants to be.

I remember binging season one and now you’re telling me all these layers and I'm excited to see more!

I'm glad you like it. Yes and I think you know obviously it's a show about a video game company which I personally find fascinating because it's such a huge industry and it's such a huge community and I feel like a lot of stories from within that industry just haven't really been told yet so there's this wealth of story that we can pull from; but having said that, it's sort of just a story about a dysfunctional found family. You know it's about a group of people that go into an office every day and some days we get along and some days we don't, and I think that's universally relatable. And for me, I wasn't a gamer when I signed onto the show but I was already totally pulled in by the script and then in retrospect I should've kind of got a little bit into gaming.

What are you playing right now?

Actually I haven’t been playing very much lately because I got so obsessed with Animal Crossing that I had to like cut myself off. I was just wasting an entire day. Yes I miss everybody. All I want to do is it's like fish and you know dig up delightful fossil lake. I got very obsessed with making my house perfect I put so many waterfalls in to my island.

Do you still visit your house?

I haven't been in a while and I'm very nervous to log back in I think all my villagers are going to have abandoned it.

Being a person of color and a woman in the entertainment industry and also as a girl colder, how do you weave it all together all those elements?

I think that we are very wary of not trying to have that attitude of like wagging our finger at the audience and trying to teach them a lesson. Ultimately, we want to be entertaining and we want to make you feel good. That’s the heart of the show. Having said that we don't want to sugarcoat the fact that the gaming industry is a male-dominated one and Poppy, the character that I play, is a bit of an anomaly and she has struggles that are unique to being a woman in that industry. The thing that I think we like to play with is this idea that when you put a woman in that role, you want her to be perfect. Do you want her to be a saint? You want her to never mess up so that you can be like – “look how great it is having this woman in this role of leadership role.” With Poppy, we make her very human. We make her very flawed. She's not a very good feminist. She's not very good at supporting the women around her and she's kind of not the woman that you would necessarily want to be your boss but I think that's kind of the beauty of the show- we're trying to allow the characters to be human essentially. I think as an actress like me, personally, as a woman of color in the industry that I'm in, it's really exciting to see those sorts of roles become more and more available for performers like me. I think there was a time with the only characters available to me were very one dimensional and now I'm getting to play this very complex woman at the center of a story and it's beautiful.

The show is brilliant and every person is relatable.

And I'll say I think that we increase that tenfold in season two. I'm not just saying that. I really feel like you get to delve into these characters even further and you think that you know people and then they'll do something totally out of left field and I it's just like the right world for exploration. I got to do scenes and characters that I didn't really interact with in season one. Poppy and Dana got this great storyline of these two women in this industry that is like kind of helping each other and kind of which is really fun to play I just think there's like so many things in Season Two that people are going to go nuts over.

So obviously you're not like the character Poppy Li. What are the similarities and the differences?

I mean I would say that a lot of Poppy’s goofiness comes from me but I think she was a little bit less awkward originally and they cast me and they were like you know it's really funny when Charlotte is a mess. And so I love bringing that. So like seriously, that weird physicality is fun to have which is like honestly there's not much performing there. One of the things that I can't relate about playing her is that I am extremely concerned all the time about other people but for Poppy it is like the opposite of that. Poppy does not care how anyone else is feeling as long as she's getting her way and while I would never want to live my whole life like that it is pretty fun to like a dip into that nonchalance every so often when I'm playing the character - I just want to be in the corner. Yeah just want to be like a little bit selfish for a second and Poppy is selfish so narcissistic. In season two, now her ego is allowed to grow as big as she wants it to. I mean she's a woman with a mission right? She cares about her job deeply which I relate to. That I think is one of the things that I do find a similar between us. Work is at the center of my life to the detriment of everything else but I would definitely say it's the thing that drives me and motivates me the most and I didn't think I relate to that in the way that Poppy operates. I mean with a good amount of that kind of determination, it's good. It's good to have. It's always about finding that balance for her as a character it's like finding the balance between how far do I push to achieve what I want to achieve before it comes at the expense of my own happiness which you know she's a stressed out woman.

Let’s talk about you being a Filipino

In this massive amazing industry, you know I think that there's so many talented Filipino actors working in Hollywood and around the world at the moment and it's interesting because there's not a lot of Filipino stories being told and so often, we play other ethnicities. For me, playing Poppy is really exciting because being a Filipino woman is part of who she is. I think that at the moment, the audience is hungry for a lot more specific in the stories that they're watching and so I'm excited to see the Filipino communities. I think we're really talented people like this that's just sort of like a natural artistic leaning.

I agree we love entertainment and I think there's like a lot of like “secret Filipinos” and we are everywhere!

It's funny that you mention the “secret Filipino” just wouldn't necessarily know but me and my dad love the game that's me and I'm always like “this actor is Filipino” and I’m right!

Do you have any advice to women breaking into the industry that you know especially now that there's an emergence or female representation?

I think you know whenever I get asked this question I try to come up with something clever and concise to say but I don't know if there is just one brief advice that you can give to women entering the industry. Perhaps I would say is to understand right from the beginning the path where you're trying to get to is going to be extremely squiggly and that's but that you shouldn't allow setbacks or stereotypes. I think women and especially women of color have a tendency to minimize themselves and their value and more and more I'm realizing that. That is sometimes one of the only things that stopping you from breaking through obviously the structures of the industry a difficult and some of them need to change but I also think that part of what is so difficult about being a woman in this industry is that you're really taught from such a young age to doubt yourself and I found for myself the more I have tried to quell that voice easier it's been to find strength and motivation. To be clear it's not the fault of women I think it's a voice that comes from a society that often is asking women to minimize themselves and so I think that it's I think it's revolutionary for women and women of color to especially to silence that voice.

If you were a book what book would you be?

I want to have a good answer to this. It's “If on a Winters Night a Traveler” by Italo Calvino. I love that book because every chapter you're kind of in a new story and you're kind of in a new world and I don't know if that's who I am as a person but it's definitely the life that I'd like to live.

Thank you Charlotte, you’re wonderful!

Thank you so much!