What do barbecue tongs, a pineapple, and an electric mosquito racket all have in common? In The Brothers Sun, these ordinary objects become implements of destruction in the deadly hands of Taiwanese triad gang killer Charles Sun, played by Justin Chien.

His impromptu arsenal includes rolling pins, golf clubs, and a rusty wrench — unsurprising for a man whose proclivity for creative violence earned him the name Chairleg. (Spoiler alert: That name is NOT related to his carpentry skills.)

The stone-faced assassin can fight anyone, anywhere, whether it’s masked ninjas in a Korean spa or dinosaur-suited brawlers at a children’s birthday party. But behind these on-screen antics, there’s a team that brings the action to life. 

“Our stunt coordinators, our choreographers were pretty stunning,” said Academy Award winner Michelle Yeoh, who plays exiled crime family matriarch Mama Sun. 

“Our directors Kevin Tancharoen and Viet Nguyen handled the intensity of the drama and the violent choreography of dance and action with such finesse that you are on the edge of your chair,” she said. “You’re going, ‘Why am I laughing at this? This is not supposed to be funny, but it really is.’ The chemistry between my sons is brilliant.”

Executive producer and director Kevin Tancharoen and Justin Chien.

Executive producer and director Tancharoen looked back on the vast pantheon of action films in his memory when he charted The Brothers Sun’s fight scenes. “All my favorite action sequences, it’s the emotional landmarks that I remember, not necessarily the gunshot,” he said. “[In The Brothers Sun,] every action scene is an extension of an emotional arc that’s happening in that episode. This is not just about cool choreography — it’s about character.”

That emotional core and levity are what underscored the production, said co-creator Brad Falchuk. “We didn’t want any darkness in the show,” he said. “You’d watch this show and you’d feel good afterwards. You wouldn’t feel like you had been sort of beaten down in any way.”

Sam Song Li, who plays Bruce Sun — Charles’ brother, who prefers improv comedy to improvising weapons — found a lot of heart in the series. “There’s a lot of action, there’s great comedic elements, and there’s also Justin’s abs as well; you’ll get plenty of that.”

How was Justin Chien cast as Charles Sun?

Co-creator Byron Wu said he loved how seriously the actors took the training and the acute attention to safety, which was helmed by the stunt and fighting crew. Stunt coordinator Justin Yu, who has worked on everything from the explosive John Wick to the intricately choreographed Mulan, played an essential role in prepping the stunt team and actors for action. “You’ll see that there’s tons of sequences where there’s no double,” Wu said. “Jenny Yang is really going and doing all those pieces. We’re on her face for it, and that’s really hard to do unless you put in a lot of time and a lot of effort, from Justin Yu and his whole team down to the actors.”

Finding an actor who could accomplish the intense training wasn’t easy, said Tancharoen. In other films, he’d use a stunt double to do the close-up, quicker fighting. But make no mistake — Chien is an ultimate ninja. He started training in Muay Thai boxing a decade ago and recently became a blue belt in jiujitsu, competing in a tournament last summer.  

“Justin just nailed the fighting,” said Tancharoen. “He was like, ‘If you’re going to give me ninja training, I am going to be a ninja.’ I was actually shocked at how good he got, because he became a full-on martial arts expert. He fully Keanu’d this role.” 

On his first day on set, in his first ever on-screen fight scene, Chien had to take on “the giant,” who bashes through Mama Sun’s kitchen in Episode 1. “It was overwhelming and quite intense,” said Chien. “But luckily, I had an awesome dance partner in Nate Andrade, who is almost 6-foot-8 or 6-foot-9 — he’s Thanos’ stunt double. He would fist-bump me and just reassure me. And sometimes, before a take, we would look at each other and just let out a real primal yell to get the energy going.”

How did Chien train for The Brothers Sun fights?

Chien’s training involved the stunt and fighting team led by Yu, fight coordinator Eric Brown, and fight coordinator and stunt actor Michael Lehr, who were all present on the original Keanu-fied kick-fest John Wick. “They put me through the wringer, and I loved it,” Chien said. “They held me to a really high standard. I remember Justin [Yu] came up to me one day and he’s like, ‘We’re going to push you because we’re not treating you like an actor — we’re treating you like one of us.’ ”

Yu was not only the creative fight coordinator, he was also second unit director, shooting parts of the Dim Sum Palace and Ka Spa brawls.

He runs his team like an army, said Tancharoen, who worked with Yu previously on Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. “That dojo mentality really made me gravitate towards him, the way he was able to run the department so smoothly,” he added. “He’s incredibly creative but also has such a warmth.” 

Stunt double Michael Lehr and Justin Chien.

Justin Chien and stunt double Michael Lehr.

Who was Charles Sun’s stunt double?

When a double was needed for Chien, Lehr would step in. “Mikey Lehr kicks so much ass, it scares me,” said Wu. But being a stunt double is much more than just getting kicked in the face or thrown out a window; Lehr’s acting background helped him develop a solid psychological base for the character. “Justin [Chien] and I have a lot of similar training in our backgrounds; he boxes, does Muay Thai, and submission grappling, which are all martial arts styles that I’ve been training for the better part of two decades. I don’t even think I’m that great at them, but they definitely helped me in matching Justin’s movement.”

What does choreographing musical numbers and fight scenes have in common?

Tancharoen knows a ninja when he sees one; he directed the 2011 Mortal Kombat web-series reboot. But he also perfected ways to capture movement in dance-centric flicks including Fame and Glee: The 3D Concert Movie. Very early on, The Brothers Sun team discussed having a rhythm to the fighting, which was super important, said Tancharoen. “When you go and watch some of the greats, like either Jackie Chan or especially Bruce Lee — and even Donnie Yen too — if you closed your eyes and just listened to the sound effects, there’s a rhythm to it,” he said. “Bruce [Lee] was really good at pausing and then doing three quick punches and then stopping again. There’s a magic to it.”

Falchuk said Tancharoen’s background in choreography was crucial. “We prepped these action sequences like musical numbers,” Falchuk said. “You get the choreography down, you set it, you understand where everything’s going to be, and then you can understand where to put the cameras. The difference is, if you miss a shuffle step in a musical number, you go back, but if you miss a kick, you could hurt somebody. So they had to be really, really specific and committed.”

But for stuntpeople like Lehr, even with the prep, training, and risk mitigation, a little wear can come with the territory. “Sometimes scenes are also just a matter of biting the bullet and going home with some bruises,” he tells Tudum. “There’s a scene where I actually get to play a character with my normal, unfortunate face, and I get absolutely beaten by a young man with a stick, just absorbing hits for something like 30 seconds straight…. Somewhere, somebody has an hilarious cell phone video of me laying on the floor, eyes crushed shut, frowning and thinking, ‘What a weird job I have.’ ”

Li jokes he regrettably didn’t get the same kind of training as Chien. “[It] is so sad because we have a world-class stunt team; they’re so good,” he said. “It was really fun in the few scenes that I did get to choreograph, though. There’s an art to running around like a chicken with his head cut off, all right?”

Below, read about how some of The Brothers Sun’s wildest fights scenes were made.

How did they do the dinosaur fight scene?

Kevin Tancharoen: When I read that in the script, I immediately laughed and was very excited to shoot it. But it offered a bit of a logistical nightmare because it was incredibly hot. These suits have a motorized fan in them, and we’re asking them to do martial arts and flip and kick and fall in pools, which is not easy in that suit because it’s just this lumbering thing. You can’t really get fully solid with any sort of move or know where you’re going, because if the head goes one way, you’re blind.

So they had a bunch ordered to the stunt rehearsal and just played around with it. And the second they put it on the stunt team, it’s like having kids in a costume. They all of a sudden are doing hilarious things. They immediately were playing and doing flips and saying, “Oh, we should do this.” So their creative brains sparked the second they had a T. rex costume on.

How did they pull off the dim sum banquet battle? 

Tancharoen: For the banquet scene, when I first read it, I was like, “Oh my god, this is going to take forever.” And there’s so many people in the scene, there’s so many story points we need to hit, and it’s towards the end of our series. It can’t just be small. It has to be really, really big and epic and character driven. 

Michael Lehr: The dim sum scene was so massive and had so many moving parts, with our team split up in a bajillion directions and tons of stunts happening in every frame. I mean, even when it’s going smoothly, it’s calculated pandemonium, but challenges are what stuntpeople live for!

Byron Wu: They would start sometimes, like, what, two months in advance for that dim sum fight? They would basically develop the whole fight with literally Home Depot boxes to stand in for the stage or set or location, and they would mock fight. They would practice it, they would see what worked, what didn’t, and then they would bring in our actors to do tons of training.

Tancharoen: It was organized chaos in the best way possible because it was a small set, a lot of people on camera, and a lot of crew in a very claustrophobic space.

But the fact that we were able to coexist and cooperate on that level of stress is nothing short of a miracle. The cast was there to do it 100% every single time. It was a long shoot. And it’s very easy to get tired sitting at a dim sum table pretending like you’re shooting a gun. But they did it with enthusiasm every single time.

How did they make the golf driving range fight look so real?

Brad Falchuk: The fight choreography team is one of the best, if not the best, working. Absolutely committed to excellence in every way. We would come up with an idea like, “Hey, golf course.” And [the fight choreography team] would come up with the most fun, elaborate, but story-driven sequence that had all the bells and whistles of what you want in terms of the action but was also emotional.

Justin Chien: The most challenging undertaking, I’d say, was the golf fight, because it was just such a gargantuan sequence. And I remember we actually shot the hardest [part] of that entire sequence first, somewhere on the first floor: a 30-, 45-second take. We shot that first because I think I was the most fresh.

Who was responsible for the Bake Off fight scene?

Wu: I’m the one who loves Bake Off and really wanted it to be part of the show, from the opening set piece where we are fighting with The Great British Baking Show in the background. It was part of our tone from the outset, and so we really wanted to find ways of making these set pieces fun.

Watch The Brothers Sun now.