Born for the Spotlight Review 2024 Tv Show Series Cast Crew Online
Shih Ai-ma (Ting-Yi Lin) is the young actress on her way to an audition, being driven there by her manager, Ms. Chubby (Hsin-Ling Chung). Ms. Chubby is so preoccupied with talking on the phone while Ai-ma gets changed that she almost hits a pedestrian. When her car won’t restart, Ms. Chubby nervously eats a snack and tells her young client to “Run!”. Ai-ma runs to the audition, only to see that she’s one of dozens being considered for the role.
Hsueh Ya-chi (Ying-Hsuan Hsieh), a veteran actor who is now a manager and producer, is at a photo shoot for Li Hsin-ni (Annie Chen), a young up-and-coming client. Ya-chi is pushing her client to do the shoot and look sexy, while Hsin-ni pushes back that she’s doing too much.
Another veteran actress, Ko Li-fen (Chiung-Hsuan Hsieh), is dozing on the set of her soap opera, having not slept for over 24 hours. When she does a scene, she makes a “Pow!” sound when she goes to slap her co-star. When he encourages her to slap him for real, she does so — but a bit too hard.
Ya-chi is in a meeting with the casting people of a movie she’s producing that’s being directed by her husband, Li Tzu-chi (Hsueh Shih-ling). She laments how the men in the room all think Taiwanese actresses are becoming “same-y” when they won’t consider them for more varied roles. Someone suggests award-winning star Chou Fan (Cheryl Yang) for the role, and Ya-chi scoffs, given that her former friend hasn’t been in a film in three years.
Chou Fan is busy getting drunk at the hotel where she lives, stumbling into clubs and picking up on young guys who may or may not recognize her — it’s better if they don’t.
Fan is a hero to a lot of young actors, including Ai-ma, who takes her boyfriend to one of her old movies for the umpteenth time, because she admires how Fan acts.
Ms. Chubby has a part for Ai-ma on a zombie film, acting with one of Ai-ma’s heroes, Pan Yin-yin (Wan-Ting Tseng); she plays a dead body. Yin-yin delays production when she won’t come out of an isolation tent, and her agent Gecko (RD Huang) has to be summoned to pump up her confidence. When she finally comes out, Ai-ma keeps ruining scenes by moving and yelling when Yin-yin steps on her hand.
The first episode of Born For The Spotlight skips around a bit, mainly to introduce us to all the characters. But the heart of the series, written by Yen Yi-wen and Kitten Huang, is going to be the friendship between Hsueh Ya-chi and Chou Fan. When we hear Ya-chi talk about her during the casting meeting, we know there’s more between the two of them than just a professional relationship, and we’re curious to find out more about their friendship and why it’s currently on the outs.
Yes, there are other perspectives of the Taiwanese entertainment business on display, from the young Ai-ma, who dreams of being at a fashion show with her heroes, to the diva star Yin-yin, to the young up-and-comer, Hsin-ni, who has to deal with handsy director Liu (Yi-an Lou). We also have Li-fen, who might just be over the whole acting thing but has to put up with the daily grind of the soap opera she’s on in order to pay the bills.
It’ll be fun to see all of these women acting and interacting, as we suspect that there’s more of a connection between all of them than we’re shown in the first episode. But it’ll also be fun to watch them all navigate what seems like an even more cutthroat environment than Hollywood is, given its relative size and smaller pool of available roles, even if the early episodes feel a bit disjointed as we follow all of these women’s stories.
