“Not Even Emily’s” latest role in short film “Empathy Man” isn’t the Emily fans are used to
Emily Fan started out as a one-woman show. With her phone recording her, Fan moved between different angles and characters in short skits. If it wasn’t for Fan’s internet persona, “Not Even Emily,” she doesn’t know if she would’ve pursued her lifelong dream of being an actress. Now, she’s entered the big screen with a crew, cameras, and a profession beyond the sketches filmed in the comfort of her home.
In her latest short film, “Empathy Man,” released in July, the 24-year-old Chinese American actress and content creator subverts any expectations her longtime online moniker has created.
Directed by 21-year-old Malaysian filmmaker Bryan Yanbing Lee, the film finds Fan’s character, Emma, teaming up with the titular character, a “useless” superhero, to help her prepare for the grief of losing her grandmother.
Known primarily for her satirical sketches, Fan first rose to fame posting on Vine, her account consisting of six-second videos that doubled as comedy skits. Post-Vine, she successfully transitioned into creating longform content on YouTube, where she has accumulated over 700k followers from writing and acting in sketches that stay true to the signature observational comedy she initially became known for.
“So much of my confidence, I feel, has come from social media,” Fan said. “I think it gave me the confidence to be like, ‘Oh, wait, people find me entertaining.’”
The rise in Asian-led films and stories in mainstream media bolstered that confidence. When Fan saw “Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings'' in 2021, she realized her fantasies could potentially materialize.
On top of launching an acting career, starring in several short films, and being a content creator, Fan also worked as a full-time nurse for the past two years until this June, saving up money that she now hopes will help her transition into acting.
Although she doesn’t have formal training, her experience in writing and acting in her content has been an education on its own. “It keeps that [performing] muscle trained,” Fan explained.
A little over a year ago, “Empathy Man” producer Timothy Wang cold messaged Fan through Instagram. Wang did not know of Fan’s prior acting experience then. Still, he’d been in the creator economy before producing and knew content creators who transitioned into the entertainment industry.
The crew was having a hard time looking for the right Emma, having gone through 40 potential actresses at that point without any leads. One night, while Wang was scrolling on TikTok, Fan’s account popped up.
“I was like, ‘Wait, I know this girl. I used to watch her all the time in high school. She does really funny skits, she’s got a lot of range. Why don't I, just for fun, message her? I know she'll never respond, but what if she does?’” Wang recalled.
Two hours later, Wang was luckily proven wrong when Fan responded, interested in the opportunity.
After watching Lee’s last film, “Love Locked,” Fan read the script for “Empathy Man.” She was intrigued by Lee’s distinct style. Both films intertwine the supernatural with humane experiences with their hyperbolic, thought-provoking writing and genre-defying direction. “He just reminds me of the type of filmmaker where you’d be able to recognize his work,” Fan said.
What sold Fan was the story itself, written as a superhero movie with an existentialist yet uplifting twist.
The Japanese anime “Neon Genesis Evangelion'' and the American series “The Boys” inspired Lee to incorporate a paranormal character into the examination of grief.
“I love taking characters that are conventionally seen as very innocent and giving them a realistic touch,” Lee explained. “My motto for a lot of my works is [to] take something difficult and make it human.”
Last summer, Lee read Chuck Palahniuk’s short story “Zombies.” The story started with Palahniuk’s usual cynical, absurd humor, but the peculiarly wholesome ending inspired Lee. Motivated to write a story with a similar arc, he began writing the script in August, thinking about the fear of loss.
“I see myself growing older, and I don't need my parents as much as I needed them before. It’s that fear of, ‘Oh god, my childhood is gone. It's finished. So what's coming next?’” Lee said.
The protagonist, Emma, confronts this fear with logic, or at least as logically as possible, with a superhero to help them.
Emma, a hard-shelled lawyer Fan characterized as “no-nonsense,” differs from the troubled teenage girl characters Fan has played in past short films. She wanted to expand her range as an actor and was drawn to playing a more mature character who faces fears induced by the inevitable changes from adulthood – especially alongside a superhero character.
When Lee and Wang saw Fan’s audition tape, her performance made their vision for the character finally come to fruition. “She had this presence that made me realize, ‘I've been writing [Emma] like a cartoon character, but now that I see this person, I can see her in the script,’” Lee said. After three rounds of auditions, Fan was cast.
Production started on October 28, 2022, and occurred over Halloween weekend. With five locations and a $4,000 budget, filming took place at Far Rockaway in Queens, New York, a neighborhood that could afford the crew versatile locations within limited space.
Most of the film’s events transpire on the beach, where Empathy Man spots a child building a sandcastle. He explains to Emma that their first mission is to break the sandcastle so Empathy Man can transfer the child’s grief onto Emma, a first step Emma must take if she wants to start preparing for the loss of her grandmother.
The subtly saturated hues of the film make the beach seem ethereal, even when the camera zooms in on the child’s poised animosity as Empathy Man stomps on the castle he’s built.
“I was reading a lot about Buddhism, and Buddhism talks a lot about impermanence, which is where I think the concept of a sandcastle came from, the idea that it always breaks no matter how high you build it,” Lee explained.
Stills from “Empathy Man”
The camera’s movement, panning to and from the characters, and zooming during moments of climax are emblematic of fast-paced action films. What distinguishes “Empathy Man” from mainstream action films is Lee’s direction and Fan’s performance; both give the audience space and time to feel the intense trepidation that comes with preparing for the grief of losing someone you’ve loved for a lifetime.
Filming finished on October 30, and after editing and completing the score, the film was ready for audiences to see two months later.
Friends and family of the crew and NYU students who were there by word-of-mouth gathered in SoHo for the film’s premiere on December 15, 2022. “I had people come up to me afterwards; they told me they personally have dealt with grief, and they said that the film actually really helped them process it,” Lee said.
On July 29, Fan posted the video on her YouTube channel to a larger audience than Lee and the crew had ever imagined when they started pre-production.
“It's so weird seeing Emily do a serious role, but she's so good!” one of the top comments under the film says. One of Fan’s biggest anxieties going into acting as a content creator was that she’d be pigeonholed into working only in comedy; many comments like this one absolved her of that fear.
“In a way, I get the best of both worlds: being taken seriously as a dramatic actor, but people also still thinking I'm funny and giving me praise for being funny,” Fan said.
Although Fan has starred in three other films as the lead, this is the first one completed and released. Things have been especially stagnant with the SAG-AFTRA strike, and Fan has felt stuck.
For the past two years, she’s been starring in more micro-budget short films that would strengthen her reel, but now that she feels like she’s had enough experience, she’s ready to move onto bigger projects and book more dramatic roles similar to “Empathy Man.”
“I don't really want to be like a personality actor where it's like, you're acting, but not really,” Fan explained. “I would want to be something that’s not like me, and it's something where people haven't seen me like that before.”
In an interview conducted by Wang on his podcast, W Lab, the three talked about how “Empathy Man” was the most fulfilled they’ve felt on set.
“There was just a sense of camaraderie,” Fan said. “I honestly feel I made friends that I'm gonna keep in touch with, not even in a work sense.”
Seeing the light shining through the windows into Emma’s grandmother’s room and the crew bustling around him, Lee felt assured that this was precisely what he was meant to do. “It really is about the people you're with when it comes to movie making, and you have to be very lucky to have so many nice people around you,” Lee said. “I got very lucky in that sense.”
That Saturday on the beach, it was supposed to rain while they were filming. Instead, they got a clear day and sunbeams complementing every shot – a sign that everything would be alright.
Behind the scenes of “Empathy Man”